Guess Who is Behind The Insurgence in Iraq 

By Ali Sina 

Since the USA decided to get rid of the terrorist Talibans in Afghanistan and the criminal Baathists in Iraq, the Iranian Mullahs were feeling the heat under their turbans and knew they would be the next unless they subversively challenge the American presence that is now too close for their comfort.  

Iran’s neighbors are Russia to the North, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the East, Turkey and Iraq to the West and across the gulf to the south there is Kuwait , and a bunch of other countries. Iran is inimical to all of them and America is friendly with all of them.  

This is a very tense situation for the Iranian Mullahs who not only have to fear the Iranian population they have to watch over their shoulders even across the borders.    

The Iranian Mullahs cannot let democracy gain footholds in its neighboring countries. This would only weaken their grip of power. The situation of the Iranian Mullahs is precarious as it is and the burgeoning of democracies in Iran’s neighboring countries does not help. So they would do everything to sabotage this process.    

The Mullahs have killed innumerable people to maintain their grip on power. They are not going to let this power slip away from their hands easily.  

The only chance they have to remain in power is to sabotage the democratization of Iraq and make Iraq a nightmare for America. If America fails in Iraq the Mullahs would have ensured their rule for many more years. But if the Iraqi experience succeeds, and democracy is established in that country the days of the Mullahs in Iran would be numbered.  

Iran has no friends in the Middle East. Her European business partners and allies would not be of much help to the Mullahs in an uprising of the Iranians. So the only way they can prolong their stay in power is to sabotage the process of democratization in Iraq.  

Today I learned that the 31 year old Moqtada Sadr, the Iraqi Shiite cleric, who is stirring anti American sentiments in Iraq and is behind the present insurgence among the Shiites, has very close ties with the Iranian clergy.  

Al Sadr who is charged in connection with five slayings including that of another Shiite religious leader, the pro American ayatollah Said Abdul Majid al-Khoei, after he returned from exile in London within days of the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime, is a nephew of the Iranian president Khatami .  

Kenneth R. Timmerman, a senior writer for Insight magazine revealed the following:

”In mainstream media reports, the 30-year-old Sadr (pronounced sod-ar) is said to have inherited a mantle of legitimacy from his father, Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, a top Shiite cleric who was assassinated along with his two eldest sons in 1999 by Saddam Hussein's agents.

But in Shiite tradition, neither religious fatwas nor clerical legitimacy is passed down from father to son, a prominent Iranian cleric tells Insight.

Instead, it is young Sadr's power, not his clerical antecedents that have given him influence.

And that power derives from massive assistance from the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has helped Sadr build up his "Mahdi's Army" during the last eight months, Iranian dissidents tell Insight.

"Moqtada Sadr is the nephew of President Mohammad Khatami's wife," a prominent dissident based in Germany told this magazine recently in Europe , making him Khatami's uncle in the Islamic scheme of things.

"Khatami's wife, Zohreh, is the sister of Moqtada Sadr's father."

The sisters are siblings of the famed Iranian cleric, Imam Moussa Sadr, who "disappeared" while on a visit to Libya in 1978.

Moussa Sadr is credited among terrorists with having launched Lebanon's Amal Movement, a precursor of today's Hezbollah.

Those family ties have helped Moqtada Sadr reach deep into the clerical regime in Iran for assistance in his yearlong effort to build a private militia to challenge the coalition authority.  

In addition, Insight sources say, the young Sadr is receiving money and weapons from a top Sunni cleric, Mullah Qusi, as well as from former intelligence officers from Saddam Hussein's regime - altogether a toxic brew which this magazine is the first to report."  

We have to realize that in those countries, people understand one language and that is the language of force. Saddam killed Sadr’s father and brothers and this man did not have the guts to declare war against Saddam. Saddam and Sadr understood one another and Saddam, thanks to his kill-first-ask-after approach was more convincing.  

To win this war America must learn one lesson. That lesson is: “When in Rome do as Romans do”. 

If America hesitates, and fears that by killing a large number of terrorists or by invading a mosque to capture them she might alienate the Iraqis, the Iraqis and the Islamists all over the world interpret that as weakness and they will add to their hostilities against America.

This Shiite uprising must be nipped in the bud and quashed at any cost. Any compromise will be interpreted as weakness.  

However one thing we should know is that even if Sadr is captured or killed the problems in Iraq are not going to end. These problems must be resolved from where they originate and that is Iran.