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The Middle East Economic and Political Analysis Company - meepas.com Subscribe to the meepas Middle East Analysis Review subscribe@meepas.com By: M. Javedanfar 11/04/2005 Allegations of Iranian influence on Iraqi Shiite politics are abound. This is due to a number of reasons the most prominent one being political and military support provided by the post 1979 religious regime in Tehran to Iraqi Shiites who were persecuted by Saddam Hussein. Now that Saddam Hussein has been removed, Iran's Shiite allies hold significant political power in Iraq whilst majority of them are lead by Ayatollah Sistani who is an Iranian born cleric with Iraqi parents. However there are new allegations of Iranian influence and complicity in Iraqi politics. This time the accusations are leveled at the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan leader (PUK) Jalal Talebani who is now also the new Iraqi interim president. The first part of this meepas analysis will examine the extent and validity of such claims by investigating the background and contents of the Kurdish leader's relations with the religious regime in Tehran. The second part of the analysis which will be released on Tuesday 12th of April will then proceed to examine the impact of Jalal Talebani's relations with Iran on Iraq's internal and external politics. Background 1975 is known as a painful year in Iraqi Kurdish history. For years prior to that the Iraqi Kurdish fight for self rule against Baghdad's Baathist government was assisted by the Shah of Iran. Shah's military assistance to the Iraqi Kurds was a part of the grand Iranian strategy of forcing Iraq to make sovereignty concessions to Iran in the disputed Shat Al Arab waterway. Another part of Shah's strategy included providing covert assistance to Israel who was Iraq's other enemy. In 1975 Saddam realised that the Iraqi Kurdish military campaign could not be defeated as long as it received backing from Iran who itself was being assisted by the United Sates. Consequently Saddam agreed to Iran's demands for sovereignty over half of the Shat Al Arab waterway and thus signed the Algiers agreement. Soon after the agreement the Shah of Iran cut off all military support to Iraqi Kurds. Saddam thus took immediate advantage from the Kurd's weakened position and launched a major military attack which decimated the Kurd's military capability. It also lead to thousands of Kurds having to flee their homes to take refuge in Iran. The Iraqi and Czech educated Jalal Talebani who was then a senior member of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) took note of the Shah's betrayal of the Iraqi Kurds. Feeling disappointed with the KDP and due to internal opposition he then went to form a new Kurdish political party called the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). In 1979 Jalal Talebani and his movement backed the Iranian revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini as revenge against the betrayal of the Iraqi Kurds in 1975 by the Shah. Talebani's assistance to the Ayatollah's regime was also due to the fact that the clerics in Iran had promised more rights for local Kurds. Start of relations Despite the fact that Khomeini's regime did not fulfill its promises to Iran's Kurds, Jalal Telebani's PUK started to form a military relationship with the Iranian religious government of Ayatollah Khomeini which started in earnest as of 1983. This relationship was based on the concept of sharing the same enemies. Both sides had a military conflict against Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad. Iran also viewed the KDP which was Talebani's rival with suspicion. This was due to KDP's affiliations with the KDP-Iran whom Iran accused of stirring internal violence as parts of its ambitions to gain independence for the Kurdistan province of Iran. Iran's support of the PUK was also intended to counter Saddam's support for the Iranian anti-government militant MKO (Mujahedin Khalq) Organisation. Last but not least, both the Iranian government and the PUK opposed Turkish influence in northern Iraq. Subsequently the PUK's military and political presence in northern Iraq served as a tool for Iran to keep Turkey out. The military assistance from Iran to the PUK included supply of weapons and fighters, some of whom were Iraqi Shiites (from the famous Iraqi Shiite Badr brigade) who had joined Iran's fight against Saddam. The steady supply of weapons from a reliable source such as Iran was instrumental for the continuation of PUK military operations against Saddam's forces. The military assistance supplied by Iran also enabled the PUK to compete successfully against its rival the KDP in the political and military arena of northern Iraq. In return the PUK carried out joint special operations attacks with Iranian forces against sensitive positions deep inside Iraq. The PUK also provided Iran with valuable intelligence regarding Iraqi troop movements and troop concentrations. Furthermore according to a number of reports the PUK assisted Iranian attacks against MKO positions inside Iraq by providing forces and valuable intelligence to Tehran. More importantly PUK operations in northern Iraq sapped up Iraq's armed resources there, thus allowing Iran to score a number of important victories from its attacks against Iraq's southern flank. A prominent example includes the Fajr 5 military operation executed by Iran's armed forces in 1986 which started initially with attacks in northern Iraq with the assistance of the PUK. The operation was then followed by a massive push in the south. This military operation enabled Iran to capture the strategically important southern Iraqi peninsula of Al Faw. The PUK also assisted Iran in its plans to keep Turkish activities and ambitions in northern Iraq in check by providing assistance to anti-Turkish PKK Kurdish guerrillas who had escaped to northern Iraq from Turkey's advancing army. Furthermore on a number of occasions the PUK assisted Iran in its military campaign against Iran's KDP-I Kurdish insurgents. The most notable example was in July 1996, when the Iranian government sent 3000 Iranian troops deep into PUK territory in northern Iraq to pursue militant Iranian Kurds based there. It is interesting to note that until the mid 1980s Talebani managed to maintain contact with the leadership of KDP-I especially with Dr Abdul-Rahman Qassemlou with whom Talebani had studied in Prague. This was despite the fact that Talebani's Iranian supporters viewed the KDP-I as their adversary. So much so that Tehran assassinated Dr Qassemlou in 1988 and his successors Dr. Saeed Sharafkandi in 1992. It should be noted that Jalal Talebani's relations with Iran did have its costs, the heaviest of which was the Iraqi chemical attack on the PUK controlled city of Halabjeh in 1988. This attack was Saddam's punishment for the PUK's Iranian backed assaults against Iraq's army and economic interests. It is also alleged that the reasons behind the West's muted response and lack of assistance to the Kurds after the chemical attack was due to PUK's close relations with the Ayatollah's regime in Iran whom the West viewed as a threat. In 1996 Saddam extracted another painful price from the PUK. This was military assistance provided to the KDP which enabled it to expel PUK Peshmerga forces from the important city of Irbil in August 1996. Relations between Tehran and Jalal Talebani's PUK continued at the same level into the early 2000s. However one noted change was Jalal Talebani's rapprochement with the US despite the fact that Iran viewed the US as a threat to its interests. The PUK's new relationship with the US was based on their mutual animosity towards Saddam Hussein and America's need to find reliable allies in northern Iraq to open up a second front against Saddam Hussein. Talebani used his rival's (the KDP) relationship with Saddam Hussein to his advantage by presenting the PUK as the only reliable ally for America's upcoming attacks against Iraq. This was a very important strategic move by Talebani as it enabled him to score political and military points with the US and Iran in one move. The military advantages gained from the US included US military assistance in fighting the Iraqi army in the north. The PUK also gained political capital from the US by being recognised as the representative of the Iraqi Kurds in negotiations with the post Saddam interim Iraqi government which was backed by the US. At the same time Talebani improved his standing with the Iranian government by acting as a trusted mediator between Washington and Tehran prior to America's launched invasion against Iraq in 2003. This was confirmed by his two visits in as much as two months in December 2002 and January 2003 (one month before the US invasion of Iraq) to Tehran. The visits were aimed at co-ordinating Iranian backed anti Saddam forces which comprised of the PUK and the dissident Shiite Iraqi groups based in Iran. Talebani also used the trips to convey an important message from Washington to Tehran stating that the US does not have any plans to attack Iran. Meanwhile during his trips to Iran Talebani further improved his prominence with his Iranian hosts by promising to use his good offices with the Americans to convince them not to allow the Turkish army to enter Iraqi soil during the upcoming US invasion. In this regard Talebani was successful, as apart from one unconfirmed incident no Turkish soldiers entered Iraq after Saddam's defeat. Furthermore Talebani used his close relations with the US to release 65 Iranians detained in Um al-Qasr prison in southern Iraq. In conclusion the presented evidence points to a viable 20 year relationship between the new Iraqi interim president Jalal Talebani and Iran. As a result, in addition to Iran's strong relationship with Iraqi Shiites, the PUK – Tehran relationship is expected to provide the Iranian government with another ally in Iraqi politics. The important questions are: for what purposes will Iran try to use its influence with the PUK? And what impact will this have on the PUK's policies regarding Iraq's relations with foreign government and PUK's own policies towards other Iraqi political parties. The analysis by meepas on Tuesday 12th of April will examine the aforementioned questions. 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