I Smell Iran
Najaf attack was a plot to kill al-Sistani, CNN reports.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and other top Shiite religious figures were the apparent targets of an insurgent plot thwarted in an intense battle near the Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf, Iraqi officials said.
… The possible death of al-Sistani “would really plunge Iraq and the possibly the rest of the region into a bloodbath,” said Vali Nasr, author of “The Shia Revival,” a recent book on the rise of the sect.
“Ayatollah Sistani is the most revered and the most followed Shia spiritual leader,” Nasr said. “He is like the Shia pope. Shias follow him across the Middle East in religious affairs, and his death at the hands of the insurgents would be of enormous symbolic value.”
Iraqi officials said a force of about 400 to 600 insurgents planned to seize control of Najaf and the surrounding province.
Exactly who and why remain puzzling questions, given that weird report about Mahdi-happy zealots that included both Sunni and Shia. From a cynical, murderous realpolitikische (Iranian) point of view, it creates a bloodbath in which the Sunnis and the U.S. lose, and the Iranians emerge triumphant. So maybe that makes the most sense. From an al Qaeda/Sunni point of view … which, as we’ve learned is also an Iranian pro-chaos point of view … it provokes open warfare which the most extreme Sunnis believe is their own chance at survival in what is otherwise Shiite-dominated state. Sunni Al-Qaeda likes this for the same reason Iran does. Chaos thwarts us, and gives them their opening.
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Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:54 am on Monday, January 29, 2007
6 Responses to “I Smell Iran”
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January 29th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
If only we could afford to let them go at each other and settle things once and for all. Of course, Planet Earth would be a nuclear cinder by the time it was over.
January 29th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Can’t seem to get a trackback to go through. I added an excerpt and link to Now can we bomb their asses? It’s time. It’s past time.
January 29th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
The attack shows planning beyond what we usually see. Now we know what the Iranian republican guards were doing there.
It is a shame that the political atmosphere here is such that Bush won’t attack Iran. I have a feeling, though, that much of that would change if people thought that we were actually fighting aggressively, as opposed to this holding action we’ve been in.
January 29th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
The eggs I had for breakfast were a little undercooked…I blame Iran!
Can we slaughter a few thousand Iranian civilians now?
January 29th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
“The eggs I had for breakfast were a little undercooked”
Funny, all here feel the same way about you…”undercooked”.
“…I blame Iran!”
Simpleton, have Syria cook ‘em next time.
“Can we slaughter a few thousand Iranian civilians now?”
Asks Ahmadinejad of Khamenei, utterly exasperated, Khatami says “we already did this morning you little buffoon”.
January 29th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
“The eggs I had for breakfast were a little undercooked”
Is your knowledge of world politics at the same level as your ability to cook eggs?