Now the Americans know better but they are helpless to cover the Pandora’s box they have opened. The Shia onslaught seems to be unstoppable and the Sunnis are on the defensive. However, the conflict between the Sunni and the Shia has little to do with religion per se. It has everything to do with how the Islamic world will be controlled by one way of life fashioned by religion. So the conflict is more political than anything else. Since the overthrow of the shah in 1979, Iran has been ruled by an ultra-conservative clergy who wanted to export their brand of religion/regime. However, what they tried to export was not belief as much as a recipe for “proper conduct” that empowered and extended the influence of the Iranian regime in the environing Muslim lands. For example, Turks are mainly Sunni and the Sunnis by tradition do not see the Shia as mainstream Muslims. However, the call of the Iranian revolution to the disfranchised conservative social cohorts was immense because it carried heretofore peripheral and powerless groups to the center of power and made them the master of their country. A part of the Turkish peripheral conservatives saw an opportunity to be politically relevant and active through fundamentalism whereby religion was rendered a potent political ideology.
In the meantime, the Iranian regime under the influence of the clergy who settled on top of the hierarchy evinced an insatiable appetite to extend its influence in the Muslim world. The Saudis saw this “expansion” first and tried to tell the Americans that the Iraqi tyrant, Saddam Hussein, stood in the way. That is why they, among other Arab governments, supported Iraq in its war (1980-1988) with Iran. They believed that only Iraq’s military machine could build a fire-wall against the onslaught of the Shia influence. That is why today many Sunni Arabs view the toppling of Saddam Hussein as a danger to their safety, not because they loved the ex-tyrant but because he was the watchdog of Sunni power.
Well, their worries were not unfounded after all. American ignorance offered the control of Iraq on a silver platter to the Shia whose power will most likely expand toward the Gulf region threatening smaller Arab states. Iran’s rulers make it easy for everyone to understand their intention of extending their newly won advantage thanks to their American “foes” by pressing on with their nuclear program.
Having been hit on the head with this stark reality, now the Americans are desperately seeking ways of containing Iran’s growing influence in the Middle East. One way of doing so may be to supply a countervailing nuclear capacity for the Arabs or Turkey or both. This could lead to nuclear proliferation which the US has always been wary of. Yet if it does not appease its allies who feel threatened by Iran, the US can lose them or they may feel quite vindicated in seeking their own defense mechanisms.
The second is organizing and instigating the Kurds against Iran, a process that has already started. Iran has a Kurdish population of approximately 5 million Kurds. Most Kurds are secular Sunni Muslims. Iranian Kurds actually took part in the 1979 uprising against the Shah that brought about the Islamic Republic, but soon fell into conflict with the hardline Shia regime. Now they are organizing or being helped to organize to bring down the incumbent Iranian government.
The Kurdish party in opposition to the government of the mullahs is called PEJAK. It has organic ties to the PKK of Turkey. Its guerrilla force, named KOMALA, commands close to 1,000 fighters composed of young men and women just like its role model in Turkey. They have taken refuge on the same mountain range (Kandil) in northern Iraq about 50 kilometers from the Iranian border. The organization’s long time leader Abdullah Mohtadi flew to Washington last year to meet with US officials as well as other members of the disorderly Iranian opposition. Seven Iranian groups, including the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran, signed a cooperation pact to act together against the present regime in Iran under US guidance.
What do you think they wanted in return for their services? They wanted the same prize of autonomy that the United States delivered to Iraqi Kurds after the fall of the Baath regime as a starter and a United Kurdistan in the future.
Is the US aware that in order to close the lid of the Pandora’s box it released, it is now opening the gates of hell in the Middle East which will never be the same after an extended period of turmoil and devastation that will make the whole world less safe for everyone? Every Kurdish leader and organization in the region is explicitly expressing that their final aim is the “United Larger Kurdistan” carved out of Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran.
Maybe before any regime change anywhere in the world, it is time for a government change in the US.
