TEHRAN (IPS) – While foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi has rejected claims that Iran received highly classified U.S. intelligence from Ahmad Chalabi, other government officials and the hardline newspapers that support them have remained largely silent on the allegations Washington has leveled against its former top Iraqi ally.
The various mouthpieces of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei have instead focused on clashes between militias led by Shi’ite Muslim leader Moqtada al-Sadr and “invading troops led by the Americans and Britons” in Najaf.
They view the ongoing fighting in the holy city in southern Iraq as the “Iraqi people’s resistance against the U.S.-led invasion.”
Hardliners have been using damage to the Imam Ali shrine, the most sacred Shi’ite site, to rally people against the U.S.-led coalition. Mobs they have organized gather in front of the British embassy, which has been pelted with bricks and stones as protesters burned effigies of Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush.
“The occupiers’ hands are stained with the blood of the Iraqi people,” said Khamenei. He proclaimed Friday last week an official “day of mourning,” declaring that “Muslims and Muslim governments are duty-bound to protest to the invasion of Iraq” because the “calamity of Iraqi people” is shared by all Muslims.
“The Iraqi calamity at its beginning was a threat to us, but now turned out to be an (good) opportunity,” said Revolutionary Guard Gen. Mohsen Rezaee, secretary of the Expediency Council, the state’s arbitration body.
Among those looking to seize the opportunity is Rahim Ahmadi, who was interviewed as he headed to the British embassy after Friday prayers to vent out his anger over “sacrileges of the holy shrine in Najaf by the U.S.-led invading troops.”
The 36-year-old said, “We should mobilize our Muslim forces for a likely ‘jihad’ (holy war) against the invaders in Iraq.” Ahmadi is not surprised that Iran’s government officials are not discussing the allegations against Chalabi or attempting to distance themselves from him. “It is another American mess in Iraq,” he said.
Chalabi was considered a top candidate to head Iraq’s provisional government before falling out with Washington, his former chief sponsor. However, political observers here do not believe the current imbroglio will diminish Chalabi’s political influence.
“Middle East politicians are not out of business with one or two allegations,” said Sadeq Tabatabaee, former spokesman for Iran’s first post-revolutionary government, in an interview with IPS.
Ebrahim Yazdi, the country’s first post-revolutionary foreign minister, also believes Chalabi will demonstrate staying power.
“He was deeply involved in transfer of power in Iraq, and such a political broker will remain on the political scene in future,” he said. “These sorts of challenges and the intelligence leak scandal, whether true or not, are natural in any post-tyrannical regime.”
Chalabi gained influence, in both Iraq and Iran, in the years leading up to the recent U.S.-led invasion, during which he was engaged in shuttle diplomacy involving Washington, London and Iraqi Shi’ite factions based in Tehran.
After the invasion, he was appointed to the U.S.-handpicked Iraqi Governing Council, and he has continued to use his connections to strengthen his power base.
Among those apparently indebted to him is Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Husaini Sistani, Iraq’s most powerful Shi’ite leader.
At the beginning of the carnage in Najaf and Karbala two months ago, IPS was attending an off-the-record briefing with a representative of Sistani’s son-in-law in Iran, when he received a call from Chalabi, who was in the United States trying to prevent clashes between U.S. troops and Iraqi insurgents in the two holy cities.
The representative told Chalabi that Sistani appreciated his attempts to mediate a resolution.
It is widely speculated that the United States accused Chalabi with passing classified information to Iran because he had provided Washington with faulty intelligence used to justify its invasion, namely Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Analysts maintain that such retaliation is misguided because many others made similar claims about Iraq’s weapons capabilities.
“If Americans are looking for a new scapegoat to justify their blunder in invading Iraq, they may find more accomplices for Chalabi,” said political analyst Amir Hussaini.
He told IPS that Masoud Barezani, head of Iraq’s Kurdistan Democratic Party, Jalal Talebani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and Abdulaziz al-Hakim, brother of Ayatollah Mohammed Saeed al-Hakim, an influential Shi’ite cleric assassinated in Najaf last year, “were all the American sources for Saddam’s mass destruction weapons.”
In an October 2002 interview in Tehran, Abdulaziz al-Hakim, who at the time was working for a local political magazine, said the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (also known as the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq) had concrete evidence of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. Headed by Ayatollah al-Hakim, the assembly was the largest group of exile Iraqis.
“If Americans want to victimize Chalabi, their own agent, for luring them to invade Iraq, then they should go ahead and sever ties with their (other) new allies in Iraq,” Hussaini suggested.
Despite Chalabi’s troubles with Washington, Hussaini predicted he will continue to shape the course of politics in Iraq, where a new interim president and Cabinet were named Tuesday.
Said Hussaini: “For sure, Chalabi will be a survivor in Iraqi politics and be a man for all seasons and, of course, kingmaker behind the doors.”
