Events in Iraq are spinning out of whatever control the US still has there, warns Nicola Nasser* US Ambassador Christopher Hill's warned on 18 February that it could take months to form a new government in Baghdad after the Iraqi elections, scheduled for 7 March, and that this in turn could mean considerable political turmoil in Iraq. Observers and experts as well as officials warn against the looming spectre of a renewed sectarian war in the country, and that security, stability, let alone democracy, and a successful "victorious" withdrawal of American troops from Iraq have all yet a long way to go. A secure, stable and democratic Iraq will have to wait for an end to the raging power struggle over Iraq between the United States and Iran inside and outside the occupied Arab country. Associated Press quoted Hill as predicting "some tough days, violent days as well, some intemperate days" ahead of the 7 March vote. The warnings raise serious questions about US Vice-President Joe Biden's statement a few days ago calling Iraq a "great achievement" for the Obama administration. Neither Biden nor President Barack Obama are able yet to declare that the United States has won in Iraq. In 2007, both men advised the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, but former president George W Bush opted instead for the military "surge", which the Obama administration is now "responsibly" drawing down. However, neither the surge nor the drawdown have produced their declared aim, a secure democracy; instead, a pro- Iran sectarian regime is evolving. The upcoming Iraqi elections have already embroiled the two major American and Iranian beneficiaries of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 in an open power struggle that neither party cares anymore to contain within the limits of their previous bilateral tacit understanding on security coordination, which indicates that the honeymoon of their bilateral security coordination in Iraq is either over, or about to end, a bad omen for the Iraqi people. Despite trumpeting the drums of war, the Obama administration is still on record committed to what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described in the Saudi capital Riyadh on 15 February as the "dual track approach" of simultaneously massing for war and diplomacy, given teeth by building an international consensus on anti-Iran sanctions under the umbrella of the United Nations. Adding to this the fact that Washington is restraining a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran and postponing its positive response to Israeli insistent demands for war as the only option, and the fact that the US military in Iraq are capable of confronting the Iranian militias and intelligence networks inside Iraq but choose not to do so yet, are all indicators that Washington is still eyeing a power sharing arrangement with Iran in Iraq. However, Tehran will not forgo its anti-US leverage in Iraq as long as Washington continues its current strategy to settle the scores of the US-Iran power struggle inside Iraq by moving the struggle to the Iranian homeland itself. Moreover Tehran is trying to disrupt the Arab launching pad of the anti-Iran front, which Clinton said in Riyadh that her administration is "working actively with our regional and international partners" to build, wherever it can, from Gaza and Lebanon to Yemen. Washington is exploiting "Iran's increasingly disturbing and destabilising actions" according to Clinton on the same occasion, as an additional casus belli for convincing Arab partners to join that front. The US and Iran are turning the entire Middle East with its Arab heartland into an arena of a bloody tit-for-tat game, with Iraq as the end game prize. The wider US-Iranian conflict in the Middle East is over Iraq, and not over Iran itself. The Israeli and the Palestinian factors are merely a distracting side show and a propaganda ploy for both protagonists in their psychological warfare to win the hearts and minds of the helpless Arabs, Palestinians in particular, who are being crushed unmercifully under their war machines, left with their religious heritage as the only outlet to seek refuge and salvage, while Arab states are cornered into a choice between worse and worst. Expectantly therefore, Clinton had almost nothing of substance to say about Iraq during her joint press conference with her Saudi counterpart Prince Saud Al-Faisal on Monday, who for geopolitical reasons could not ignore the Iraqi issue: "We hope that the forthcoming elections will realise the aspirations of the Iraqi people to achieve security, stability, and territorial integrity and to consolidate national unity on the basis of equality among all Iraqis irrespective of their beliefs and sectarian differences and to protect their country against any foreign intervention in their affairs," he told reporters. But "foreign intervention" or more to the point foreign US military and Iranian paramilitary occupation, is exactly what would doom the prince's hopes. The editorial of The Washington Post on 20 January, "Obama administration must intervene in Iraqi election crisis", was in fact misleading because US intervention has never stopped for a moment in "sovereign" Iraq, militarily and politically. Similarly, Iran has imposed itself as the arbiter of Iraqi politics. Men like Ahmed Chalabi and Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki are leading a de-Baathification process that was originally the trademark of Paul Bremer, the first civil governor of Iraq after the US-led invasion of 2003. De-Baathification is now sustained by sectarian agents of Iran merely as a pretext to disqualify whoever opposes Iran or its sectarian agenda in Iraq. A pro-Iran sectarian regime is evolving to cement an Iranian power base in Iraq that will sooner or later spread sectarianism all over the region, instead of turning the country into a launching pad for democracy in the Middle East, as promised by the US neoconservatives to justify their invasion of the country seven years ago. The "horrible price" of the Iraqi invasion, which Biden referred to in his appearance on "Meet the Press" on 15 February, is yet to be paid. Chalabi, Al-Maliki and the likes are now braving a challenge to US strategy. Al-Maliki was on record as saying, "We will not allow American Ambassador Christopher Hill to go beyond his diplomatic mission." His aides called for the expulsion of Hill. These are professional politicians. What are their resources to defy the US, whose soldiers are protecting them and whose taxpayers' money has financed them, other than their pro-Iranian credentials? "Despite the presence of more than 100,000 US troops, America's influence in Iraq is fading fast, and Iran's is growing," Robert Dreyfuss fretted in The Nation on 8 February, adding: "As soon as George W Bush made the fateful decision to sweep away the Iraqi government and install pro-Iranian exiles in Baghdad, the die was cast. President Obama has no choice but to pack up and leave." * The writer is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
