Saudi Arabia,Iran,Egypt & US Allied Against Iraq

[Guest guest]

Iran Jumps Aboard US War on Iraq

DEBKAfile's Washington, Gulf Sources

30 September: America's failure to enlist UN Security Council

members for a tough new ultimatum to Baghdad is misleading. On the

quiet, Washington has made important strides in the bid to assemble

an Arab-Muslim coalition for its war effort. Egypt and Saudi Arabia

were the first to come on board, although they refrain from publicly

admitting to having made their sea and air bases available for the

American assault.

According to DEBKAfile's military sources, the big Egyptian military

base at Cairo West has been turned over to the US war command as its

foremost logistical launching pad, while US warships freely navigate

the Suez Canal.

The Saudi Prince Sultan air base northeast of Riyadh is now an

American forward base for air raids over southern Iraq. Sunday,

September 29, US AWACs took off from Sultan to escort American

bombers raiding Iraqi command posts and radar systems at the big

international airport of Basra, Iraq's port city on the Persian

Gulf. This second American air assault against Basra inside a week

had more than one effect; one was to disable Iraq's potential for

striking out at neighboring Iran and its Khozistan oilfields.

What has happened to place Iran, one of Washington's fiercest

critics, in Saddam's gun-sights? And why are US warplanes protecting

the Islamic Republic?

The answer was offered in Issue 78 of DEBKA-Net-Weekly that came out

on September 27:

President George W. Bush and his aides must be patting themselves on

the back this week over the remarkable feat of turning round an

implacable foe for its line-up against Iraq: DEBKA-Net-Weekly's

military and Iranian sources report that months of laborious

bargaining have produced a secret US-Iran military cooperation

agreement for the operation to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime.

Iran's first quid pro quo was having its forces co-opted to the

assault.

According to our military sources, a several hundred-strong Iranian

vanguard apparently went into northern Iraq some ten days ago. It is

believed to be made up of Iraqi and Afghan rebels fighting inthe

Badr force, an elite counter-terrorism contingent of the

Revolutionary Guards. US and Turkish special forces officers

escorted the Iranian unit to its deployment zone in the Kurdish

Sulimaniyeh area.

This week, DEBKAfile adds, the military partnership went into

political gear.

Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri, who flew to Tehran Sunday,

September 29 to seek support against Washington, was coldly informed

by President Mohamed Khatami that Iran wanted the entire Persian

Gulf free of weapons of mass destruction. On his way out, the Iraqi

minister almost bumped into Kuwait's defense minister Sheikh Jaber

Mubarak al-Hamad, who arrived on a diametrically opposed errand: a

two-day conference with his Iranian opposite number, Rear Admiral

Ali Shamkhani, on "collective security".

According to DEBKAfile's sources in Tehran, the two defense

ministers have been assigned by the US war command to line up their

military front against Iraq.

Iran's still secret about-face gives substantial ballast to the anti-

Saddam Arab-Muslim alliance put together by the Bush team and offers

a rebuttal for much of the criticism of an American military move

against Baghdad coming from the Democrats in the US Congress, the

Europeans led by France and Germany and the UN secretariat under

Kofi Annan. Many critics claim to speak for the Arab Middle East and

Persian Gulf. Now that the strongest Gulf power, Iran, has crossed

the floor – and is not the first to do so - President George W. Bush

can claim a regional coalition weightier than the one which

confronted Iraq in 1991.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Iran experts recall that just before the Afghan

War last October, Washington and Tehran secretly shook hands on a

military pact to do battle against al Qaeda and the Taliban and in

particular protect the Shiite population of W. Afghanistan,

especially in the Herat province. That pact is in effect reaffirmed

in a different context.

One key rationale for Tehran is its compulsion to hold onto its

influence among Iraq's Shiites, who make up some 60 percent of the

23 million strong population, and protect its interests in any

future government rising in Baghdad. Ever practical, the ayatollahs

calculated that the American military operation against Saddam is a

foregone conclusion anyway; therefore it was more to their advantage

to jump aboard the speeding American bandwagon than to snipe at the

US war effort from the shrinking opposition.

The Iranians are now keen to pull Syria out of the opposition camp

and over to the American side so as to ward off a potential American

or Israeli strike against the Damascus-based Palestinian radical

terror groups and Hizballah strongholds in South Lebanon.

Tehran was also influenced by the recent outbreak of stormy anti-

government riots in Damascus, reported exclusively by DEBKAfile last

Thursday, September 26. The Assad regime turns out to be a lot less

stable than thought. Its fall would remove one of the Hizballah's

key props.

Iran's crossover to the American side against Iraq does not detract

an iota from its sponsorship of the Hizballah's war against Israel

or the Lebanese government's plan for plugging an important source

of Israel's water supply with the Wazzani River diversion project.

This gives Tehran a chance to pull off a double: If the Lebanese get

away with this project under Iranian protection, while at the same

time the Iranian-American military collaboration in Iraq is

successful, Iran's standing in the Persian Gulf and Middle East will

be much enhanced. At the same time Tehran will not be required to

abandon its ingrained animosity to Israel.

To make sure Israel did not upset the gathering US Islamic-Arab

alliance, Washington forced Israel into a military climb-down in

Ramallah, giving Yasser Arafat his moment of triumph as he emerged

from 11 days of Israeli blockade. Pale and trembling amid the rubble

of his government headquarters, he brandished the V-sign for the

tiny following that came out to cheer him.

Although Israeli siege forces have moved back, Arafat is still

trapped. His presence in the only building left standing in his

compound is the last shield protecting his terrorist masterminds

from Israel's grasp.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources find neither the Americans nor Iranians

under any illusion that their old feud is resolved by their new

military accord. But, as an ad hoc device, this collaboration has

made it possible for the United States to tighten its noose around

the necks of Saddam and his regime, while putting its longstanding

war of words with Iran on hold for the duration.