August 21, 2007
Ahmadinejad renews an old dream of Khomeini’s
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad issued a stark challenge to the Bush administration Tuesday, saying his country is "prepared to fill the gap" if American forces withdraw from Iraq.
Stoking tensions with the U.S. as the two nations fight for influence in Baghdad, Ahmadinejad said Iran will fill the power vacuum created if American lawmakers succeed in forcing President George W. Bush to end the war and bring troops home.
--Canada.com
There is nothing to be surprised about here. The Islamic Republic of Iran, like the former Soviet Union, has always had an expansionist streak; and Iraq has always been one of its most coveted targets.
Saddam Hussein started the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988. However, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini had a chance to end the conflict with a generous reparations package in 1982. The Ayatollah chose to continue the costly war against Iraq because Iranian troops appeared to gaining ground inside Iraq’s borders. (The war began with an Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980; but Iran invaded Iraq the following year.) Khomeini’s goal was to conquer Iraq, overthrow the Ba’athist government, and install a friendly Shi’ite fundamentalist regime.
It now appears that Ahmadinejad has the same plan in mind. If Iran ever did gain control of Iraq, the combination would create an Islamic oil superstate, capable of enforcing its hegemony on the region.
We need to solicit wider participation in the Iraq conflict. The U.S. and Great Britain have borne too much of the burden. But Iran is a “partner” that we don’t need at the moment. A partnership with Iran inside Iraq would be much like our “partnership” with Soviet Russia in Germany during the immediate Cold War years. Iran, like the USSR of the 1950s, is dead-set on spreading its version of a “revolution.”
The best we can hope for is that Iran----fearful of U.S. retaliation---will keep a respectful distance.
