Meme Now Departing On Iraqi Airways
Remember the lefty talking point that the new Iraqi government is a pawn of Iran? You still see that argument around, although it took a serious blow when Maliki sent the Iraqi Army to crush the Iranian-backed Shia militias. Now it may be time to sound the final death knell on that canard, as Iraq’s Speaker of Parliament is getting the sort of treatment Iran normally reserves for Israelis or Americans:
BAGHDAD (AP) — An Iraqi parliamentary official says the plane carrying Iraq’s Sunni parliamentary speaker has been refused entry into Iran.
Mahmoud al-Mashhadani was on an Iraqi Airways commercial flight to Tehran on Monday, but the plane was not allowed to land after the airport was informed that dignitaries were on board, said the official who works in the speaker’s office.
This happened, of course, because al-Mashhadani is a Sunni representative, and Iran is a Shia theocracy. It will be very interesting to see how the Iraqi gov’t responds, and how this plays among ordinary Iraqis, especially Shia and Kurds. This strikes me as being sort of like a moment in football where a teammate you don’t particularly like is taunted by the other team; you rally to his side even though you’re not especially fond of him because it’s an insult to your team. Or consider how Republicans might feel if Nancy Pelosi were denied entry to Canada by a Conservative government; the insult to national pride would far outweigh the parties’ similarities in philosophy.
Subscribe to Dean's World by Email
6 comments
What if Nancy Pelosi were denied entry to the US after returning from a trip to Canada? >.>
Elisha Feger’s last blog post..Fatal Wisdom - Principles of Humanity
What so bugs me about the "Iraq is becoming an Islamic Republic in the orbit of Iran" folks is not just that they jumped the gun on believing something like that when there was plenty of reason to doubt it–hey, people disagree and see things differently–but because they just can’t admit that it never happened, and that it was at least a smidge racist to assume that it would. Or if not racist, bigoted in some fashion; the idea that Arab and Persian Muslims automatically like each other and cooperate is about as silly as assuming that all Protestants always support each other and would choose to support their fellow Protestants over and above any issues involving nationality, ethnicity, wealth, or anything else.
The Iraqis have a nation and the vast majority of them want to keep that nation, which they’re proud of.
I’m certainly not looking to defend the position, but I thought the argument was not that Iraq was an Islamic republic in the orbit of Iran, but rather that the Shia political parties, militias, and leaders were in the orbit of Iran.
I think Dave is absolutely correct, though, in saying that the official Iraqi government response, if there is one, will be crucial (perhaps even definitive, as much as these things can be) in either rebutting or bolstering the argument.
Iraq is about 80% Shia. The assumption all along was that this would trump all because the Iranian ayatollahs are so powerful and worshiped. It’s a bunch of BS; while Shia are a minority worldwide among Muslims, they are a quite large and diverse group. If the Shia parties in Iraq were Iranian loyalists, you’d have this I suppose, but few of them are. There was never much reason to think most of them were unless you think "Shia=member of mindless death cult" or something.
Iran had some influence due to their "Islamic revolution," in the same way that Che Guevera is still popular among grad students and other "rebels" in college towns and such. The truth is that the Iranians are a different race, a different culture, speak a completely different language, and practice one of many varieties of Shiism; the idea that they’d exert a massive influence on Iraq was always kinda shallow, and now that it didn’t happen at all it would be nice to see forthright acknowledgement of such. Instead it appears to be just another myth about the situation there that’s disappeared in the mists of time (like the fact that we were greeted as liberators, and with flowers–which by the way we were).
Iraq is about 80% Shia.
I think this is a little high. The figure I have usually seen is 60-65%.
One important point is that many of the sacred sites of Shia Islam are in Iraq. Many Shia leaders believe that the Iraqi Shia are the rightful leaders of the Shia faith, and that Iran has taken over control of the Shia faith because of Saddam’s repression of Iraqi Shia. Long term this could be a source of friction between Iran and the Iraqi Shia, but right now more important issues are driving Iran/Iraq relations.
Yeah, 60-65% Shia sounds about right, and you had these people running around assuming that Shia political parties would therefore dominate–you only need a plurality to dominate in their parliamentary system, but with 60% control they would be utterly unstoppable.
Too bad Shiism is not a mindless death cult, and the religion in general is at least as diverse as Christianity, and the people who practice it run the usual gamut found in all major faiths: from nutjobs to very sane, from moderate to extreme, from fundamentalist to traditionalist to modernist, etc. And, little factors like language and culture and tribal affiliations and whatnot are every bit as important as religion when it comes to political matters.
Plus there’s the little fact that millions of Iraqi families lost members in the war with Iran; Iran is not exactly a beloved country to most Iraqis.
Ah but no, we would soon have "An Islamic Republic in the orbit of Iran" because, well, we had free elections there (unlike Iran, which has never had any free elections) and people who self-identified as Shia voted.
Whatever. It didn’t happen, and it’d be nice to see forthright acknowledgement of that, instead of just running away and pretending it was never said, hoping no one would notice.
You must log in to post a comment.