What Iran Wants In Iraq
By David Ignatius
Friday, February 27, 2004
Iran's crucial role in shaping the future of Iraq was conveyed in a subtle threat made this week by the country's key power broker, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
The United States is "stuck in the mud in Iraq, and they know that if Iran wanted to, it could make their problems even worse," Rafsanjani said in an interview with the Tehran daily Kayhan. He coyly opened the door to a Washington-Tehran dialogue about Iraq and other issues, saying, "For me, talking is not a problem."
The hard-line mullahs in Tehran are sitting pretty these days: America has toppled their historical foe, Saddam Hussein, and is struggling with a nasty postwar insurgency. Meanwhile, an Iranian-born Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has emerged as the dominant figure in the new Iraq.
Sistani this month forced U.S. occupation czar L. Paul Bremer to abandon his plan for regional caucuses to select a transitional government. The cleric said yesterday he would accept an interim government if elections were held by the end of this year. But his statement cautioned that the interim government shouldn't make "binding" decisions, which could prevent it from approving a fut
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