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U.S. officials: Iran is hampering efforts in Iraq

http://www.jewishworldreview.com | (KRT) MONDEHRIYA, Iraq - Senior Pentagon officials last week repeated complaints that Iran is trying to stir up anti-American feelings among Iraqi civilians, with Gen. Tommy Franks accusing the Islamic government in Tehran of mounting "an increasingly sophisticated and multifaceted influence campaign."

Yet few of the steps taken by Iran since the fall of Saddam Hussein could be described as overtly hostile to U.S. forces. And Iran itself denies the charges of meddling, instead pointing out that it is the United States that has militarily intervened in the affairs of two of Iran's neighbors - Iraq and Afghanistan.

Iran's concerns are clear: It fears losing sway in the Muslim world should the balance of Shiite power shift from the Qom-centered, Khomeini-style militant Islam of Iran to a moderate approach based in the traditional Shiite religious heartland of Najaf in south-central Iraq.

And it fears for its own national security. Iran has already seen the U.S. military oust hostile regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. Of the approximately 145,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq, hundreds are deployed along the Iranian border, some less than a mile from the frontier.

What remains unclear is how far Iran would go to assert its national interests in Iraq.

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Senior U.S. diplomats suggest that the Iranian government has made a strategic decision to do all it must do to prevent the United States from succeeding in establishing a moderate, pluralistic democracy in Iraq.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, testifying Wednesday with Franks to the Senate Armed Services Committee, accused the Iranians of relocating border posts on Iraqi territory.

"That is behavior that's not acceptable, and they should be staying on their own side of the border," Rumsfeld said. Iran says that most of its presence in Iraq is charitable - ambulances, medicine and medical personnel supplied to Iraqi hospitals and camps, for example.

But Iran is also steadily sending religious instructors into Iraq to spread the Iranian view of Shiite Islam.

And in a decision that U.S. officials deemed provocative, Iranian officials recently welcomed Moqtada Al-Sadr, an Iraqi Shiite religious leader, to Iran for ceremonies marking the anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini's death.

Sadr heads an organization called Jamaat Al-Sadr Al-Thani, which has been involved in anti-American demonstrations. In Friday prayers at the Kufa mosque near Najaf, Al-Sadr, who is only 30 years old, has spoken of the need to ban alcohol in Iraq and to force all women to wear the veil.

Then there is the case of Ali Behbahani.

Surrounded late last month by Kurdish men in makeshift uniforms who said they were the local police, Behbahani had just walked 100 feet into his native Iraq from the Iranian border post here, 100 feet that brought him home after 23 years of exile in Iran.

With one bag full of Qurans and the others filled with items he acquired during nearly a quarter of a century spent outside his country because of his family's opposition to the Saddam regime, Behbahani spoke excitedly about the next phase of his life.

After nine years of intense study in a religious institute in Qom, the city at the heart of Iranian Shiite Islam where Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned after his triumph at the head of his country's Islamic revolution in 1979, Behbahani was ready.

"I am here to spread the word of Islam and promote Islamic law," the 32-year-old said. "I am to go wherever I want and answer religious questions."

For his work, the Qom-based Institute of Islamic Relations for Non-Iranian Students paid Behbahani $300, he said, adding that about 500 students from the institute already had crossed into Iraq since Saddam was toppled in April. He said there were about 3,000 students at the institute, including Americans.

"We understand that there is a certain need (for religious instruction) in Iraq that is not being met by Iraqis," he said, adding that all of those returning have been told to go first to their native towns and villages.

At the center of the emerging religious geopolitics of Iraq is Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr Al Hakim, a Shiite religious leader who returned to Najaf after decades of exile in Iran during the Saddam era.

"He wants no imitation of Iran or Afghanistan," said Assad Al Thiyeh, a close adviser to Hakim and a member of the important Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, known as SCIRI.

"Ayatollah Hakim has made a formal decision to have good relations with America," he said, sitting inside a Najaf mosque. "The Ayatollah has made a decision to be independent and not be beholden to any one group."

About 55 percent of Iraq's population is Shiite Muslim, and Saddam's downfall has given them the opportunity to assert the rights denied them during his Sunni-dominated regime.

While the leading Islamic figures in Najaf so far sound moderate, the heady brew of post-Saddam Iraq leaves many questions unanswered about the cooperation, or lack of it, between Iraqi and Iranian Shiite religious leaders.

Al Thiyeh also cautioned that Ayatollah Hakim's view of the U.S. role in Iraq was under constant review.

"The order we have for now is to give them (Americans) a chance, a chance for now," he said after complaining about the slow pace of political reform and the failure of U.S. officials to organize elections.

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