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k o May 2014 o l Has Iran Overplayed Its Hand in Iraq? t u By Michael Rubin O Key points in this Outlook : n • While some analysts attribute the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq with unleashing sectar - r ian strain there, Sunni-Shi’ite tension long predates Operation Iraqi Freedom. e • As Iranian-backed militias expand their influence in Iraq, Iraqi Shi’ites place Iraqi nationalism above t sectarian solidarity with Iran. s • Nevertheless, force of arms sometimes trumps hearts and minds, and so Iranian sponsorship of extremist groups inside Iraq will continue to pose risks to both Iraqi stability and US security interests. a E This Outlook is a reprint of an article by Michael to Shi’ism. Beginning in the 1960s with the Rubin published on the Foreign Military Studies Ba’athist seizure of power and then in the 1980s e Office’s Operational Environment Watch website. with the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War, the l See http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/OEWatch Ba’athist regime stripped tens of thousands of d /Current/Special_Essay_01.html. Shi’ites of Iraqi citizenship and deported them to Iran. The Shi’ites, however, have from the begin - d Al Qaeda’s seizure of Ramadi and Fallujah in ning of Iraqi statehood considered themselves and i January 2014 propelled questions of sectarianism their more traditional tribal ways as representing a in Iraq to the forefront of Iraqi politics. Sectarian - more pure Arab identity. 1 M ism, of course, is nothing new in Iraq. While some Iraqi Shi’ites have experienced a religious analysts attribute the 2003 US invasion and occu - renaissance since a US-led coalition ousted pation of Iraq with unleashing sectarianism, the Saddam, but the idea that the Iraqi Shi’ite tension between Sunni and Shi’ite Iraqis long community seeks for sectarian reasons to attach predates Operation Iraqi Freedom. Ba’athism, the themselves to or be dominated by Iran misunder - ideology that late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein stands Iraqi history and politics and the attitudes embraced, was inherently sectarian. While it of Iraqi Shi’ites. Rather than separate from their embraced Arabism as its central pillar, Saddam country, Iraqi Shi’ites have for decades worked and many of his aides saw true Arabism through a both to integrate themselves into Iraqi society sectarian lens. He suspected Shi’ites of harboring and to resist Iranian attempts to subvert their loyalty to Iran; indeed, he often labeled Iraqi communal independence. Despite attempts by Shi’ites “Safawi,” the Arabic name for the Iran to dominate Iraq politically, culturally, and 16th-century Safavid dynasty that converted Iran economically, Iraqi Shi’ites have in recent years been successful at resisting Iranian attempts at Michael Rubin ([email protected]) is a resident scholar dominance. That does not mean that Iraqi at AEI. Shi’ites will be pro-American or anti-Iranian, 1150 Seventee nth Street, N. W., Wa s hi ngt on, D.C. 20036 20 2.862.5800 www.aei.org - 2- but only that they will not allow themselves to be During the Iran-Iraq War, Shi’ite conscripts fought puppets of a foreign state. on the front lines while those more privileged by their tribal connections to Saddam served more safely in the rear. Indeed, Shi’ites comprised 70 percent of ordinary Iraqi Shi’ites have for decades worked both soldiers but only 20 percent of the officer corps. 4 Despite to integrate themselves into Iraqi society the discrimination Shi’ites (and Kurds) faced at the hands of the Ba’athist regime, few outright defected from and to resist Iranian attempts to subvert Iraq to Iran during the war; rather, the Ba’athist govern - their communal independence. ment forced many to leave either by revoking citizenship or by decreeing membership in Shi’ite parties such as the Islamic Da’wa Party to be a capital offense. Those who Ethnicity vs. Religion did defect to Iran represented a far smaller group than those who, like the Mujahedin al-Khalq, a revolutionary The Iraqi-Iranian border is not only a political boundary, terrorist group, defected from Iran to the service of Sad - but an ethnic one as well. Iraq is overwhelmingly Arab, dam. Both during and after the Iran-Iraq War and, although Kurds predominate across the north of the indeed, to the present day, Iraqi Shi’ites observe Iraqi country and Turkmen maintain centuries-old communi - Armed Forces Day on January 6 because for Shi’ite con - ties in and around Kirkuk and Tel Afar. In Iran, in scripts and the broader community, the problem was contrast, ethnic Persians now represent only slightly always Saddam rather than the institution of the army. more than half of the country, and Azeris and other Turkic minorities another fifth. Today, only about two The Evolution of Shi’ite Politics in Iraq percent of Iran is Arab. 2 While religion is an important part of most Iraqis’ Shi’ite political thought was well developed in Iraq identity, boiling identity down to only religion would when the Ba’athist regime seized power in 1968. The be misleading. Iraqis are not simply Muslims or Chris - constitutional movement in Iran infused new political tians, or Sunnis or Shi’ites, but are also Arabs, Kurds, thought into clerical circles, both in Iran and Iraq. In and Turkmen; urban or rural; educated or not; and 1909, Mirza Muhammad Hussein Gharawi al-Na’ini tribal or more modern in outlook. To assume sectarian wrote The Admonition and Refinement of the People , solidarity between Iraqi and Iranian Shi’ites discounts which imbued traditional Shi’ite thought with anticolo - centuries of ethnic distrust, if not outright hostility. nial politics and argued that until the hidden imam— While Shi’ites embraced Iraqi statehood, rivalry with Shi’ite Islam’s messianic figure—returned, the people their Persian counterparts drove a wedge between the had to choose between tyranny and constitutionalism. 5 two national communities. Iraq hosts Shi’ite Islam’s Sheikh Mahdi al-Khalissi, also a top Shi’ite cleric, most prominent shrines and centers of scholarship. led the 1920 revolt against British rule. While Khalissi Iran, however, has for centuries maintained its own died in 1925 and Na’ini passed away in 1936, just seminaries in Qom, a city less than 80 miles south four years after the Kingdom of Iraq gained its full inde - of Tehran. pendence, subsequent generations of theologians and Nor does the Sunni-Shi’ite divide correlate to an political theoreticians whom Na’ini taught in Najaf embrace or rejection of Iraqi nationality. The Shi’ites built upon his work to outline the interplay between led the 1920 revolt against the British that culminated religious precepts and a constitutional framework in the establishment of the Iraqi kingdom, although the encouraging popular representation through the anti-British colonial uprising had enjoyed cross-sectarian appointment of deputies. This of course justified full appeal and participation. Sunnis dominated Iraqi gover - Shi’ite participation in the Iraqi state. nance in the wake of the country’s independence, but In 1963, the Iranian shah launched the White rather than reject the state, Shi’ites pushed for greater Revolution, a modernization drive toward which he participation. While the Iraqi king long enabled Shi’ites tolerated little dissent. However, as the shah moved to to run the Ministry of Education, with time they also impose women’s suffrage, encourage literacy and public assumed other portfolios including the presidency of health, and undertake land reform, he clashed with more Iraq’s Senate and premiership. 3 conservative Iranian clerics like Ayatollah Ruhollah - 3- Khomeini, whom he ultimately expelled from Iran. After has been fractious. Da’wa initially attracted Shi’ites a year in Turkey, Khomeini settled in Najaf, where he predominantly from the educated middle class, the began to teach and preach. It was there that he resur - very constituency whose political consciousness Saddam rected the older clerical notion of a guardianship of the and the Ba’ath Party found most dangerous. Sadr did jurisprudent [ wilayat al-faqih ], which he developed most not exclude Sunnis from his vision; he encouraged notably in a 1970 series of lectures later compiled into Da’wa to establish and maintain relations with Sunni the book Islamic Governance [Hukumah al Islamiyah ]. 6 Islamist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood While Khomeini’s peers largely rejected his arguments, and Hizb al-Tahrir, thus augmenting the danger that he imposed his philosophy by force on Iran after the Sadr’s activism posed to the Ba’athist regime. 10 Accord - Islamic Revolution. ingly, Baghdad outlawed Da’wa and deemed membership a capital offense. As Saddam’s secret police began targeting Iraqi Khomeini’s overbearing attitude—and Shi’ite political activists, Da’wa activists fled the coun - the poor treatment of many Iraqi refugees try, many finding uneasy refuge in Iran, with smaller communities establishing themselves in the United in Iran—did not endear the Islamic Kingdom or Syria. Those who fled to Iran were quickly Republic to Iraqi Shi’ites. disenchanted by the Shi’ite paradise they sought in the newly formed Islamic Republic. Khomeini measured loy - alty not in religious devotion but in the embrace of his Many other clerics in Najaf—and, indeed, many own religious philosophy. Those who dissented quickly in Iran—gravitated more toward the writings and found themselves targeted by Khomeini’s security agen - philosophy of Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, a senior cleric cies. Many held true to Sadr’s ideas but had little choice who outlined the idea of a guardianship of the people but to remain silent; they could not continue the politi - [wilayat al-umma ], which preached that man could be the cal debate in which their counterparts in the United trustee of God [ Khilafat al-insan ].