WORLD

Holy war, holy warriors Iraqi Shi‘ites in Najaf pledge to fight against ISIS, the Sunni militant group that has swept through northern Iraq

IRAQ’SPhotograph by Haidar Hamdani ETERNAL WAR The sudden military victories of a Sunni militant group threaten maelstrom in the Middle East IRAQ’S ETERNAL WAR BY MICHAEL CROWLEY WORLD | IRAQ

s the brutal fighters of the ancient hatreds are grinding the country to Islamic State of Iraq and Greater bits. Washington has reacted with shock— ANCIENT HATRED: Sunnis vs. Shi‘ites Syria (ISIS) rampaged through no one saw it coming—and the usual fin- northern Iraq in mid-June, a ger pointing, but today’s Washington is a Initial split spokesman for the group issued place where history is measured in hourly In the year 632 Muslims disagreed over a statement taunting its shaken news cycles and 140-character riffs. What’s who should succeed the Prophet Muhammad, enemies. Ridiculing Iraq’s Prime Minister happening in Iraq is the work of centuries, who had died that year. One group believed A that leadership should stay within the family Nouri al-Maliki as an “underwear mer- the latest chapter in the story of a religious of the Prophet and go to his son-in-law Ali. chant,” he warned that his fighters, who schism between Sunni and Shi‘ite that was They became the Shiat Ali (followers of Ali), or follow a radical strain of Sunni Islam, already old news a thousand years ago. Shi‘ites. The other group, the Sunnis, would take revenge against al-Maliki’s re- The Sunni radicals’ dream of establish- believed the Muslim community should determine the new leadership by consensus. gime, which is dominated by Shi‘ites. But ing an Islamic caliphate—modeled on the Ali eventually became the fourth caliph, or this vengeance would not come through first reign of the Prophet Mohammed in leader. Upon his assassination in 661, war the capture of Baghdad, the spokesman the 7th century—has no place for Shi‘ites. broke out between the two groups. vowed. It would come through the subju- That’s why Iraq’s leading Shi‘ite cleric re- gation of Najaf and Karbala, cities that are sponded to ISIS’s advance by summoning home to some of the most sacred Shi‘ite men of his faith to battle. So begins another Struggle for dominance shrines. The Sunni fighters of ISIS would Iraqi civil war, this one wretchedly entan- Around 1500 Safavid established the area cheerfully kill and die, if necessary, to gled with the sectarian conflict that has of modern-day Iran as Shi‘ite. Shi‘ites gradually united the Persian Empire and erase their blasphemous existence. already claimed more than 160,000 lives distinguished it from the Ottoman Empire What army would rather raze a few in Syria. Poised to join the fighting is Iran, (based in modern-day Turkey) to the west, shrines than seize a capital city? The answer whose nearly eight-year war with Iraq in which was Sunni. Today the majority of the says a lot about the disaster now unfolding the 1980s cost more than a million lives. world’s Muslims are Sunni, but Sunnis have long been a minority in Iraq. Nonetheless, in Iraq and rippling throughout the Middle To Americans weary of the Middle East, this Sunni minority controlled Iraqi politics in East. The rapid march by ISIS from Syria the urge is strong to close our eyes and, as the decades following World War I and under into Iraq is only partly about the troubled Sarah Palin once put it so coarsely, “let Al- Saddam Hussein. land where the U.S. lost almost 4,500 lives lah sort it out.” President Obama has kept and spent nearly $1 trillion in increasingly a wary distance from Syria’s civil war and vain hopes of establishing a stable, friendly the turmoil of postwar Iraq. But now that Modern-day rift democracy. ISIS is but one front in a holy war the two have become one rapidly metasta- In 2003 the U.S. invaded Iraq and that stretches from Pakistan across the Mid- sizing cancer, that may no longer be pos- overthrew Saddam, allowing a Shi‘ite-led government to come to power. But sectarian dle East and into northern Africa. A few days sible. As long as the global economy still divides continued to trouble the country, before ISIS captured the northern Iraqi city runs on Middle Eastern oil, Sunni radicals almost leading to civil war in 2006–07. A of Mosul, Pakistani militants driven by sim- plot terrorist attacks against the West and surge of U.S. troops brought what now seems ilar Sunni radicalism killed 36 in an assault Iran’s leaders pursue nuclear technology, to have been a temporary peace. on their country’s busiest airport. Holy war the U.S. cannot turn its back. inspires the al-Shabab radicals who took “There is always the danger of passing credit for massacring at least 48 Kenyans in the buck,” says Vali Nasr, a former Obama The Westerners who have sought to a coastal town on June 15 and explains why State Department official and an expert control the Middle East for more than a suspected al-Qaeda fighters in Yemen rid- on Islam. “Not to say the region doesn’t century have always struggled to under- dled a bus full of military-hospital staff the have problems or bad leadership. It does. stand the religion that defines the region. same day. It’s the reason Boko Haram has But these things won’t go away. They are But how could the secular West hope to kidnapped hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls going to bite us at some point.” What Leon understand cultures in which religion is and why Taliban fighters sliced off the ink- Trotsky supposedly said about war is also government, scripture is law and the past stained fingers of elderly voters who had cast true of this war-torn region: Americans defines the future? Islam has been divided ballots in Afghanistan’s June 14 presiden- may not be interested in the Middle East. between Sunni and Shi‘ite since the death tial election. Osama bin Laden is dead, but But the Middle East is interested in us. of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 and a his fundamentalist ideology—and its cold bitter dispute that followed over who logic of murder in God’s name—arguably should lead Islam. (Sunnis called for an has broader reach than ever. ANCIENT ENMITY elected caliph. Shi‘ites followed Muham- For now, the ISIS front is the most danger- as he helped draw the post–world mad’s descendants.) Over the centuries, the

ous. The chilling prospect of holy warriors War I map of the Middle East, Winston two sects have developed distinct cultural, PAGES:PREVIOUS AFP/GETTY IMAGES with dueling nuclear capabilities—Sunnis Churchill asked an aide about the “reli- geographic and political identities that go in Islamabad and Shi‘ites in Tehran— gious character” of an Arab tribal leader well beyond the theological origins of that remains a worst-case scenario, but the he intended to place in charge of Britain’s schism. Today, Sunnis make up about breakup of Iraq as a nation-state appears to client state in Iraq. “Is he a Sunni with 90% of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims. But be all but an accomplished fact. Two and a Shaih sympathies or a Shaih with Sunni Shi‘ites have disproportionate power, with half years after the U.S. withdrew its last sympathies?” Churchill wrote, in now an- their control of Iran and their concentra- combat forces and more than a decade since tiquated spelling. “I always get mixed up tion around oil-rich areas. the beginning of America’s war in Iraq, between these two.” The seat of Shi‘ite power is Iran, whose 30 BATTLE LINES ISIS is sweeping from Syria into Iraq MILITANT DREAMS ISIS wants to build a cross-border caliphate

Black Sea Black Sea

TURKEY TURKEY

IRAN IRAN Mosul Mosul Aleppo Aleppo Raqqa Kirkuk Raqqa Kirkuk

Tikrit SYRIA SYRIA Tikrit

Baghdad IRAQ IRAQ JORDAN JORDAN Baghdad

SAUDI ARABIA SAUDI ARABIA

KUWAIT KUWAIT

AREAS OF ISIS PRESENCE

KURDISH SUNNI SHI‘ITE ISIS-ENVISIONED BOUNDARIES FOR A NEW STATE

1979 Islamic revolution cracked open the eagerly supported the training and arming of al-Qaeda documents in which its op- bottle in which the region’s sectarian ten- of young jihadists—among them a rich eratives say things along the lines of ‘the sions had been sealed for many years—first young Saudi named Osama bin Laden—to Americans are evil, the secular tyrants are by the nearly 500-year rule of the Ottoman fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. That vic- evil, the Israelis are evil—and the Shi‘ites Empire and then by Western colonizers. tory was short-lived as bin Laden and other are worse than all of them,’” says Daniel Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini’s over- Sunni warriors, lit by the conviction that Benjamin, the former counterterrorism throw of the pro-American Shah of Iran Allah had empowered them, founded al- coordinator at the State Department who fired the ambitions of jihadists elsewhere Qaeda and declared the goal of establishing is now at Dartmouth College. Some Saudi and instituted the region’s first modern a new caliphate. Targeting the U.S. and oth- textbooks depict Shi‘ism as more devi- theocratic regime. The ensuing American er Western powers, which bin Laden called ant than Christianity or even Judaism. A hostage crisis established Iran’s new leader- “the far enemy,” was just a step toward the common bit of folklore among Lebanese ship as a mortal enemy of the West. In 1983, nearer yet ultimate aim: to drive the U.S. Sunnis, Nasr writes in his book The Shia when the Shi‘ite militant group Hizballah and its allies out of the region, ending their Revival, is that Shi‘ites have tails. bombed a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, support for repressive infidel rulers in plac- For decades, the dictators of the Middle killing 241 Americans, and began kidnap- es like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. East have warned their democratic patrons ping Westerners in the region, Islamic ter- The national boundaries plotted on in the West that only their repressive mea- rorism seemed to wear a Shi‘ite face. Iran’s Western maps have little place in the radi- sures could stifle the Shi‘ite-Sunni rivalry. long war with Sunni-dominated Iraq— cal vision of the restored caliphate. The But in the aftermath of 9/11, U.S. leaders sparked in part by Khomeini’s call for a ambition is absolute Sunni authority and concluded that repression was part of the Shi‘ite uprising in Iraq—put the U.S. on Shari‘a—Islamic law—over the entire problem. Touting a new “freedom agenda,” the side of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Muslim world. To achieve this, the West President George W. Bush pressed for an in- Indeed, America’s leaders were so need only be banished, while the Shi‘ites vasion of Iraq to topple Saddam and—this blithe about Sunni radicalism that the CIA must be eradicated. “There are all kinds was the expressed goal, anyway—establish time June 30, 2014 GRAPHIC AND MAP SOURCES: ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA; NPR; WORLD FACTBOOK; CRS; INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF WAR WORLD | IRAQ

t Qata wai r Ku Sa u d i SHIFTING A r a IRAN b i SANDS GULF a ISIS’S SUCCESS U.S. IRAN U.S. HAS LED TO STATES UNLIKELY IRAQ SHI‘ITE ALLIANCES MILITIAS BETWEEN SOME FORMER FOES IN THE MIDDLE EAST. SUPPORTING IRAQ CONTAINING IRAN HERE’S THE Despite decades of hostility, the U.S. Longtime allies, the U.S. and the Gulf BREAKDOWN and Iran are in talks over a joint strat- states have worked to curb Iran’s in- egy to combat the growing power of SUPPORTING ASSAD fluence in the region and prevent it OF WHO SIDES ISIS in Iraq. They remain at odds over In order to preserve the Shi‘ite sphere of influ- from developing a nuclear weapon. WITH WHOM the Syrian crisis—with Iran continu- ence, Iran and Hizballah, and to a lesser degree But the U.S. is unhappy that some of ON WHAT ing to prop up Assad’s regime—and Iraq, have helped President Assad in his bloody the Gulf states have provided funding over Tehran’s nuclear program. war against the Syrian rebels—who include ISIS. for Sunni militants operating in Syria.

democracy in his place. Instead, Bush let Two factors gave ISIS new life. One was loose the sectarian furies. The eventual re- THE REIGN OF ISIS Syria’s civil war. Largely funded by wealthy placement of Saddam with the pro-Iranian the islamic state of iraq and greater Gulf Arabs and driven by suicidal fanati- Shi‘ite ruler al-Maliki, who assumed pow- Syria is at once highly modern and wholly cism, the fighters of ISIS moved across the er in 2006, set off alarms across the Sunni medieval. Its fighters eagerly post propagan- porous border with viciousness unmatched world, especially in oil-rich monarchies da videos on YouTube and photos of executed even by al-Nusra Front, a rival Sunni ex- of the Persian Gulf like Saudi Arabia, Ku- prisoners on Facebook. Credit ISIS with one tremist faction whose soldiers ultimately wait and the United Arab Emirates. Shi‘ite of the most demented mashups of our time: report to al-Qaeda’s Pakistan-based leader- Iran’s march toward a nuclear weapon a tweeted crucifixion. Ruling by a radical in- ship. The group’s rampage through Iraq in- turned alarm into existential panic. terpretation of Shari‘a—with its puritanical cluded a boast of executing 1,700 captured With the 2011 Arab Spring, many in mores and bloody punishments—ISIS now Iraqi soldiers—a slaughter conveniently the West grew hopeful that the spirit of controls a swath of land that stretches from documented online for propaganda pur- democracy was finally taking root. In- eastern Syria to central Iraq. Not since the poses. (“This is the destiny of al-Maliki’s stead, as in Iraq, the toppling of dictators Taliban ruled Afghanistan have men with Shi‘ites,” read one caption online.) unleashed the religious radicals almost a literal interpretation of Islamic texts and The second factor was the Iraqi Prime everywhere. In Syria, strongman Bashar the determination to kill Westerners occu- Minister. Insecure in his power and shrug- Assad’s struggle to survive has evolved pied so much territory. ging off demands from Washington to be into a cauldron of Sunni-Shi‘ite bloodlet- And they are more fearsome than the more inclusive, al-Maliki has trampled the ting. Sunni warriors from across the world militants who came before them. When Sunnis who once ruled Iraq. Sunnis have have gathered to fight the forces of Assad, what became ISIS first gathered in Iraq to been forced out of government and mili- a member of the Alawite sect, an offshoot attack Americans after the U.S. invasion, tary posts, and al-Maliki’s security forces of Shi‘ism and a close ally of Iran, which they called themselves al-Qaeda in Iraq. have attacked peaceful Sunni protests. has poured men and money into the fight. But their violence against fellow Muslims Many Sunnis now see al-Maliki as noth- “All the jihadists in the world are coming appalled the senior al-Qaeda leadership. ing more than a Shi‘ite version of Saddam. to Syria. It’s the new Afghanistan,” says Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s most se- This may explain how as few as 1,000 one Arab diplomat. A June report by the nior comrade, chastised the group for kill- ISIS fighters, originally equipped with New York–based Soufan Group estimates ing Shi‘ites too wantonly. (Al-Zawahiri small arms and pickup trucks, managed to that more than 12,000 foreign fighters have remains wary of ISIS and has dueled with overrun some 30,000 Iraqi troops to capture traveled to Syria to join the fray. the group’s charismatic leader, Abu Bakr al- Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul, before they As the fight against Assad, now in its Baghdadi, for primacy in the global jihad and their allies took Kirkuk, Tikrit and Tal fourth year, grinds on, the Sunni goal of forc- movement.) Eventually, American troops Afar. They were, if you will, welcomed as ing him from power endures. But the older forged or bought alliances with moderate liberators. Indeed, many Sunnis in the Iraqi goal of breaking down borders to establish Iraqi Sunnis repelled by endless beheadings army literally stripped off their uniforms the new caliphate has come to dominate the and joyless social restrictions. The 2007 U.S. rather than fight for al-Maliki. “ISIS is the conflict, and the killing has bled easily from troop surge and the Sunni awakening had spearhead in a Sunni coalition,” says Ken- Syria into Iraq. “No one’s talking about fight- decimated the group by the time George W. neth Pollack, a former CIA analyst and Iraq ing Bashar anymore,” says the diplomat. Bush left office. expert now at the Brookings Institution. 32 GULF SUNNI KURDS IRAN STATES MILITANTS KURDS TURKEY U.S. IRAQ

COOPERATION IN SYRIA DEFEATING ASSAD The Kurds and Turkey have historically been The Gulf states have allied with the hostile toward each other, but they have U.S. in trying to bring an end to DEFEATING ISIS recently developed a working relationship on Assad’s rule. But they have also sent The U.S., Iraq, Iran and the Kurds are committed to turning economic concerns like oil and have agreed to money and arms to some extreme back ISIS. But the Kurds have benefited from some of the support each other against Assad’s forces in Sunni militant groups in Syria that chaos created by ISIS, which has allowed them to gain Syria. Also, Turkey now says it is considering are opposed to the U.S. control of land in northern Iraq they have long coveted. supporting a Kurdish state.

That coalition now features everyone from pumps oil and even sells electricity to the three people at the Jewish Museum in Brus- disgruntled tribal leaders to former Saddam very Assad government it is warring to sels on May 24 is believed to be a veteran of loyalists. “What happened is a rebellion,” a overthrow. “As long as the support of these ISIS in Syria. Attacks on the far enemy may 49-year-old Mosul man tells Time, asking Sunni elements holds, ISIS looks well posi- not be the endgame for ISIS, but they could that his name be withheld for his safety. tioned right now to keep the territory it has bring stature and propaganda benefits. On “People here have been feeling frustrated captured, absent a major counteroffensive,” June 15, the group’s leader, al-Baghdadi, is- with the government for a long time.” says one U.S. official. Fear of alienating sued a message for the U.S.: “Soon we will U.S. officials grasping at strands of hope moderate Sunnis may explain why ISIS face you, and we are waiting for this day.” are clinging to the idea that ISIS will be hasn’t imposed severe Shari‘a law in most of stopped short of Baghdad and the Shi‘ite its newly captured Iraqi population centers. holy cities, blocked by a hostile Shi‘ite popu- If ISIS’s gains prove durable, the de facto BOUNDARIES OF SAND lation. But even the hopeful view is bleak: Sunnistan they have created will pose a as haunting as the threat of a terror- “If that’s what you’re dealing with, I think severe threat to the U.S. and its Western ist haven may be, the significance of the ISIS we’re headed for a grinding guerrilla war allies. According to intelligence officials, victories goes far beyond the threat it poses that’ll last a long time, with extremely high thousands of European passport holders to Baghdad or the West. With lightning death rates, that could end up sucking in have joined the fight in Syria, and no doubt speed, ISIS has begun to erase the Middle more of the neighbors,” says Stephen Biddle a number of them are now in Iraq. Their East map drawn by Europeans a century of the Council on Foreign Relations, who next stop could be anywhere. U.S. offi- ago. In 1916, Mark Sykes, a young British pol- has advised the Pentagon on Iraq. cials say Moner Mohammad Abusalha, an itician, and François Georges-Picot, France’s That would suit ISIS just fine. A climac- American from Florida, recently triggered former counsel in Beirut, agreed to divide tic war with the Shi‘ites is exactly what the a suicide truck bomb in Syria after post- the region to suit Western goals. With an group wants. And as its territory grows, so ing a jihadist recruiting video online—in eye to the death of the Ottoman Empire— does ISIS’s readiness for such a war. As they English. A French Islamist who killed on the losing side of WW I—the two diplo- conquered major Iraqi cities, ISIS fighters mats slashed a diagonal line across a map of looted military bases for guns, ammunition the region, from the southwest to the north- and U.S.-made Humvees—along with at east, and divided the empire between their least two helicopters. They have also plun- countries. “What do you mean to give them, dered gold and vast sums of cash from banks. exactly?” British Foreign Secretary Lord One unconfirmed estimate by local officials ‘WE’VE SAID ALL ALONG THAT WE Balfour asked Sykes during a meeting at 10 pegged the haul at a staggering $425 million. Downing Street, according to James Barr’s Even if that figure is inflated, ISIS— WON’T BREAK AWAY FROM IRAQ 2012 book, A Line in the Sand. “I should like to estimated at about 10,000 men strong in draw a line,” Sykes said, as he ran his finger Iraq and Syria combined—has begun col- BUT IRAQ MAY BREAK AWAY FROM along the map of the Middle East, “from the lecting taxes, levying fines and running US. AND IT SEEMS THAT IT IS.’ ‘e’ in Acre to the last ‘k’ in Kirkuk.” lucrative mafia-like operations in its zone —qubad talabani, After crossing the line between Syria of control, giving it the resources to ad- deputy prime minister, and Iraq, ISIS fighters took a bulldozer to minister a quasi-state. The group already kurdish regional government the berm that marked that border. time June 30, 2014 33 WORLD | IRAQ

Once shattered, the pieces may never THE FOREVER WAR be reassembled. Al-Maliki shows no sign RAW IMAGESPhotos of an alleged barack obama first ran for president, of the tremendous political skills needed massacre stoke sectarian rage in large measure, to end the Iraq War, and to earn the cooperation of spurned Sun- The photographs are disturbing. he takes pride in having done so. It surely nis. Iraq’s Shi‘ites, with their reservoirs of Members of ISIS stand with their automatic wasn’t easy, then, to announce that some 170 oil in the south, may be content to slough rifles pointing at rows of men wearing combat-ready soldiers were headed to Bagh- off the comparatively barren Sunni lands civilian clothes, some handcuffed. Other dad to secure the U.S. embassy. The White photographs appear to show the militants to the north and west. The country’s long- shooting. Others show trenches filled with House insists that Obama won’t re-enter a beleaguered Kurds, meanwhile, may what seem to be bodies. ground war, though military planners are seize this moment to finally claim their exploring possible air strikes. (For now, lim- Posted to social-media sites affiliated independence. When ISIS soldiers drove with ISIS on June 14, the images were ited intelligence and ill-defined targets have al-Maliki’s forces from the oil-production accompanied by a sobering message: the put bombing on hold.) The likelier option is center of Kirkuk, the formidable Kurdish extremist group claimed to have killed a small contingent of special forces to advise militia known as the peshmerga stepped in 1,700 Iraqi soldiers, including those in the Iraq’s military. But Obama wants to leverage photos, in the preceding week. The online to grab the city. Neighboring Turkey has messages claimed that Shi‘ites among the any possible U.S. help to force al-Maliki into lately begun to reconsider its long-held troops had been singled out. major political reforms. A new governing co- opposition to a Kurdish state. Perhaps an The killings have not been verified, alition giving Sunnis real power could offer oil-rich, peaceful buffer between the Turks but if the militants did execute that many the country’s only hope for long-term sur- and the anarchy of Iraq wouldn’t be so bad. captives, the slaughter would represent vival. Whether something the U.S. couldn’t “We’ve said all along that we won’t break the biggest mass killing in a bloody accomplish when its troops were still in Iraq away from Iraq but Iraq may break away multiyear war that now spans Syria and is feasible now is another question. Iraq. Even if the claims are exaggerated, from us,” Qubad Talabani, Deputy Prime the images could be intended to terrify Clearly, Obama was mistaken in declar- Minister of the Kurdish Regional Govern- ISIS’s opponents as the group consolidates ing, after the last U.S. troops departed in ment, tells Time. “And it seems that it is.” control of Iraq’s Sunni-dominated regions. 2011, that “we’re leaving behind a sover- Other borders could also be in danger. ISIS may have another reason to release eign, stable and self-reliant Iraq.” But while Western Iraq abuts the kingdom of Jor- the photographs, real or not—to provoke Washington plunged into the blame game, dan, a vital U.S. ally and oasis of regional the country’s Shi‘ite militias, potentially fair-minded observers could see that the igniting a sectarian war. ISIS’s ultimate moderation. Though he is a Sunni, Jordan’s goal in such a conflict: the creation of a U.S.’s road through the region is littered Western-educated King Abdullah is pre- fundamentalist Sunni state. —ARYN BAKER with what-ifs and miscalculations. What if cisely the sort of ruler ISIS would hope to we had never invaded Iraq? What if we had topple, and Abdullah’s kingdom sits inside stayed longer? What if Obama had acted the sprawling caliphate sometimes depict- early in the Syrian civil war to put arms in ed on ISIS maps. So does Lebanon, a sectar- the hands of nonradical rebels? “We would ian tinderbox. Syria, meanwhile, may be have less of an extremism problem in Syria melting into unofficial quasi-states. now, had there been more assistance pro- The region’s heavyweights, Sunni vided to the moderate forces,” Obama’s for- King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Shi‘ite mer ambassador to Damascus, Robert Ford, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei of Iran, watch told CNN on June 3. with wariness and few good options. For Yet on a deeper level, the blame belongs Abdullah, al-Maliki’s pain is a welcome to history itself. At this ancient crossroads of development, for the Saudis have always the human drama, the U.S.’s failure echoes felt threatened by his ties with Iran. On earlier failures by the European powers, the other hand, since the earliest days of al- by the Ottoman pashas, by the Crusaders, Qaeda, the Sunni radicals have cherished by Alexander the Great. The civil war of the dream of deposing Abdullah’s family Muslim against Muslim, brother against and taking possession of the Arabian holy brother, plays out in the same region that cities of Mecca and Medina. The Saudis gave us Cain vs. Abel. George W. Bush look to Iraq and see nothing but enemies. spoke of the spirit of liberty, and Obama The same goes for Israel, ever a prime tar- often invokes the spirit of cooperation. get for both Sunni and Shi‘ite militants. Both speak to something powerful in In Iran, the growing momentum of the modern heart. But neither man—nor Sunni radicalism has set alarms clanging. America itself—fully appreciated until As the movement obliterates borders, the now the continuing reign of much older sheer number of Sunnis—nine of them spirits: hatred, greed and tribalism. Those for every Shi‘ite—compels Iran to act. The spirits are loosed again, and the whole MILITANT WEBSITE/AP (3) pressure is such that Tehran is contemplat- world will pay a price. —reported by aryn ing one of the strangest partnerships in its baker and hania mourtada/beirut, 35-year revolutionary history, wading into massimo calabresi, jay newton-small tentative talks on the crisis with the Great and mark thompson/washington and Satan himself: Uncle Sam. karl vick/jerusalem ■

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