Tony Karon wonders if we're going to go to war with Iran. Increasingly, I think not, if only because the administration doesn't have near the political capital to support such a venture. When Iraq was being debate, the fault line where support turned to opposition came part way through the Democratic coalition, the Republicans were united. Now, it's the opposite, with all Democrats and many Republicans against war with Iran. Congress right now is too full of presidential hopefuls and scared incumbents to allow an executive with approval ratings in the high-20 and low-30s to lead them into a disastrously unpopular conflict. So I'm becoming somewhat more sanguine on the unlikelihood of an attack.
That said, continued belligerence, radicalization, and even provocation as the administration tries to provoke Iran into something that looks like a war with us is entirely possible. And in thinking about that, Karon makes an important point:
[T]he idea that Iran is “meddling” in Iraq. What exactly is the U.S. doing there? Iran has far more legitimate interest in shaping the politics of its neighbor, whose last Sunni regime initiated a war that killed more than a million Iranians. Not only that, the overwhelming majority of Iraq's democratically elected political leaders (both Shiites and Kurds) are on close terms with Iran and welcome its involvement in rebuilding their country. And the Iraqi government has not echoed the U.S. accusation about Iranian activity[...]
The distortion is clear in the language of this report from CNN on changes being considered in the Iraqi intelligence structure: Under the headline “Pro-Iran Agency May Take Over Iraq's Intelligence,” it notes that the current Iraqi intelligence structure was created entirely by the U.S. and that the Iraqi government wants to bring it under its own authority. “But now, the future of the U.S.-controlled agency appears to be in jeopardy. A document from Iraq's National Security Council lays out a blueprint for Iraq's new intelligence community. Under that plan, all intelligence gathering would be consolidated under Iraq's Iranian-friendly central government.” So, the democratically elected government of Iraq wants to exercise its sovereignty by putting its own intelligence service under its control (rather than that of a foreign power, i.e. the U.S.), and this is portrayed as some sort of Iranian power grab!
It is true, according to sources I've spoken to, that the last few months saw an uptick in Iranian involvement in the region. But the uptick wasn't against, or even about, us. It coincided with the accelerating deterioration of a state that is right on Iran's border. In the end, we can leave Iraq, and absent a very long plane ride or an even longer boat trip, they're not coming over here. Iran can't leave. And so the idea that they're going to stay uninvolved, or that their interference represents some sort of casus belli, is war mongering through illogic.
