The Hindu : International : Iraqi clergy must have a role, says Khamenei

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 10, 2004

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International

Iraqi clergy must have a role, says Khamenei

By Atul Aneja

MANAMA, JUNE 9. The Iran's Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has lashed out at the newly appointed Iraqi interim Government, calling it a `lackey' of the U.S. administration, and decried the marginalisation of the `clergy' from politics in Iraq. Ayatollah Khamenei, during his address marking the fifteenth death anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of Iran's Islamic revolution, said that humiliation of "Iraqi men, raping Iraqi women, breaking down the doors of Iraqi homes, and installing a lackey government, that is what happens when you remove the clergy from politics."

While Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, gave qualified support to the new Government, he emphasised that Teheran wanted to see, "an elected and democratic government to take over in Iraq as soon as possible." Analysts attach considerable importance to the Iranian spiritual leader's remarks on the Iraqi clergy, as they see them as implicitly criticising the U.S. attempt to displace the influence of Iraq's top spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, in the new Iraqi dispensation. Leading Shia religious parties have not been accommodated in most of the key positions in the new Cabinet, though one of the Vice-Presidents is from the Shia Islamic Daawa party.

Commentators in Iran are interpreting the elevation of Iyad Allawi to the post of Prime Minister as part of a wider U.S. effort to push to the forefront, a `secular' Shia leadership that is manoeuvrable, in contrast to the religious establishment in Najaf that has links with Shia strongholds across the globe, including Iran.

Mr. Allawi is member of Iraq's secular elite, western educated and known to have strong links with the CIA and the British MI6. He is reportedly related to Mohammad Abdel Khalek Hassouna, a prominent General under Abdul Karim Qassim, a senior military officer and later Iraqi Prime Minister during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Mr. Allawi's appointment, who at one time was a prominent Ba'athist student leader, is seen as helping the U.S. in making inroads into the formerly impregnable Ba'athist bureaucracy. Sections of the Iranian media have highlighted details about U.S. efforts to involve former Ba'athist officials, who are mainly Sunnis, in ruling Iraq, after the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Fallujah at the end of April.

The Iranian English daily, Teheran Times, in a recent article said that the U.S. administrator, Paul Bremer, has met "1500 detained high-ranking officials from the former Ba'ath regime" and asked Maher Abdul Rashid al-Tikriti and Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Tikriti, both former Generals who were released from prison, to organise members of the Tikriti tribe. Political observers say that Iran, which envisions itself as the guardian of Shia interests worldwide, and exercises considerable influence over sections of the Iraqi society, is likely to retaliate against the perceived marginalisation of the religious leadership.

Arshin Adib Moghaddam, who specialises on Iran at Cambridge University told The Hindu that, " Iran has carefully forged relations with the whole spectrum of Iraqi groups, from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) to the multifarious Shia groupings," which it could now utilise to achieve its political goals. In fact, the PUK, led by Jalal Talabani, has been known to be a reliable Iranian ally in northern Iraq since the early 1980s.

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