Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 39)
TUESDAY 26 JUNE 2007
DR ALI
ANSARI, DR
TOBY DODGE,
DR ERIC
HERRING, DR
GLEN RANGWALA
AND PROFESSOR
SAMI ZUBAIDA
Q20 Mr Hamilton: I am thinking, Chairman,
of an 18-month period when the American elections are going to
be coming up, so my question to both Glen and Eric is that you
do not say you disagree with Toby, in actual fact, what you are
really saying is just let the cards fall, withdraw and that will
take care of itself, because that is what will happen, in two
years' time, three years' time, four years' time. I just want
to be clear that is what you are really saying, is it not?
Dr Rangwala: Not really. I think
one does not give incentives to Iraqi political parties to make
a deal between themselves, but one thing that the British and
Americans can do is try to negotiate with the surrounding actors,
with the regional states, Iran, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia,
to ensure they do not use Iraqi political groups as their own
proxies in a turf war in Iraq. I think the main role of the Coalition
has to be in ensuring that the regional states do not engage in
a way that they could do, with devastating consequences for Iraq
if they do.
Dr Herring: Again, I do not say
just walk away and wash your hands, but, for example, are you
going to try to conquer insurgents by force; the answer simply
has to be no, because they have massive support. Are you going
to try to conquer the Sadrists by force, as is happening currently,
right now; you cannot, so do not try. You must negotiate with
them. Engaging all the surrounding actors is a good idea, in the
sense that what you must do is you have to do it seriously, not
like the United States does currently, where it just wants to
get what it can but fundamentally it does not accept your legitimacy.
Really, it is going to be an Iraqi national process, because Iraqi
nationalism will not be too keen on the idea of the surrounding
states, somehow or other, just deciding the future. We will not
just walk away, but you have to calculate what will produce coherent
actors and what will produce a military balance conducive to negotiations.
You cannot win by force and the Coalition should stop trying to
do so; it cannot do it.
Q21 John Smith: Do you envisage any
strategic threats from the premature withdrawal of the Coalition;
strategic threats to the west and to this country in particular?
Dr Dodge: Yes, I do. We have a
failed state at the moment which no-one controls; a multi-layered
civil war. I think Eric talked about a military balance; what
would a military balance look like, as we go forward? I do not
think it will look like a neatly-divided Iraq into three areas.
Because all of these militias were set up after regime change,
bar the two Kurdish militias, they are prepared to come back into
a country, and no one group will win and you will have intra-communal
and inter-communal war, so you will have a failed state with comparative
stability in fractured areas. That looks to me broadly comparable
to Afghanistan before the rise of the Taliban. The international
community turns its back on a country, the country then descends
into civil war with proxies increasingly fighting their own state
policies on Iraqi soil. A failed state, already with a rising
Islamic radicalism and a transnational Jihadist trend in it, looks
to me to pose a distinct threat because it sits on the edge of
Europe.
Dr Herring: That is what we have
now, but we have layered on top of that Coalition Forces trying
to win offensives against two major actors, and that is the absurdity
of it. This is the direction we have already; we are already there,
it exists. The comparative stability in Basra is precisely because
the militias have managed to dominate.
Dr Dodge: There is no stability
in Basra.
Dr Herring: Actually, stability
in terms of a fragile balance between militias. I do not mean
in any positive sense. I think we can agree on that.
Chairman: We are now aware of the general
views that you have expressed about Iraq as a whole. Moving on,
and dealing first with the surge, David Borrow.
Q22 Mr Borrow: On that point, how
successful has the US surge been; is it delivering the results
that were expected and what do you expect General Petraeus to
report in September?
Dr Dodge: I was travelling through
Baghdad in April, which was about the third month of the surge,
and travelling on the western bank of the Tigris, Yarmouk, Mansour,
what are generally considered Sunni neighbourhoods. You could
say, to some extent, in those neighbourhoods, what the surge has
done is stopped the militia of the Mahdi Army, Muqtada al-Sadr's
militia, coming in and purging those communities of Sunnis, which
it did at least for 12 months. To a certain extent, we have seen
somewhat of a drop-off in extrajudicial killings, but, as Eric
was saying, that is an incredibly localised and probably temporary
issue and that has led directly to the fighters, the militias
and insurgents, moving out of the capital to Diyala, where violence
has increased massively. On that level, I do not think the surge
has yet been successful. Secondly, in my wildest imagination I
cannot see General Petraeus turning up at Congress in September
and saying "It's all over; let's go home." What he will
say is "Here is the data; I think we need more time."
That is crystal-ball-gazing, or anyway controversial; he will
try to push for more time.
Dr Herring: Briefly, it is a blip
not a surge, in the sense that there is a small increase in Forces
to below the maximum previously there, so actually you could call
this the refusal to go back to previous levels, the maintained
cut, would be just as accurate a description. Presumably we will
be going to get on to political benchmarks because the surge was
meant to create the space for the achievement of the political
benchmarks on provincial elections, the reversal of some de-Ba'athification,
compromising on the Constitution, oil revenue-sharing and the
future of the oil industry. All of that, more or less, is struggling
very much, and effectively I think has stalled, even the things
that they claimed to have some agreement on, so the idea of surge
to create some political space has failed.
Q23 Mr Borrow: There has been some
talk about the approach of the UK as opposed to the US; at the
same time as the US is putting extra troops into the surge the
UK is drawing down troops from the south. Do they represent different
strategies or are they part of a single strategy, and what has
been the reaction in the south to the draw-down of the UK Forces?
Dr Rangwala: There has been a
consistently different strategy taken by the British in the southern
governance, in the south-east of Iraq, from the US approach in
central Iraq, essentially. The British approach has been a much
more hands-off approach; in that sense, they have not tried to
intervene in many of the disputes that have taken place between
the different groups within Basra, they have not tried to intervene
in some areas in which they know that they will provoke a violent
response. This is quite different from the US approach, which
is essentially tackling those areas, sending their troops into
those areas in order to impose a new form of rule in those towns
or cities concerned. The British approach at the moment of scaling
down its presence to 5,500 troops in Basra essentially is a continuation
of that hands-off approach. We are likely to see the removal of
British Forces from their central base in Basra completely over
the coming months, and I think, in that sense, at least, it is
part of that different approach that the British have taken.
Q24 Mr Jenkin: Is not really the
future of Iraq dependent upon the politics of Washington, rather
than the merits of any particular strategy or policy any General
or department in Washington might adopt?
Professor Zubaida: I think there
are many issues in Iraq which are dependent upon policy in Washington,
but given that Washington has proved to be so impotent in actually
managing Iraq then there must be very limited issues which are
determined by Washington. I think one of the big questions that
will be determined by Washington is the future of the Kurdish
region. In fact, the Kurdish region is relatively well-off, relatively
stable, and so on, but that depends very much on continued American
support and keeping Turkish Forces at bay. That is one of the
issues which depend very much on Washington and what happens in
the future. Given that Washington has not really been terribly
successful in controlling Iraq, I do not know, apart from the
decision to stay or withdraw, and in what form to stay, there
are so many elements in Iraq, as has been made very clear, which
are not under control.
Dr Ansari: I just want to add,
I think that the situation in Iraq, in the border region, could
probably be, in some ways, certainly affected perhaps in a positive
way if US policy towards the region was a little bit more coherent.
I am focusing particularly on Iran there.
Q25 Mr Jenkin: Lots of people talk
about engaging Iran. How should we do that and what are we trying
to achieve?
Dr Ansari: My own view is that
you are not going to get broader results in the war on terror,
be it Afghanistan or Iraq, unless you begin to have some sort
of coherent policy and strategy towards Iran. Engagement can mean
a broad range of issues. At the moment, as far as I can see, the
United States and Iran are settling into a rather uneasy war of
attrition and some of the excesses of this war of attrition are
being seen in Afghanistan and Iraq. On the one hand, the Americans
are pushing for a fairly tight and, I would say, in some ways,
quite successful economic embargo, in a sense, a sort of siege
of the Iranian economy, which is beginning to bite, and the Iranians
are beginning to retaliate by supporting a whole range of different
proxy groups, to try to put pressure on the Coalition. I have
to say that we generalise at our peril, in a sense, because clearly
in the United States as well there are some strong divisions within
the Administration as to how to proceed. On my recent trip to
the United States, I was quite struck to see the differences in
opinion between the State Department and, say, for instance, the
Vice President's Office. The Vice President's Office seemed to
be carrying on a policy, quite distinct and of its own, as far
as, say, Baluchistan was concerned. There are things going on
which I do not think are terribly helpful, but you can see how
the Iranians might retaliate in kind by supporting units like
the Taliban or supporting even Sunni insurgents in Iraq, however
limited I consider those to be, but nonetheless obviously it exists.
Q26 Mr Jenkin: The West is torn between
a policy which might be characterised as carpets and pistachios
and being nice to the trading ruling class in Iran, or carrier
groups and backing the PMI. Should we be doing either of those
two things, or both of them; are they mutually exclusive?
Dr Ansari: In my view, I think
the latter point is probably not helpful. I do not think it is
helpful at all to be backing groups such as the PMI, principally
because until they can convince me that they are a democratic
opposition I do not see what the point of them is. On the other
hand, yes, there are elements, and one of the things we find in
Iran is that it is a very plural political system, that there
are options for engagement with different groups. The problem
with western policy, I think, towards Iran is it has been too
monolithic, so we fail to see the distinctions between different
groups, we tend, as you say, to have carpets and pistachios, in
a general sense, in a sense mollifying even the more hard-line
elements. The great joke in Iran today is that when we had a President
who talked about dialogue with civilisations we responded with
the axis of evil and when we have a President who talks about
the Holocaust we offer him talks. This is the thing, that there
is sort of a contradiction in western policy, and particularly
coming out of Washington, and it is not missed in Iran, the Iranians
see it. Even Iranians who have no affection whatsoever for Mr
Ahmadinejad are struck by the fact that he seems to get away with
murder, and they wonder what his magic is, his great trick is,
really. What they do not understand is, and this is, as I am sure
you appreciate, as far as Britain is concerned, they certainly
cannot conceive that anything that Britain does is anything but
calculated at the most profound level. The notion that Britain
might in some ways make a mistake, or not actually deal with something
in a coherent manner, is inconceivable to most Iranians because
that is simply not the way Britain works.
Q27 Mr Jenkin: What sort of Iraq
does Iran legitimately want and how do we appeal to Iran's legitimate
interests?
Dr Ansari: I was struck by one
of the comments that Sami made earlier. We have this situation
of various different groups which all want a united Iraq but no-one
can be in control of it. I think the Iranians can be counted as
one of those groups which want a united Iraq but want to be in
control of it. Ultimately, they see themselves as being there
when the Coalition has gone. They have a certain complacency about
it, of course, they consider themselves to have been around for
thousands of years and will continue to be so and they see Iraq
as their justifiable near abroad, as I used the term earlier.
I think, by and large, the comments that were made to me certainly,
and this is, I have to say, a while back, certainly 18 months
to two years ago, but when I was talking to some senior officials
their argument was very strongly in favour of a united Iraq but
a united Iraq which was militarily weak. Their red line was "We
will not allow, at any stage, a military threat to emerge from
this country again. That is our red line. What emerges out of
Iraq, out of that, ideally, we would like a politically unified
Iraq, one that can be a good market for Iranian goods." This
is the sort of thing that they are looking at. If the country
was to fragment, they think they can manage it, with the Turks,
and that is their view.
Q28 Mr Jenkin: Moving on, we know
that lots of stuff comes over the border, which is killing our
soldiers, bluntly; is this with the support, the permission, the
active involvement of the Iranian Government?
Dr Ansari: I think that there
is a dual layer in Government in Iran, since 2004 this has been
particularly evident; one is basically what you would call the
orthodox republican elements of government machinery, and the
other is the IRGC, and the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps, tends to operate on its own agenda. I think, where you
find some of the more unhelpful elements of Iranian intervention
in Iraq, it comes from the IRGC. Their response, incidentally,
will be "This is our response" to what they perceive
to be US/British intervention in Khuzistan or in Baluchistan.
There is a cycle of violence emerging, which I suspect is part
of the whole fragmentation of political life in Iraq, which is
spilling over the border; but that is the way they see it. There
are other ideological agendas going on, of course, where they
say "We want to make life as uncomfortable as possible,"
for two different reasons. One is "If the Coalition is kept
busy they won't pay attention to us;" and, two, "Perhaps
we can encourage them to leave earlier," because some of
them believe that Iran will be in a very strong position to be
the dominant player. I think there are others, of course, in the
Foreign Ministry and other cases, many of whom are not in Government
actually at the moment, who would argue that both views are fanciful,
that actually there should be some sort of constructive engagement
with the Coalition, tacitly, behind the scenes, you would never
say it publicly, of course, to ensure that some form of stable
Iraq is left, because the last thing they want is, as Toby drew
the analogy, another Afghanistan on their western border.
Q29 Mr Jenkin: If we got the support
of the Iranian Government, could they actually stop the flow of
weaponry across the border?
Dr Ansari: Inasmuch as there is
IRGC intervention then, yes, that could be stopped. I do not think
there is a problem there. Inasmuch as there are entrepreneurial
elements at work, that is more difficult, yes.
Q30 Mr Jenkin: The Committee was
recently briefed on the Fulton Report into the capture of the
UK Naval personnel. One of the questions we were asking was what
was the motive behind this attack? What do you think was in the
minds of IRGC; was it their idea, was it somebody else's idea,
was it a local thing? What was behind it?
Dr Ansari: I think the IRGC had
made it quite clear that they wanted to retaliate for the seizure
of the Irbil Five; the intelligence was there.
Q31 Mr Jenkin: The intelligence was
there: that is a very serious accusation to make?
Dr Ansari: It was on their website;
they were making announcements about it, they were saying "We
will go after blonde, blue-eyed ... " What they did not say,
necessarily, was "We will go after a British Naval vessel."
The assumption was they would target the Americans. My view of
that is, judging from the experience of 2004, if they were going
to go after people probably they would not go after Americans.
There was always vulnerability there, but the fact is that, on
the occasion of the Persian New Year, the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah
Khomeini, effectively gave the go-ahead. He said, in his speech,
very clearly, that "If the Coalition persists in illegal
activities, we will retaliate with illegal activities of our own."
Q32 Mr Jenkin: Does that include
the capture of the Irbil Five?
Dr Ansari: The Irbil Five was
a factor; it was them plus there was a defection, supposedly,
of an Iranian Minister of Defence, there were also the diplomats
which were being abducted. We have to bear in mind that from the
moment that George W Bush announced, I think it was, in January,
or December, I cannot remember, that Iranian personnel would be
legitimate targets of Coalition Forces, and you have this sudden
surge—splurge—whatever, seeking to abduct as many
Iranians as you can in Iraq, to curtail their activities, the
likelihood of a retaliation was always there, and they made it
very clear. The Irbil Five, despite the fact, of course, that
the Iranians, during the whole episode of the sailors, officially
would say "There is no link," very frequently, when
you got to point two, the link became very apparent, the link
was there. They wanted, first of all, access to the individuals,
there was no access; as usual, the individuals were abducted,
there was no Red Cross access, there was no diplomatic access,
they did not know where they were. I think now we have Red Cross
access. As I understand it, from Tehran, there was an assumption,
they were led to believe, now whether this is true or not I have
no idea of saying, that they would be released on the occasion
of the Persian New Year, and when they were not released on the
occasion of the Persian New Year I think the go-ahead was given
that they should act.
Mr Jenkin: You would think it entirely
reasonable for HMS Cornwall's Intelligence Officer to have been
furnished with or to have access to that kind of intelligence?
Chairman: That is not a question for
Dr Ansari.
Q33 Mr Jenkins: What exactly is the
relationship between Iran and Russia at the present time; how
close are they?
Dr Ansari: I think one of the
unfortunate consequences of the developments in Iranian politics
that you are seeing now is part of a tighter relationship with
Russia. As you see Mr Putin going down the route of growing autocracy,
I think you can see his influences reigning large in Iran at the
moment. There is a very strong business link, basically, between
the two; black market links, I suppose, is the polite way of putting
it. It is very strong business links, and so on. I think also,
from the Russian perspective, they see the issue of Iran as a
useful stick with which to beat the United States. It is leverage
for the Russians, as far as I can see. It is the old game.
Mr Jenkins: Yes, it is the great game
returns.
Chairman: Dr Ansari has been talking
about Iran at some length and very helpfully. Is there anything
any of you would like to add to that, or would you like to bask
in his wisdom: right, then let us move on.
Mr Jenkins: Thank you very much. That
is very helpful.
Q34 Willie Rennie: To what extent
is there a risk that the sectarian violence in Iraq could spill
over to a regional war, with the Sunnis and Shi'as?
Dr Dodge: I think, if this is
King Abdullah of Jordan's rather ill-measured and extreme statements
about the crescent of crisis, and maybe King Adbullah can say
that because he has no indigenous Shi'a population of his own,
a spill-over into a regional war is highly unlikely; extremely
unlikely. I think what is much more likely is that conflict will
be contained in Iraq and regional tensions will be fought out
in Iraq by proxy. I think there is a great deal of very realistic
worry in Saudi Arabia and in Jordan that they are living on the
edge of a failed state and that what they want to do is seal their
borders and push the conflict away from them. Their big fear is,
as US troops draw down and as the situation gets worse, there
will be less and less to stop the regional players playing in
and we will get, basically, a cold war, a proxy war, between Iran
and Saudi Arabia in Iraq. That, I would argue, would have nothing
to do with sectarian identity; that would be dressed up as sectarian
identity. It would be reasons of state, the two ruling élites
fighting each other across the dead bodies of the Iraqis.
Professor Zubaida: There is also
very strong Sunni Salafi sentiment in Saudi Arabia and that Saudi
influence around the world against the Shi'a, and this translates
often into internal conflicts within these countries, so, in fact,
with the Iraq situation, the Shi'a of Saudi Arabia have come under
greater pressure and the tensions between Shi'a and Sunni in Bahrain
have been sharpened, as a result of Iraq. In fact, there is a
certain degree of triumphalism of oppressed Shi'a minorities in
Saudi Arabia and some of the Gulf States, through the Iraqi Shi'a
resurgence; this, of course, is also true in Pakistan. In fact,
while I agree with Toby that it will not lead to a regional war,
possibly greater intervention by proxy within Iraq, at the same
time I think we have to look at the internal situation in many
of these countries, which have a significant Shi'ite community.
Dr Herring: You do get pockets
of local fighting and balancing and settling-up, and there has
been no reference to Basra; what you have there is the dominance
of militia forces which have driven people out. They killed off
the former Ba`thists, they killed off the local intelligentsia,
the dominant local tribes, and they established something that
they managed to settle themselves, very violently and with lower
levels of continuing violence. Surrounding states will not look
to just throw themselves, willy-nilly, into doing their own fighting
and trying to work out all of this locally; they do have these
incentives to continue and extend the involvement, and picking
horses rather than going in themselves.
Dr Dodge: Let me give you an example.
Basra is quite fascinating; the extent to which the powers in
Basra have been picked, or created, by Iranian funding is a matter
for discussion.
Professor Zubaida: I think, in
speaking of Basra, there are also other parts; we have forgotten
about the Christians. In fact, one of the sectors of victims of
this situation has been the smaller Christian communities in Iraq.
Whereas all the official political leaders and religious leaders
make noises about tolerance and unity, and what have you, the
actual facts on the ground, of the militias and the various groups
which try to force their authority over neighbourhoods and communities,
have been that the Christians have been targeted. In many ways,
they have been, in some areas, and I think in Basra, particularly,
under great pressure and some have been ethnically cleansed, so
to speak.
Q35 Willie Rennie: We have touched
on this issue briefly already, about dialogue with Iran, not so
much about Syria, but do you think there is really constructive
dialogue or do you think it is tokenistic, between the US, UK
and all the various states?
Dr Herring: From what I have seen,
it appears fundamentally to be token; primarily because the United
States is extremely hostile to those states. There might be tactical
accommodations they can both make and so they can actually get
real deals on some specifics, but it does not change the fact
that when you spend time in the United States, for example, in
the case of Iran daily, the American media is awash with just
an amazing amount of hostile material, being over there. You have
all the stuff on television about how the Iranians are going round
the New York Subway system, taking down all the targets that they
can use for their possible chemical weapons and nerve gas in the
US Subway. That kind of frenzied mentality in the United States
is not conducive to serious engagement. There has to be a choice;
are you even going to recognise the Iranian state, are you going
to establish full diplomatic relations, are you going to deal
with it as a legitimate state, or not, and if they cannot fundamentally
bring themselves to do that then it is hardly surprising if those
states are not going to co-operate fully in your regional designs.
Q36 Willie Rennie: Do you think that
applies to Syria as well?
Dr Herring: Less so, but it is
still fundamentally yes.
Professor Zubaida: I think, when
we talk about engaging with, the question really is what are you
going to give them; presumably engaging with means negotiating:
what are you going to negotiate, what are you going to offer?
Syria has a whole list of objectives, in relation to Israel, the
region, Lebanon, what have you; what lines are you going to follow
with this, for instance? The other question to ask is, supposing
you did get Syria on your side, what can Syria do, what can they
achieve; apart from closing their borders and stopping the Iraqi
exiles being active there, or whatever, really there is very little
they can do in terms of controlling the situation in Iraq.
Dr Rangwala: I think there are
very specific things which can be achieved through negotiation
with Iran, in the short term. Border liaison and co-operation
over the border and naval liaison are two of those things which
can be achieved through negotiation, and are achievable. Both
have been attempted in the past by the British, actually, the
British Ambassador in Iraq entered into negotiations with both
Syria and Iran, with regard to stabilising the border region and
co-operating over that, as well as, I believe, over naval liaison,
in 2004. Both were called off by the opposing side, as it were,
Syria and Iran, as US rhetoric against both those countries escalated.
In that context, at least, a more subdued US critical tone towards
those two countries will enable those short-term objectives to
be secured, with respect to Iraq.
Dr Ansari: There are two things
I want to talk about. One is, the difficulty we find with Iran,
of course, is you have a Government which does not want to talk;
that makes it more difficult, obviously, and I do not want to
romanticise the prospects of having a good dialogue with Iran
at present. At the same time, I would want to say that I think
the problem with western, American policy in particular to Iran
is that I simply do not think Iran really, for the last 30 years,
has been taken seriously enough at high levels of political decision-making.
The sad thing is that Iran is seen very much as an aspect of another
problem, so we either talk to Iran as part of the Iraqi problem,
the Afghan problem, any other problem, and we fail to look at
Iran just on its own merits and its own particularities. Until
we do that we are not going to get results; it is just simply
not going to happen.
Q37 Willie Rennie: What about the
Arab-Israeli conflict, peace process, what kind of an effect is
that having on Iraq and the region as a whole?
Dr Herring: There is a very widespread
commentary that you find just about everywhere that really you
cannot make progress on Iraq until you take seriously the Arab-Israeli
problems. I would dispute that, pretty fundamentally. What is
happening in Iraq is actually very Iraqi and I think it would
really help if we took the substance from Ali's point, that we
take Iraq and what is happening there more seriously. Rather than
having the recent lurch towards referring obsessively to al-Qaeda
in Iraq, every time something happens it is al-Qaeda, it is not
even al-Qaeda in the Mesopotamia region, it is the Iraqi version
of it, it is actually simply al-Qaeda, it is incredibly unhelpful
and also the references to Iran, and therefore they are implying
that everything in Iraq is to do with everything else except Iraq.
This, again, is part of the problem, I would suggest, and what
happens in Iraq can be de-linked from the Arab-Israeli conflict,
that is not what they are fighting about.
Dr Rangwala: Fundamentally, I
agree with that. I think, especially in southern Iraq, the battles
are essentially local battles being fought by different parties,
all of them drawing, to some extent, upon Iranian support to some
degree, but they are local battles and have their own dynamics,
quite independently of external actors. Whether that be actors
involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict or engaged in struggles
between the US and Iran at present, they are local battles which
can be resolved on their terms.
Q38 Chairman: Drawing on Iranian
support to some degree; is there evidence of Iranian manufacture
of IEDs and of Iranian training of insurgents in Iraq?
Professor Zubaida: I think one
point is worth making, which is not a direct answer to your question,
which is that for the most part the Americans and the Iranians
are supporting the same side in Iraq; that, in fact, the main
Iranian client in Iraq is SCIRI, the Supreme Council for the Islamic
Revolution in Iraq, and they are precisely the main ingredient
in the Maliki Government, which is supported by the United States.
The idea that somehow Iran is arming the other side against the
United States may be correct to a very small extent, but the main
thrust of Iranian influence and Iranian support in Iraq is the
same side as that of the United States. I think that is worth
keeping in mind.
Q39 Chairman: What a curious business.
Dr Rangwala: I would disagree
with that slightly. My sense is that the Iranians are backing
every side, they are backing every horse in the race, as it were,
within Iraq at present, they are backing groups which are opposed
to the Supreme Council as well as backing the Supreme Council
itself, so that no group takes—- -
Professor Zubaida: Are they backing
Sunni insurgents though?
Dr Rangwala: I think they are,
as well. They have shown in the past their willingness to support
groups which are fundamentally ideologically opposed to Iran,
in the hope that will bring them into a position of a modus
vivendi with Iran over other issues.
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