Psyche, Science, and Society

Porter on Iran as savior of US

September 26th, 2006

Gareth Porter has a new piece [Iraq Occupation Depends on Sadr -- and Iran] in which he argues that Iran is the savior of the US in Iraq. Porter, a historian, argues that al-Sadr’s forces are much stronger than in the past. He even cites figures of 200,000 for the Mehdi Army! According to Porter, Iran acts as a restraining force on the Mehdi Army, preferring to keep its enemy, the United States, tied down in Iraq rather than free to confront Iran with its full military might.

But the main threat to the occupation comes not from the Sunni insurgents but from the militant Iraqi Shiite forces aligned with Iran, led by Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army. The armed Shiite militias are now powerful enough to make it impossible for the U.S.. occupation to continue.

Gone are the days when the U.S. military could be so cavalier about Sadr’s forces that it deliberately provoked a major military confrontation with him in Najaf in April 2004. That was when he was believed to have 10,000 poorly-trained troops.

Since then, U.S. officials have avoided giving any estimate of the Mahdi Army’s strength. But according to a report published last month by London’s Chatham House, which undoubtedly reflected the views of British intelligence in Iraq, the Mahdi Army may now be “several hundred thousand strong”. Even if that estimate vastly overstates his troop strength, it reflects the sense that he has the strongest political-military force in the country — because of the loyalty that so many Shiites have to him.

The Mahdi Army controls Sadr City, the massive Shiite slum in eastern Baghdad that holds half the capital’s population. But even more important, perhaps, it holds sway in the heavily Shiite southern provinces, and as Sadr knows well, that gives him a strategic position from which to bring the U.S. military to a standstill.

Patrick Lang, former head of human intelligence collection and Middle East intelligence at the Defence Intelligence Agency, explained why in an important analysis in the Christian Science Monitor July 21: U.S. troops must be supplied by convoys of trucks that go across hundreds of miles of roads through this Shiite heartland, and the Mahdi Army and its allies in the south could turn those supply routes into a “shooting gallery”.

Lang notes the supply trucks are driven by South Asian or Turkish civilians who would immediately quit. And even if the U.S. military used its own troops to protect the routes, they would vulnerable to ambushes. “A long, linear target such as a convoy of trucks is very hard to defend against irregulars operating in and around their own towns,” he wrote.

It would not require a complete cutoff of supplies to make the U.S. position untenable. A significant reduction in those supplies would begin a “downward spiral”, according to Lang.

Alas, the US has a savior, for the moment:

If Sadr and his followers are already preparing for a showdown with the U.S. occupation forces, the only factor that appears to be restraining the Mahdi army now is Iran. After all, Tehran’s interest lies not in forcing an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces, but in keeping them in Iraq as virtual hostages. The potential threat to U.S. forces in Iraq in retaliation for an attack on Iran is probably Tehran’s most effective deterrent to such an attack.

An article well worth reading in full.

Entry Filed under: Iraq, Middle East