Hard-Liners Take Early Lead In Iranian Elections

Hard-line conservatives allied with President Mahmud Ahmadinejad have taken an early lead in Iran's parliamentary elections according to unofficial results.

Iranian state television is reporting that hard-line conservative supporters of Ahmadinejad have taken 53 out of 144 contests tallied so far. Moderate conservatives have won 38 mandates and reformists 18. Another 35 winners are independents.

There are 290 seats in the Iranian parliament, called the Majlis, and most results have not yet been tabulated.

Hasan Khanlou, a spokesman at Iran's Interior Ministry, nevertheless says turnout was more than 65 percent of Iran's 44 million eligible voters -- up significantly from the 51 percent who voted in the 2004 election.

The election, held on March 14, is seen as a crucial test for Ahmadinejad in advance of next year's presidential elections where he is expected to face challenges from moderate conservatives and -- to a lesser degree -- from reformers.

Iran's conservatives are divided between hard-line supporters of Ahmadinejad and a more moderate faction alligned with former nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei and other senior officials had called for a big turnout to defy the countries they say are Iran's enemies. Reformists had also urged their supporters to vote to deny conservatives clear dominance in the next parliament.

Outside The Empowered Circle

Still, many Iranians have complained about a lack of choice after the Guardians Council -- an unelected body of clerics and jurists -- disqualified some 1,700 mostly moderate candidates on the grounds that they were insufficiently loyal to Islam or Iran's 1979 revolution.

"In this eighth parliamentary election [since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution], we have unfortunately seen the omission of most of the reformists, nationalists, and candidates who stand outside the current empowered circle," former reformist legislator Jalal Jalalizadeh told Radio Farda on March 14. "As a result, in most of the polling areas there are no candidates other than the ones who are close to the ruling bloc. This has led to the disappointment of people and thus in many electoral areas they have not participated."

One unidentified man, voting in Tehran, told Reuters that "there wasn't a candidate on the lists that actually appealed to me...I couldn't find the right candidate."

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack has criticized the elections, saying the results were "cooked" because the Iranian people were not able to vote for a full range of candidates.

Challenges Ahead

Analysts say, however, that despite the bias toward conservative candidates, Ahmadinejad will likely have a more difficult time with the new parliament than he had with the outgoing legislature.

"Reformists -- many of whom have been banned from running -- will, in the most optimistic view, succeed in getting one third of the seats in parliament," Mashaollah Shamsolvaezin, a Tehran-based journalist, told Radio Farda on March 14. "This powerful minority, along with the majority of the traditional and technocratic conservatives who oppose Ahmadinejad's policies, can form a remarkable majority, in order to put an end to the Ahmadinejad's current policies in terms of lawmaking. On the other hand, they can provide a tighter control over Ahmadinejad's domestic and foreign policy, especially in the field of economy."

Likewise, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a close ally of reformist former President Mohammad Khatami said he expected Ahmadinejad to face "more challenges" with the next parliament.

Reformists and some conservatives have accused Ahmadinejad of fueling inflation, which now stands at 19 percent, with loans and subsidies. Reformists have also criticized him for his vitriolic anti-Western rhetoric, which has led to Tehran's increased international isolation.

The president is facing increased opposition from moderate conservatives led by Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, former Islamic Revolution Guards Corps chief Mohsen Rezaie, and former nuclear negotiator Larijani.

There are also two coalitions of moderate reformers: the Reformist Coalition inspired by former reformist President Khatami and the National Confidence Party led by former parliament speaker Mehdi Karroubi.

(RFE/RL's Radio Farda contributed to this report)

Turnout uneven in Iranian elections

By Nazila Fathi and Graham Bowley
Friday, March 14, 2008

TEHRAN: According to the evidence on the streets of Tehran, opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad turned out in greater numbers than expected to vote for the few reformist candidates in parliamentary elections Friday.

In southern Tehran, where Ahmadinejad has a political base, streets and polling stations were quiet.

In the east of the city, where the president has a residence, people showed up in large numbers, with lines of prospective voters waiting outside the neighborhood's large Al Nabi Mosque.

In the middle-class neighborhoods of central and western Tehran, mosques were crowded as people turned out, and many said they were voting for reformists.

But with most high-profile reformists barred from running by a conservative vetting body, religious conservatives are still expected to tighten their grip on power, and only minor reformist candidates are taking part.

Indeed, the election has largely come down to a contest between conservatives who still support the president and those who have become his opponents.

At a mosque in the western neighborhood of Sadeghieh, 100 people were gathered inside and there was a line of people waiting to vote.

"I am voting because I didn't vote in the two previous elections," said Muhammad Hossein Fozi, 27. "As a result, people I don't like were elected, and their policies have affected my life."

People said they were unhappy about the policies of the government, and in particular cited problems like unemployment. There is much anger over unemployment, inflation and fuel shortages in this oil-rich country and frustration that Ahmadinejad's economic policies have only made the poor poorer and the rich richer.

One supporter of Ahmadinejad, Akbar Moharampour, 52, an architect, said: "I believe those who are in power right now are more concerned about people's situation. I think they have to have another opportunity."

The results of the election are expected to be known by early next week.

Nazila Fathi reported from Tehran and Graham Bowley from New York.

Survey Says Iranians Favor Free Election Of Their Top Leader

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 9, 2008; A17

As Iran's brief election campaign for parliament heats up, a new public opinion poll shows that the vast majority of Iranians would like to directly elect their supreme leader in a free vote -- and be able to replace him.

The power of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has long been at the heart of political debate in Iran, because the supreme leader can veto legislation, presidential actions, judicial decisions and candidates for office. Iran's top political position has basically become a lifetime job, even though a panel of 86 religious scholars elected every eight years has the right to dismiss him. Khamenei has held the job since 1989.

But now, almost nine out of 10 voters surveyed want the top political position to be accountable to voters, the poll found.

The survey shows limited interest in the current political choices for parliament, with about one-third of voters preferring neither reformists nor hard-line conservatives. Among those polled, only 8 percent favor conservatives, and 22 percent want to vote for reformers. One out of four voters surveyed in all 30 provinces said they did not know who they would vote for in the election on March 14.

Although more than 80 percent of those polled said they would vote, Iranians are not inspired by any of the candidates, the poll concluded.

The poll was carried out last month by the nonprofit Terror Free Tomorrow and D3 Systems Inc., an international polling and research group.

"The most interesting result is that Iranians are expressing a desire for a more open and democratic system. The fact that they are not enthusiastic or inspired by the ballot choices shows a level of discontent," Kenneth Ballen, president of Terror Free Tomorrow, said.

Conservatives are expected to win the parliamentary contest, in part because hundreds of reformist candidates were disqualified from running. The poll found that more than two-thirds of Iranians believe all reformist candidates should be allowed to run, with 10 percent supporting the decision by a religious council to bar them.

"This survey confirms what any visitor to Iran notices right away, and that is people's utter lack of inspiration with their political system and political candidates," Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said.

Iran's parliamentary election is a harbinger of the presidential election next year. The United States and the European Union have increased diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran partly in the hope that Iranian voters would turn against hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who faces reelection.

Terror Free Tomorrow is a nonprofit advocacy group whose advisory board members include the former 9/11 Commission co-chairmen -- former Democratic congressman Lee H. Hamilton (Ind.) and former Republican governor Thomas H. Kean (N.J.) -- as well as Republican presidential candidate John McCain and former Senate majority leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). The organization undertakes public opinion polls to determine what policies could be most effective in countering extremism. It is funded by independent, public and family foundations, such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

D3 Systems, based in Vienna, Va., has been polling in Iran since 2004. It carried out the survey of more than 1,000 Iranians by telephone from within the region. The two groups conducted another poll in Iran last June.

Ahmadinejad gets a boost from the new poll. On the economy, 42 percent of Iranians polled believe the economy is headed in the right direction, up from 27 percent in June. The Iranian president's populist economic policies have elicited criticism from parliament and other hard-liners.

More than three-quarters of Iranians polled favor normal relations and trade with the United States, but Iranians are less supportive of concessions to the West than they were in the 2007 poll by the same groups.

The three most important steps Washington could take to improve relations with Tehran are withdrawing its forces from Iraq, increasing visas for study and work in the United States, and a trade deal between the two countries, the poll found.

"The previous poll . . . showed that people were more open to the idea of Iran offering concessions" in exchange for abandoning a nuclear weapons program, Ballen said. "That's dropped from 80 percent to 70 percent."

Just over half of the Iranians polled favor developing nuclear weapons. Since June, the proportion of Iranians who believe that that goal is "not at all important" has dropped from one-third to one-fifth.

At the same time, 70 percent of Iranians told pollsters that they favor an arrangement in which Iran would receive aid and investment in return for allowing inspections and guaranteeing not to develop nuclear weapons.

About six out of 10 Iranians also said they support the Iranian government's military and financial assistance to Lebanon's Hezbollah, Iraq's Shiite militias and the Palestinian militant movements, the survey reported.

Fewer than one in four Iranians polled said they are willing to recognize Israel even if the Palestinians get full statehood, while 45 percent said they would support the recognition of Israel as part of a broader deal with the United States, down from 55 percent in June.

Case Is Dropped Against Shiites In Sunni Deaths

Ex-Officials' Trial Seen as Test of System

By Amit R. Paley and Zaid Sabah
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 4, 2008; A12

BAGHDAD, March 3 -- Two former high-ranking Shiite government officials charged with kidnapping and killing scores of Sunnis were ordered released Monday after prosecutors dropped the case. The abrupt move renewed concerns about the willingness of Iraq's leaders to act against sectarianism and cast doubts on U.S. efforts to build an independent judiciary.

The collapse of the trial stunned American and Iraqi officials who had spent more than a year assembling the case, which they said included a wide array of evidence.

"This shows that the judicial system in Iraq is horribly broken," said a U.S. legal adviser who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly. "And it sends a terrible signal: If you are Shia, then no worries; you can do whatever you want and nothing is going to happen to you."

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's decision to allow the case to proceed to trial was considered a significant step toward proving his Shiite-led government could hold Shiite officials accountable for sectarian crimes. The case was heard at the multimillion-dollar Rule of Law Complex, protected and supervised by the United States, which has said that the development of an impartial justice system is essential to Iraq's long-term stability.

On Monday a three-judge panel ordered the former Health Ministry officials released after a prosecutor unexpectedly asked that the charges be dismissed for lack of evidence. The request caught U.S. officials off guard and came on the second day of what was expected to be at least a four-day trial; evidence had been presented completely on only some of the allegations against the defendants.

The trial of Hakim al-Zamili, a former deputy health minister, and Brig. Gen. Hamid Hamza Alwan Abbas al-Shamari, who led the agency's security force, was the most public airing of evidence that Baghdad hospitals had become death zones for Sunnis seeking treatment there. The officials, followers of anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the feared Mahdi Army militia, were accused of organizing and supporting the murder of Sunni doctors; the use of ambulances to transfer weapons for Shiite militia members; and the torture and kidnapping of Sunni patients.

Zamili and Shamari said they were innocent and unaware of the ministry being used for crimes against Sunnis. Their attorneys accused the government and American officials of trying to lead a campaign against the Sadrist movement. Sadr has been both a key supporter and a critic of Maliki's government; the cleric has recently won praise from U.S. officials for continuing to order his militia to refrain from violence.

Zamili, 43, of Sadr City in Baghdad, and Shamari, 49, of the capital's Baladiyat district, were taken into custody by the U.S. military last February.

"The very fact that the charges were heard and investigated does show modest progress toward the rule of law," said Mirembe Nantongo, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

But the case hit roadblocks immediately. The trial court sent it back at least three times to the investigative court, asking for more information, according to American officials, who said the unusual requests were unnecessary and dangerous to carry out.

"The fact that the trial panel would find what we did insufficient was a great disappointment," Michael F. Walther, a Justice Department official who advised the Iraqi legal system, said in December. "I do think that they may have applied a different standard of proof than they would have for an ordinary criminal."

Eventually the panel announced that the trial would begin on Feb. 19, but three hours after it was scheduled to begin, a spokesman for the Iraqi court system, Judge Abdul Satar Ghafur al-Bayrkdar, said the case would be delayed until March 2 because witnesses had failed to appear.

American officials, however, said evidence had emerged that one of the trial judges had promised to find the defendants not guilty and that a senior judge had ordered him to be replaced.

Witness intimidation has been one of the most significant concerns in the trial.

Many of the witnesses agreed to testify only because they believed their names would be kept secret, but their names were leaked and supporters of the former Health Ministry officials threatened to kill them or their families if they didn't recant their testimony, American officials said. Many of the witnesses did not show up at the trial, though Iraqi law allows their testimony to be read if they do not attend.

One witness who did appear on Monday, Nazar Mehdi Abdul Rasul, the Health Ministry's chief legal representative, contradicted his sworn testimony in October that he witnessed an old man begging Zamili to help secure the release of the man's kidnapped brother.

"I heard Hakim Zamili call the kidnappers on his cellphone and ask them to release the brother of this old man," Rasul testified in October. "And after a long pleading I heard Zamili saying, 'Don't kill him, just throw him on Canal Street.' "

But on Monday, Rasul, who trembled and kept glancing at Zamili, said Zamili was a pious man and competent administrator. Rasul said he had misspoken during his earlier testimony because he was weak from fasting for Ramadan. The angered chief judge chastised Rasul and said he could submit his testimony in writing if he feared speaking in the courtroom.

Attorneys for the defendants called a number of witnesses, many Sadrists and current employees of the ministry, who defended Zamili and Shamari and suggested that others were behind the kidnappings and killings. But the judge also read the testimony of witnesses who accused Zamili and Shamari of being sectarian killers.

At the end of a long day Monday, the prosecutor got up and read what Americans described as a long statement. "The evidence against Hakim and Hamid is not enough to convict them. I ask to drop these charges and release them right away unless they are wanted for another case," said the prosecutor, whose name was not released as a security precaution.

"The bottom line is that we're reserving judgment on the Iraqi court's decision today," said Nantongo, the U.S. Embassy spokeswoman. "We remain concerned about this case."

A U.S. official said Zamili and Shamari are likely to be freed within 24 hours. Preparations were being made to tighten security for witnesses who testified against them.

Also Monday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrapped up a historic two-day visit to Iraq by calling on U.S. forces to leave the country.

"They should leave this area, and they should hand over the running of affairs to the government and the people of this region," he said. "The people in the region despise them and don't welcome them. None of the people in the region love those forces."

Despite tightened security measures that shut down much of Baghdad, two suicide bombers staged separate attacks that killed at least 18 people and wounded 23 others, Iraqi officials said.

In Search for Peace, a Shrinking White House Role

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 2, 2008; A16

When Palestinians broke through the barrier dividing the Gaza Strip and Egypt in January and streamed across the border by the tens of thousands, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak faced a moment of crisis. His phone soon rang, but the world leader offering help on the other end was not President Bush -- it was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mubarak took the call, resulting in the first such contact between leaders of the two nations since relations were severed nearly three decades ago.

The conversation signaled a growing rapprochement between Egypt, which receives nearly $2 billion in annual aid from Washington, and Iran, a country that the Bush administration has tried to isolate as a possible threat to U.S. interests in the region.

As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heads back to the Middle East this week, three months after Bush hosted a peace conference bringing together Israelis and Arabs in Annapolis, prospects for peace have shifted dramatically. There has been little clear movement in peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, while the Iranian-backed militant group Hamas has shown increasingly that it can set the region's agenda.

Hamas rockets have continued to rain down on Israeli towns, prompting deadly counterattacks by Israel amid increasing speculation that Israel will invade the narrow coastal strip housing 1.5 million Palestinians that it abandoned just two years ago.

Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, said that key players in the region are moving beyond the Bush administration. "The feeling is that if you keep the flash points on a lower or somewhat higher flame, it will give you more cards when a new administration comes in," he said, speaking in a phone interview from Israel. "Everyone is sucking up to the Iranians," he added.

The signs of American irrelevance are apparent throughout the region. Even Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, hailed as a potential peacemaker by the Bush administration, mused last week to the Jordanian newspaper al-Dustour that in the future it might be necessary to return to armed struggle against Israel. And Syria, which received an unexpected invitation to Annapolis, believes that the peace summit was "an exercise in public relations" and that Bush has no interest in peace, as Syria's ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha put it last week.

Rice's first stop, on Tuesday, will be Cairo, where she will consult with Mubarak and other Egyptian officials on Gaza. She then will shuttle between Israeli and Palestinian officials on Tuesday and Wednesday, seeking to head off a deadly confrontation between Israel and Hamas while pushing for progress in the nascent peace talks.

The architecture of Annapolis established by Rice includes four key tracks, all of which are supposed to operate simultaneously: high-level talks on "final status" issues such as the division of Jerusalem; incremental changes in security, Jewish settlements on the West Bank and roadblocks hindering Palestinian movement; jump-starting the Palestinian economy; and greater Arab involvement. The final-status talks have been shrouded in secrecy, while little has happened on the other tracks, participants said. The number of roadblocks has increased, according to U.N. estimates.

"Politically, I have not heard anything that is good," a senior Arab diplomat said.

Organizers of a Palestinian investment conference scheduled for late May, designed to bring Arab businessmen to Bethlehem, have expressed concern that senior Arab executives will be forced to wait for hours in humiliating checks at roadblocks, potentially spoiling the mood for investment.

The lack of movement has added to the skepticism, even in Israel. A poll published in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth last week showed that 69 percent of Israelis surveyed believed the talks would not bring peace, while 78 percent believed the talks were being held only for political reasons.

During a recent visit to Washington, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad charged that Israel has "not done a thing materially on the ground to help my government." Israeli officials counter that Israel has taken steps to bolster the Abbas government, but that some efforts -- such as new restrictions on settlement growth -- cannot be publicized because of the tenuous political situation in Israel.

Ghaith al-Omari, a former adviser to Abbas and now advocacy director for the American Task Force on Palestine, faulted the Bush administration for not nurturing a process that it started. He noted that the administration has appointed three generals to assess various aspects of the issue, but that few people in the region understand their roles. Rice's two-day visit this week is her first substantive trip since the conference in November.

"There is no push from the Americans," he said. "We are still waiting to see what they will do. It is surprising how little has happened. If you guys are going to run out of steam, why create all these expectations?"

"It is a big question mark," said Martin Indyk, director of the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy. "The impression one gets is that this administration is out of juice."

Most observers give the administration six months, until the Democratic and Republican conventions, to show that progress on the peace talks is possible. But the Annapolis conference has been increasingly overshadowed by the conflict over Gaza.

The Annapolis talks were designed to bolster Abbas so he could overcome the challenge from Hamas. In 2006, the militant group unexpectedly won Palestinian elections that the Bush administration had supported, beating Abbas's Fatah party, and a unity government between the two sides went sour when Hamas seized control of Gaza last June. The administration had hoped that if Abbas could seal a peace deal, it would give him the popular support to oust Hamas, which has called for Israel's destruction.

Neither Hamas nor Iran was invited to Annapolis but, as Ahmadinejad's courting of Mubarak suggests, the administration's effort to divide the region into "moderate" and "extremist" camps has not succeeded. After the phone call between the two men, Iran's foreign minister declared that diplomatic ties with Cairo would soon be restored.

Meanwhile, Hamas has gained popularity as Israel has attempted an economic blockade of Gaza. Hamas bulldozers burst through the Gaza-Egyptian border in January, while Hamas rockets last week reached Ashkelon, an Israeli city of 120,000 that generally had been safe from Hamas attacks.

Egypt would like to arrange a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas while giving the Palestinian Authority control over border crossings, Arab diplomats said. But those would be difficult negotiations as public pressure increases in Israel for a ground invasion of Gaza. In the best-case scenario for Israel, that would wipe out Hamas's leadership, but it could also prove as vexing as Israel's war against Hezbollah in 2006.

Some argue that Hamas's strength can no longer be ignored. Before the Annapolis conference, a group of U.S. foreign policy specialists -- including former national security advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft and former congressman Lee H. Hamilton -- wrote Bush to argue that "a genuine dialogue with the organization is far preferable to its isolation." But State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Friday, "It's pretty hard to say that Hamas has a legitimate role to play in this process if their main policy is to promote terror."

Iranian Leader Arrives in Iraq

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 10:45 a.m. ET

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday his landmark visit to Iraq opened a new chapter in ''brotherly'' relations between the two countries, which were once bitter enemies.

The Iranian president’s trip is a historic one, the first since Iran and Iraq fought an eight-year war in the 1980s. The trip not only highlights his country's growing influence on its Arab neighbor in the post-Saddam Hussein era, but it also serves as an act of defiance toward the U.S., which accuses Iran of training and giving weapons to Shiite extremists in Iraq.

The Iranian leader went from Baghdad's airport to a meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who gave him a red-carpet welcome. The two kissed four times on the cheek in the traditional fashion and a band played the two countries' national anthems.

''We had very good talks that were friendly and brotherly. ... We have mutual understandings and views in all fields, and both sides plan to improve relations as much as possible,'' Ahmadinejad said in a news conference with Talabani at the Iraqi president's residence, located across the Tigris River from the new U.S. Embassy in the fortified Green Zone.

Talabani said the two discussed economic, political, security and oil issues and planned to sign several agreements later. But he said the issue of borders, including the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway between the two countries, was not discussed.

Ahmadinejad stressed that his country wanted a stable Iraq that would benefit the region.

''A united Iraq, a sovereign Iraq and an advanced Iraq is to the benefit of all regional nations and the people of Iran,'' he said.

Though much of the public talk focused on the warming relations between the two countries, Ahmadinejad denounced U.S. accusations that Iran was training and supplying Shiite militia fighters in Iraq with weapons designed to kill American troops.

''Such accusations increase the problems of the Americans in the region and they are not going to solve their problems,'' Ahmadinejad said in a separate press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki after discussions with Talabani.

Al-Maliki emphasized that the Iranian leader's visit was ''an expression of the strong desire to enhance the relations and develop mutual interests after the past tensions during the dictatorship era.''

The news conference appeared to end abruptly after a reporter asked Ahmadinejad about the People's Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, which was allied with Saddam during the bitter 1980s war between the two countries. The group has opposed Iran's Islamic republic and has operated out of Iraq. The U.S. and European Union list it as a terrorist organization.

Talabani interjected, saying: ''This issue has been discussed earlier and the presence of those as a terrorist organization is constitutionally not allowed. We will endeavor to get rid of them out of the Iraqi territory soon.''

The U.S. has said it will have no involvement in Ahmadinejad's visit. Ahmadinejad arrived in Iraq a day after Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came to Baghdad on an unannounced visit with commanders and Iraqi officials.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told The Associated Press that Ahmadinejad plans to leave Monday morning.

Though both are Shiite-majority countries, Iran and Iraq were hostile to each other throughout Saddam's regime. Their eight-year war after Saddam invaded Iran in 1980 cost about 1 million lives.

But when Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime fell and Iraq's Shiite majority took power after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, long-standing ties between the Shiites of both countries flourished again, though the two neighbors have yet to sign a peace treaty.

Many of Iraq's Shiite leaders lived in exile in Iran during Saddam's rule, and Talabani, a Sunni Kurd, speaks fluent Farsi.

With the trip, Ahmadinejad also may be trying to bolster his support back home ahead of parliamentary elections later this month. They are seen as referendum on the Iranian president, who has come under criticism in his country for spending too much time on anti-Western rhetoric and not enough on Iran's economic problems.

The U.S. has tried to downplay Ahmadinejad's visit. It has said it welcomed Iran's stated policy of promoting stability but that its actions have done just the opposite.

Rear Adm. Gregory Smith said the Iraqi government would provide the principal security for Ahmadinejad and had the capacity and equipment to do so.

''Iraq has a responsibility as a neighbor to provide security,'' he said during a press conference in the Green Zone, adding that the U.S. hoped the visit ''produces real and tangible results.''

President Bush denied that Ahmadinejad's visit undermined U.S. efforts to isolate Tehran, but had some advice for what al-Maliki should say to the Iranian leader.

''He's a neighbor. And the message needs to be, quit sending in sophisticated equipment that's killing our citizens,'' Bush said.

In Tehran, Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini criticized Bush.

''His remarks are an intervention in the friendly, brotherly and sincere relations between Iran and Iraq,'' Hosseini told reporters Sunday after Ahmadinejad left Iran. ''Americans do not want the relations to grow.''

Iraq braces for Ahmadinejad visit

The Iranian leader's visit is welcomed, but it comes at a time when Iraqi Shiite allies are growing wary of Tehran's role in their war-torn country.
By Borzou Daragahi
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

February 29, 2008

BAGHDAD — Hussein Athab visited Iran three times after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The political science professor took in the religious sites and admired Iraq's bigger, richer and stronger Shiite Muslim neighbor to the east.

But his esteem for Iran's government has since plummeted over what many here view as Iranian meddling and subversion in Iraq.

"We thought Iran would extend the hand of friendship," said Athab, a Shiite. "But it looks like Iran considers Iraq a playing card, and we don't want to be used as a playing card."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrives Sunday to an Iraq far more leery of his country than it was after the ouster of Hussein.

Publicly, Iraq's politicians welcome the hard-line president's arrival. He is the first leader of a Middle East country to visit Baghdad and grant the government the international recognition it craves.

But privately, Iraqi officials say that Ahmadinejad and his clique are part of the problem. Iraqis would prefer a visit by a less divisive figure, such as former President Mohammad Khatami, a reformist.

"We know that Ahmadinejad is a controversial figure and we have seen some policy changes since the time of Khatami," Athab said.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who visited Tehran in June, is to play host to Ahmadinejad, most likely at his heavily fortified compound outside Baghdad's U.S.-protected Green Zone. "The United States has no role in the visit," said Rear Adm. Greg J. Smith.

Ties between Tehran and Baghdad's current Shiite leadership run deep and stretch back decades. During the 1980s, Talabani and other Kurds as well as Iraqi Shiite political parties and militias found refuge in Iran and fought alongside Iranian forces against the Iraqi army. Iran was among the first countries to officially recognize the post-Hussein government.

But even among Iraq's Shiite majority, which has long looked to Iranian coreligionists as protectors and patrons, there is a wariness about Tehran's ambitions and tactical maneuvers in their country. Many feel that Iraq has become a battleground in the 30-year feud between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic of Iran, and that Tehran has few qualms about sacrificing Iraqi lives and stability for its strategic goals.

"There's a problem because the Iranians feel threatened by the Americans, and they want to act tit-for-tat with the Americans," said Haider Abadi, a high-ranking advisor to Prime Minister Nouri Maliki. Both belong to the Islamic Dawa Party, which Iran sheltered during Hussein's rule. "Whenever Americans pressure Iran outside Iraq, the Iranians respond in Iraq. We're paying for this in blood."

Iraq's Sunni Arabs and former Baath Party loyalists have long resented Iran's influence and ambitions. But over the last two or three years, tensions have also increased between Iraq's Shiites and Iran.

Abadi and other Iraqi officials said they would use Ahmadinejad's visit as an opportunity to warn Iran about its behavior in Iraq, including U.S. allegations that powerful explosives and other arms are smuggled from Iran into Iraq.

"The relationship between Iran and Iraq started off very good after the collapse of the regime," Abadi said. "But it has become worse because of this. The Iranians must see this. It is not in their interest to have the Iraqis as their enemies. Ahmadinejad will be told that we cannot have good neighborly relations while Iraqis are being killed by Iranian bombs."

Iraqi officials are also struggling to defuse what they view as the rationale for Iran's alleged transgressions: the fear that the U.S. presence in Iraq will be used to undermine Tehran. Both Iraq's Kurds and Shiites have vigorously lobbied leaders in Washington and Tehran to set aside differences, at least when it comes to Iraq.

"Officials in Iraq are still putting great efforts to improve this relationship. . . . Instead of being a place for war, [Iraq] will be a place for peace," said Sheik Hamid Muala, a lawmaker who is a member of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which has deep ties to Iran. But Muala and others acknowledged that more Iraqis have grown sensitive to Iran's role.

"Whether we like it or not, the Iranian influence is at a very high level in Iraq," said Qassem Dawoud, an independent lawmaker with close ties to the Shiite clerical leadership in Najaf. "We really are looking forward to a period when this influence should disappear."

Abadi praised Iranian Ambassador Hassan Kazemi- Qomi as one of only two foreign diplomats who regularly make the rounds of ministries to facilitate business deals and increase contacts. Trade between the two countries now totals $8 billion a year, much of it Iranian exports. Iran is also giving a $1-billion loan to Iraq.

But U.S. and Iraqi officials allege that Iran's positive contributions come with a host of headaches. They accuse Tehran of supplying arms, training and direction to Shiite and Sunni paramilitary groups.

"They are bringing in tomatoes, potatoes, gas and electricity," said Jawad Bolani, Iraq's interior minister and a Shiite. "But then we also get rockets, weapons and missiles."

Abadi also said Iranians are interfering in Iraq's politics, supporting one faction over another with infusions of cash.

But Iraqi officials point out that even the pro-U.S. Persian Gulf monarchies such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have invited Ahmadinejad on state visits.

"This guy came to power by a democratic election," said Khudair Khuzai, Iraq's minister of education and a confidant of Maliki. "Whether he's radical or moderate, the Iranian people chose him."

daragahi@latimes.com

Times staff writer Tina Susman contributed to this report.

Iran: As Tensions Rise, So Does Rhetoric

By Jeffrey Donovan

September 28, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- To any reader of the English-language blogosphere, September appeared destined to be the month of the Iran war media blitz.

A first sign of an impending war of words over Iran came in late August. In an Internet blog, professor Barnett Rubin, a highly respected authority on Afghanistan at New York University, said a Bush administration insider told him there would be an "Iran war rollout" in the media in September.

Yet it was in Paris, not Washington, that perhaps the first salvo in the war of words with Iran was fired -- a drumbeat of rising rhetoric over the last month that Admiral William Fallon, the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, has called "not helpful" and "not useful."

On August 27, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, speaking to a group of French diplomats, called a nuclear-armed Iran "unacceptable." He added: "I underline France's full determination to support the alliance's current policy of increasing sanctions, but also to remain open if Iran makes the choice to fulfill its obligations. This policy is the only one that will allow us to escape an alternative, which I consider to be catastrophic. Which alternative? An Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran."

Iran Media Blitz

As if on cue, the language of U.S. President George W. Bush, speaking the very next day, also took a confrontational turn toward Tehran.

"Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust," Bush told a gathering of U.S. war veterans. "Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. And that is why the United States is rallying friends and allies around the world to isolate the regime, to impose economic sanctions. We will confront this danger before it is too late."

Publicly, Bush has refused to take military action off the table if Iran does not comply with UN Security Council resolutions demanding that it suspend its uranium enrichment programs.

Led by the United States, the Western powers are seeking to pass a third round of even tougher Security Council sanctions against Iran. However, at a meeting today in New York, the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany agreed to delay a vote on tougher sanctions until late November at the earliest.

That outcome is a setback to U.S. and French efforts, yet their cooperation still signals a key break from the recent past.

Unlike during the Iraq war run-up, when France voiced fierce opposition to toppling Saddam Hussein, this time Paris is backing up Bush with tough talk of its own.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner weighed in with perhaps even stronger words than his boss, stating on September 16 that the world should brace for war with Iran if negotiations to end its nuclear program fail. Although he later tempered his comments, Kouchner and Sarkozy's rhetoric starkly contrasts with that of former French President Jacques Chirac, whose vocal opposition to war with Iraq dealt a blow to U.S.-France relations.

So what’s motivated France to talk tough now? Jean-Pierre Darnis, a political analyst at the University of Nice and Rome's Institute of Foreign Affairs, says the new French leader is partly motivated by a genuine desire to repair relations with Washington. Darnis adds that France clearly wants to avoid war with Iran, but sees its threat as a necessary prod to change Tehran’s behavior.

"Sarkozy said: 'I don't like the word war. I don't want to use the word war,' after Kouchner [used the word]," Darnis says. "But nevertheless, he is very open to a large panel of actions against Iran."

On September 25 at the UN General Assembly in New York, Sarkozy reiterated that an Iranian nuclear bomb would be an "unacceptable risk to stability in the region and in the world." He was echoed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said, “If Iran were to acquire the nuclear bomb, the consequences would be disastrous."

Robert Whitman, who studies European foreign policy at London’s Chatham House think tank, says the tough talk from Paris, and to a lesser extent Berlin, is partly aimed at permanent UN Security Council members China and Russia to persuade them to drop their opposition to new Iran sanctions since the alternative -- namely, war -- should appear so much worse to them.

New France

But Whitman adds that Sarkozy’s rhetoric should also be taken at face value -- that is, it reflects genuine French concern over the danger of Iran’s nuclear program:

"I think that’s partly why the French have been using the language why they have, because they think the Iran case is a very serious test of the credibility of the international nonproliferation regime for nuclear weapons," Whitman says. "And I think that their analysis is that it will have grave consequences for nuclear proliferation in the Middle East if Iran is not stopped. And the French do believe that they are being a responsible international citizen by bearing down on the Iranians."

But what about the Iranians? Are they, too, somehow served by all the war talk?

Speaking on September 25 at the UN, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad vowed Tehran would continue to defy any UN resolutions on Iran’s nuclear program. He said the nuclear question was "closed" as a political issue and that Iran would pursue the monitoring of its nuclear program "through its appropriate legal path," the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog.

British analyst Whitman says the media circus that accompanied Ahmadinejad’s trip to the United States, along with the hard-line rhetoric against him, may actually be helping him in his domestic political battles back home. "Certainly, in terms of external criticism of the regime, and particularly criticism in the U.S., this will obviously assist him in terms of his struggle against moderates in Tehran," Whitman says.

Others have noted that every time the Iranian crisis escalates, the price of oil increases, further filling petroleum-rich Tehran's coffers.

The war drums have also been beating in the right-wing U.S. media, particularly among those "neoconservative" pundits who pushed successfully for the Iraq invasion and now reportedly seek to topple the clerical regime in Iran. Reports say their pro-Iran war views may be shared at least in part by Vice President Dick Cheney and others in the Bush administration.

According to the U.S. magazine "Newsweek," in its October 1 edition, David Wurmser, a former adviser to Cheney on the Middle East, was considering a plan to press Israel to strike Iranian nuclear targets in a move that could bring the United States into a war with Tehran. Wurmser, in remarks today to the "New York Sun" daily, categorically denied those allegations.

But in a clear signal of the mood in Washington, this week the U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill that would tighten sanctions on Iran. The bill, which passed by a vote of 397 to 16, also calls on the U.S. government to list Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist group. The bill calls for sanctions against foreign companies that have U.S. subsidiaries who invest in Iran's energy sector.

A day later, the U.S. Senate passed a similar nonbinding resolution on Iran. Critics such as Democratic Senator Jim Webb of Virginia said the motion "could be read as a tantamount to a declaration of war on Iran."

But if the martial rhetoric serves the interests of "hawks" in Washington, some say it also aides "hawks" in the Middle East opposed to Iran’s ascendance in the region.

Independent author Robert Baer, who spent two decades in the Muslim world as a case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency, predicted in a recent article for the website of the U.S. magazine "Time" that there would be a military strike against Iran "within six months."

Military Caution

Last week, U.S. Admiral Fallon told Al-Jazeera television that he believed there would not be war with Iran, and called the war talk unhelpful. Similarly, General John Abizaid, Fallon's predecessor as chief U.S. commander in the Middle East, said this month that while every effort should be made to stop Iran's apparent march toward nuclear weapons, the world could live with and deter a nuclear-armed Iran.

Baer, for his part, contends that part of the Bush administration, led by Cheney, wants to strike Iran for a number of reasons including the nuclear threat, Shi’ite Iran’s growing influence in Iraq and the region, its ties to terrorism, and its alleged threat to Sunni regimes friendly to Washington, such as Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis "are saying basically, if you want to keep your 10 million barrels or 9 million barrels [of oil] a day flowing freely in international markets, and keeping the price relatively low on oil, you better come to our protection," Baer recently said. "You better do something about Iran. And they’re telling us, or what they’re telling me, is that you have to decapitate the Iranian regime."

Today's UN talks in New York effectively gave the green light for IAEA chief Muhammad el-Baradei to carry on in his efforts to try and clear up doubts about Iran's past nuclear activities. El-Baradei recently gave Iran three months to clear its record in a move criticized by Washington as a tactic to stall sanctions and evade the key issue of halting enrichment.

Reports say the Western powers are considering their own economic and political sanctions against Iran, should efforts to pass a new resolution in the Security Council prove fruitless.

Where the Iran story ultimately goes is anyone’s guess. But as September 2007 draws to a close, some have recalled a famous remark by former White House chief of staff Andrew Card.

About Washington’s Iraq media blitz in September 2002, a half-year before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Card said, "From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August."