Transcript

Host: This is “On The Line,” and I’m Eric Felten.

Iraqi security forces took control of sections of the southern city of Basra that had been strongholds for Shi’ite militiamen. The militias had been battling Iraqi and Coalition troops for days in Basra and Baghdad and had suffered heavy casualties. Radical Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr told his militias to “end all military actions in Basra and in all the provinces” and “cooperate with the government to achieve security.” Political allies of Mr. Sadr said that the sudden stand-down of his militias was a victory, not a defeat for the cleric, as the Iraqi government had not achieved the “decisive and final battle” that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had promised. But Mr. Maliki said the government’s fight had been a success. The Sadr forces were unable to spread trouble beyond Basra and certain Baghdad neighborhoods. And Muqtada al-Sadr, who is believed to be operating out of Iran, was unable to return to Iraq.

What does the brief conflict with Sadr’s militias say about the state of security in Iraq? How capable are Iraq’s security forces? And what hope is there for political reconciliation and stability in Iraq? I’ll ask my guests: James Robbins, Director of the Intelligence Center at Trinity Washington University; Deputy Washington Bureau Chief for “Newsweek” magazine: Dan Ephron; and joining us from the Brookings Institution Studio here in Washington, Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policy at Brookings. Welcome. Thanks for joining us.

Jim Robbins, what do we know about how things played out in Basra and Baghdad?

Robbins: It’s hard to know exactly how things played out, since both sides are declaring victory in the struggle. I think the significant factor is that this was one of the first times that the Iraqi government was on the offensive. Rather than accepting the violence that was brought to them by militias or by terrorists, now the Iraqi government is trying, independently or with some support, to try to take the battle to them. So that alone, I think, was something that the Iraqi government can take credit for. And the fact that it was al-Sadr who was the one who said, “Stand down” kind of argues that he was the one getting the worst of it.

Host: Dan Ephron, what’s your sense?

Ephron: I think that the success, the relative success, for us, for the U.S. in Iraq over the last year, is really a matter of three things -- it was the surge, it was the Anbar Awakening, but the third thing was Sadr’s cease-fire. And I think we saw that very clearly last week. If the cease-fire ends, the relative success, the relative stability we’ve seen in Iraq over the past year ends, as well.

Host: Michael O’Hanlon, is it your sense that al-Sadr is in a position to reverse the success in Iraq by ending his cease-fire at any given time?

O’Hanlon: He could, but this is a little more of a complicated thing than a zero-sum battle between al-Sadr and al-Maliki or between the Mahdi Army and so-called “ISCI” forces down south. I think we, ironically, need al-Sadr in a certain way, or, at least, we need certain elements of his movement, because we can’t and al-Maliki can’t fight them all. In fact, one concern I had about this raid is that it took on the appearance of a broad-based assault against JAM, the Jaish al-Mahdi militias. I think many of the individual people who were deliberately targeted deserve to be targeted. They were corrupt. They were criminals. They were murderers. And to some extent, this operation was overdue. But it took on the aura of a government and largely ISCI-motivated and supported operation.

Host: And, Michael O’Hanlon, what is “ISCI”?

O’Hanlon: It’s the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. It’s the other big Shi’a party in the South. There’s also a third party. But ISCI and the Jaish al-Mahdi Army, as well as the broader al-Sadr movement -- That’s the other big Shi’a group. And to the extent those two groups battle each other in an all-out fight, we are in a bad state, because that means widespread violence throughout much of Iraq for who knows how long? There has to be a way to split off what Dave Petraeus and others call “the irreconcilables from the reconcilables.” And what that means is, we cannot afford this to devolve into an all-out “ISCI and government on the one side, versus JAM and al-Sadr movement on the other” struggle. We have to find a way to get the kind of a cease-fire accord that, thankfully, was forthcoming and avoid seeing any future struggles take on this aura of a zero-sum game, one movement against the other.

Host: Jim Robbins, for a long time, we were hearing in Iraq about the perhaps irreconcilable conflict between Sunni groups and Shi’a groups, and now we’re hearing about this sort of intramural fighting among Shi’a groups, so what’s happening?

Robbins: That’s right. I don’t think any fights are irreconcilable while the Shi’ites were fighting the Sunnis. And, again, that’s an oversimplification, but nevertheless, while that was going on, you didn’t see as much about this internal fighting amongst the Shi’ites. Now you see various militia groups and, yes, not just the government versus Sadr, but also the Badr Corps and others trying to play out their differences. It’s very important for the government to take control of Basra since it’s the primary port for shipping oil out of the south of Iraq. And whereas fighting of this nature is obviously not the ideal way to do it, I think that, in the future, you’re going to see moments of combat of this type, as certain differences are played out between the government and these various militias. Essentially, they’re no different than organized criminal groups controlling parts of the government apparatus. The government can’t accept that. Neither can they kill them all, but force is going to be one of the elements that they use. So it’s, yes, an extremely complicated situation. I don’t think it’s going to be a peaceful one overall, but, hopefully, in the long run, they’ll settle it.

Host: Dan Ephron, President George W. Bush said, as this fighting got started, that it was going to be a defining moment for Iraq. Did it end up defining anything?

Ephron: No, it didn’t. I think what it defined to us is that chaos still reigns supreme in Iraq. And I think, for all the success of General Petraeus over the last year -- and I think he talks about this himself -- his success is tactical. It gives the Iraqi government a window to try to work out these issues between Sunnis and Shi’a, amongst the Shi’ite population. If the Iraqi government doesn’t step up and can’t resolve these issues, there’s nothing either General Petraeus or the 150,000 troops, American troops that are there, can do.

Host: Michael O’Hanlon, does it matter who’s perceived as having won this skirmish? There was one Mahdi Army commander who told an AP reporter that the reason they had won was that, “If al-Maliki had won, he would have dictated his demands, but it’s we who did that.”

O’Hanlon: Yes, it is important that one side win, and it has to be the government, if there’s going be a winner. To the extent that there is a winner, it’s more important that al-Maliki be seen as at least accomplishing some of his goals. So I hope very much that al-Sadr is not seen as the winner. But, frankly, I don’t think the ideal thing here is to be searching for the winner. What we have to do -- What we’d like to see done is for the actual fight itself to be redefined, not as the al-Sadr movement against ISCI and the government, but, rather, of certain extremists within the al-Sadr movement against certain elements of the government. And to the extent the fight can be redefined that way, then the future can, hopefully, be more peaceful, and you can look for cooperation between al-Sadr and the government, or at least, an avoidance of this kind of open conflict.

Host: How does that get redefined, though?

O’Hanlon: Initially, this was not supposed to be an attack on the al-Sadr movement, writ large. And I think, in the end, they backed off from it being that because they realized they couldn’t win that. Unfortunately, it moved in that direction in the perception of many people. It was supposed to be against criminals and against extremists who were running Basra like a mafia operation. And much of the Jaish al-Mahdi is, in fact, criminal and corrupt. Other parts of it, frankly, are disaffected Shi’a who don’t know where else to turn, who are looking for a political home in the new Iraq and haven’t yet found it. We want that latter group to avoid feeling like they’re being attacked. So there needs to be a clear demarcation between these kinds of operations in the future, going after certain specific problem individuals, but avoiding, to the extent possible, the broader movement that sympathizes with al-Sadr, but hasn’t necessarily taken up arms or become a big part of the extortion racket in Basra.

Host: Let’s talk a little bit about how this all relates to the surge. So let’s start by hearing what President Bush had to say about the surge recently:

Bush: “The surge is doing what it was designed to do. It’s helping Iraqis reclaim security and restart political and economic life. It is bringing America closer to a key strategic victory in the war against these extremists and radicals.”

Host: Jim Robbins, what is this fighting in Basra and also in Baghdad that was related to the Basra fighting -- What does it tell us about the state of play with the surge?

Robbins: I think that you could characterize this, and the President has, as being the result of the success of the surge. The situation in Basra was one that was kind of left on the back burner while other, more important aspects of the counterinsurgency in Iraq were taken care of. Now that relative security has been achieved in other parts of the country, the government can turn its attention to these other pressing issues that have kind of been left by the wayside. But I’d like to add something to what Mike said before. It’s unhelpful, if you’re going to characterize these types of events as pivotal moments or a key struggle or something like that, because there are going to be a lot of these in the future, as these issues get worked out. And so, by upping the profile and saying it’s a defining moment and then you get in kind of a muddle, where both sides declare victory -- It really is not good, in wars of perception, to define things in ways that cannot be achieved, because you can achieve a final victory of that type in these types of wars. So the surge has been so successful that it’s actually led to things like this.

Host: Dan Ephron, what’s your sense?

Ephron: First of all, I agree with that -- I think it was a mistake. I think it was President Bush who defined it as a pivotal moment, and I think it’s a mistake because this is a long war, and you have to view these things in the long run. I don’t know that this is evidence of success with the surge. I think that, from my perspective, I look at the broad issue of just how much stability there is in Iraq, how much more stability now, compared to, say, a year ago. And one way of looking at Basra is that here is another conflict that we were less aware of that has really exploded in a few days and just how chaotic can the situation there get. So, certainly, things are better, but, again, it comes back to what political moves the government can make in Iraq and what it hasn’t done during this window of opportunity that it has had as a result of General Petraeus’ successes over there.

Host: Michael O’Hanlon, what does the fight in Basra tell us about what’s going on, with regard to Iran, at this point?

O’Hanlon: That may be the single hardest question of all. And in fact, I very much agree with what Dan and Jim just said about the nature of this last week. I think the President, who’s, in my judgment, usually had a pretty reasonable tone on Iraq, at least for the last three to four years -- he wasn’t so good the first year -- this time got it wrong. He talked too much about this operation in Basra being a big manifestation of improved capacity on the part of the Iraqi government, about it being a defining moment, about it being proof of all the progress we had made. Yes, we’ve made huge progress, but this last week was a lot more complicated and, frankly, not necessarily a step towards improvement. I hope so, but we don’t know yet. One of the things we do know is that Iran has huge influence with everyone in the South. They are very cynical about how they use that influence. They continue to ship weaponry into all these different Shi’a militias’ hands. You may recall, late last year, David Satterfield, Condi Rice’s main advisor on Iraq and a very, very smart and experienced diplomat, made the statement that he thought Iran might be showing a little bit of restraint in its actions towards Iraq at that time. However, no other American government official since then has made the same determination and, in fact, more recently, quite the contrary. We are convinced that Iran is fundamentally being unhelpful in Iraq, that it’s being extraordinarily cynical, making sure it has influence with everyone, stirring the pot just enough to maintain a low-to-mid level of violence, and then trying to couch itself as a peacemaker when it counsels al-Sadr to call off the fight temporarily, and so on and so forth. I don’t know what Iran’s long-term ambitions are, but my guess is that it wants to maintain a lot of influence in Iraq, keep Iraq somewhat weak, and keep the United States tied down. And it will do that by shipping weaponry to all different forces and trying to play the politics in such a way that southern Iraq, like the country as a whole, remain somewhat up in turmoil, somewhat up in arms, without letting it get totally out of hand. The Iranians are cynical enough to want to do that, and, frankly, they’re good enough at diplomacy and at underhanded activity that they might be able to pull it off, keep things, from their point of view, just right -- somewhat violent, but not totally out of hand. And that’s a big challenge for us.

Host: President Bush touched on this question of Iran recently and Iraq. Let’s hear what he had to say:

Bush: “The reason why it’s important to be successful in Iraq -- because, one, we want to help establish a democracy in the heart of the Middle East, the most volatile region in the world. Two, we want to send a clear message to Iran that they’re not going to be able to have their way with nations in the Middle East. Three, that we want to make it clear that we can defeat Al Qaeda.”

Host: Jim Robbins, President Bush seems to say here that what happens with regard to Iran in Iraq is going to determine how much room Iran has for ambitions, perhaps, outside of Iraq. Is the ante being upped there?

Robbins: The ante should be upped. I don’t think that what we do in Iraq is going to stop the Iranians from pursuing their interests. And certainly, Iraq, from an Iranian point of view, is just one theater of a regional conflict that they’re engaged in. They have pretty broad ambitions in the region. They recently stated that they should be the ones in charge of Mecca and Medina, which the Saudis weren’t too happy to hear about. They’ve pledged to the destruction of Israel. They generally want to extend their influence throughout the area. They have a nuclear program that may be pursuit of nuclear weapons. And they have a very broad terror network -- Hezbollah in Lebanon and so forth. So the Iranians are definitely major players in this whole episode. As Mike said, they’re going to up the violence in Iraq to the extent that they can, just to keep us engaged, to keep us off-balance. And from what I’ve seen of our diplomatic efforts, I think that the United States has been very ill-equipped to compete with the Iranians in this particular contest. Militarily, we’ve done a pretty good job, but I think we’re going to have to take a much more serious look at our overall strategy, with respect to Iran, and treat it like a conflict, because that’s how they’re treating it.

Host: Dan Ephron, President Bush talks about sending a clear message to Iran. Is there a clear message?

Ephron: I think Iran is more powerful and more influential in the region today than it has been at any point since 1979, since the revolution in Iran. And I think, if someone’s sending a clear message, it’s the Iranians who are doing that. Sadr -- this guy who has a lot of power in Iraq -- sits in Iran, perhaps has contact with Iranian leaders as he calls the shots, at least, in parts of Iraq and Basra and elsewhere. So I think it’s hard to overlook the notion that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and all the events that have happened subsequently in the past five years have really served to bolster Iranian influence in the region.

Host: Michael O’Hanlon, what’s your sense of what U.S. policy should be, with regard to Iran, to confront that challenge?

O’Hanlon: Gosh. That’s the hardest single question we have in regard to Iraq and the region, because, if you think of the other pieces of our Iraq policy, whether they all work or not, we basically have a strategy. On security, obviously, it’s defined by the surge, cooperation with the Iraqi security forces, training and equipping them, establishing these joint security stations, protecting the Iraqi population. We’re trying to help the Iraqis rebuild their economy. We have strategies for security and for economics. And for the political system in Iraq, we have a strategy of trying to foster compromise, and we’re having at least some partial success of late with that. The big, big challenge here is, of course, to some extent, the Al Qaeda fighters coming in through Syria. But at least with Syria, we have a little bit of leverage we can try to exercise. We’re trying to wean them away from Iran. It may or may not work. It probably won’t, but at least we have a strategy we can spell out. With Iran, we don’t really even have a strategy. For one thing, we don’t really know how much we’re prepared to trade off the nuclear issue against the Iraq issue. Or I should say, we do have a feeling that we don’t want to lower our goals in either case. We want to minimize Iran’s role in Iraq, and we also want to prevent them from having a nuclear weapon, and we also want to oppose them wherever they support anti-Israeli movements throughout the broader Middle East. So, on every main feature of Iran, our goal is simply to oppose them, not to try to prioritize our own interests, such that we could have some trade-off space in any negotiation. Negotiations are simply not promising with Iran, because we fundamentally disagree on core agenda items. Now, there’s some hope that a new American president next year, not having the pre-emption doctrine of George Bush, will be able to get off on a slightly better foot with Iran, but I think we have to keep our expectations there very much in check, because, at this point, Iran is not that afraid of a U.S. invasion. It’s playing a more offensive strategy, and it thinks it has us back on our heels. And I’m afraid I’ve avoided answering your question, but that, in a way, is the reality of the situation. We don’t have, as a nation or even among most scholars, very clear answers on how to develop an overall strategy towards Iran. There’s a little bit of deterrence. Iran knows if they escalate their role, we could, in fact, strike them in limited ways. So, perhaps we’re trying to keep a lid on things, but we don’t have any way to roll them back inside of Iraq.

Host: Jim Robbins, we have less than a minute. But is there a strategy you see that...

Robbins: That we currently have? No, we have some policy pronouncements, such as that Iran will not be permitted to get a nuclear weapon. How we prevent them from doing that is beyond me. We haven’t really taken the fight to them, in terms of sanctuaries or shipping advanced weapons to insurgents in Iraq. It’s really disappointing our response to Iran hasn’t been more robust, and I fear this is going to be up to the next president to take care of.

Host: Dan Ephron, you get the last word.

Ephron: Very hard to say what to do about Iran. One thing we haven’t tried is some kind of negotiation, some kind of direct contacts with Iran. Nothing else has worked. And it’s not clear at all that that would work, as well.

Host: I’m afraid that’s going to have to be the last word for today. We’re out of time. But I’d like to thank my guests: James Robbins, Director of the Intelligence Center at Trinity Washington University; the Deputy Washington Bureau Chief for “Newsweek” magazine: Dan Ephron; and joining us from the Brookings Institution Studio here in Washington, Michael O’Hanlon, senior foreign policy fellow at Brookings. Before we go, I’d like to invite you to send us your questions or comments. You can reach us through our website at www.voanews.com/ontheline. For “On the Line,” I’m Eric Felten.