|
Syrians working with Iranians? Ba'athists working with Islamic fundamentalists? Don't you read the New York Times and your daily Democratic National Committee talking points? That doesn't happen.
This, BTW, was one of the biggest pieces of idiocy from the antiwar Left - that Ba'athists like Saddam wouldn't work with Islamists like al-Qa'ida - since as amply demonstrated with Hizbullah in Lebanon, Ba'athists had been working with Islamists for decades. There are differences - while Syria is predominantly Sunni Arab, its Ba'athist ruling elite is dominated by members of a small religious sect, an offshoot of Shi'ism called the 'Alawis - that many Muslims consider apostates.
Muqtada al-Sadr is a pawn of certain factions in Iran, but Iran's main horse in Iraq is SCIRI. SCIRI has, perhaps, been too accomodating to the IGC and the CPA for the tastes of some Iranians, so more money and weapons have been funneled to al-Sadr's Jaysh al-Mahdi. Neither al-Sadr nor SCIRI, though, is especially popular among Iraqi Shi'ites. Al-Sadr's people are acting like good Bolsheviks, though, using their militancy and propaganda to project greater strength.
One of the main critiques Iraqis have of the US-led coalition is its failure to adequately police the borders, allowing Syrian and Iranian agents and fighters to infiltrate. Of late, we have been more aggressive along the Syrian border - witness this weekend's engagement between Marines and militants - but this is another area where it appears we do not have adequate resources. Wasit province, which includes a portion of the Iranian border that is the main route from Iran into the heart of Shi'ite Iraq, is in the hands of the Ukrainian 6th Separate Mechanized Brigade, which does not have the resources or the ROEs to aggressively deal with the threats in its zone.
As I noted, the proximate causes of the recent unrest were more accidental (the killings in Fallujah don't appear to be part of the Syrian game plan) and opportunistic, but the build-up of tension does fit the Syrian and Iranian goal of keeping Iraq unstable. And I wouldn't be surprised if those high-profile Shi'ites going to join their brethren in Fallujah included a fair number of Iranian agents.
As for Jordan, is the king were killed, my guess is the JAF would rally around Prince Hassan bin Talal, his uncle and the late King Hussein's Crown Prince for three decades. Prince Hassan has been not-so-subtly pushing himself as a candidate for an Iraqi throne (the Hashemites of Jordan are close cousins of the Iraqi royal family, whose most senior princes had been killed by the Ba'ath), but would certainly prefer the Jordanian throne. He has good relations with the West, the JAF and the Jordanian elites.
|