On the Stratfor intelligence website, the astute George Friedman puts the Ahmad Chalabi affair into some much-needed perspective. For new readers, the erstwhile Iraqi opposition leader Chalabi has been thrown overboard by a once-fawning US establishment, with claims that he is an Iranian agent and that through him Iran has been running the US war debacle. Now read on...

What Friedman says is that while Chalabi's Iranian sympathies have always been well-known, both his influence and the allegations of such an Iranian conspiracy are grossly exaggerated -- not least because his connection was so well known. Yes, Iran wanted the US to overthrow Saddam. But the US independently wanted to overthrow him, even though it also regarded Iran as a threat to world peace. And it wanted to do this for a complex of reasons, not the least of which sheds fascinating light on what is currently happening in Saudi Arabia:

'The Americans were focused on another issue. The balance of power in the Persian Gulf was not a trivial matter to them, but it had taken on a new cast after Sept. 11. For the United States, the central problem in the Persian Gulf -- and a matter of urgent national security -- was the unwillingness of Saudi intelligence and security services to move aggressively against al Qaeda inside the kingdom. From the U.S. viewpoint, forcing Saudi Arabia to change its behavior was the overriding consideration; without that, no progress against al Qaeda was possible. The United States did not see itself as having many levers for manipulating the situation in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis were convinced that ultimately the United States would not be able to take decisive action against the Saudis, and the Saudi government was more concerned about the internal political consequences of a crackdown on al Qaeda than it was about the United States. It felt confident it could manage the United States as it had in the past.

'The United States did not want to invade Saudi Arabia. The House of Saud was the foundation of Saudi stability, and the United States did not want it to fall. It wanted to change the Saudi strategy. Invading Saudi Arabia could have led to global economic disaster if oil shipments were disrupted. Finally, the invasion of Saudi Arabia, given its size, terrain and U.S. resources, was a difficult if not impossible task. The direct route would not work. The United States would take an indirect route. If you wanted to frighten Saudi Arabia into changing its behavior without actually launching military operations against it, the way to do that would be: (a) demonstrate your will by staging an effective military campaign; and (b) wind up the campaign in a position to actually invade and take Saudi oil fields if they did not cooperate. The Saudis doubted U.S. will and military capacity to do them harm (since Kuwait would never permit its territory to be used to invade Saudi Arabia). The solution: an invasion of Iraq.

'The United States wanted to invade Iraq as an indirect route to influence Saudi Arabia. As in any military operation, there were also subsidiary political goals. The United States wanted to get rid of Hussein's regime, not because it was complicit with al Qaeda, but because it might later become complicit. Secondly, it wanted to use Iraqi territory as a base to pressure Syria and Iran as well. Chalabi's claims about Iraqi WMD did not instigate the invasion, because the United States did not invade Iraq to get rid of WMD. An invasion would be the most dangerous route for doing that, because the other side might actually surprise you and use the weapons on your troops. You would use air strikes and special operations troops. What Chalabi did by providing his intelligence was, however, not insignificant. The administration had two goals: the destruction of al Qaeda and protection of the United States from WMD. By producing evidence of WMD in Iraq, Chalabi gave Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz the tool they needed. By introducing evidence of WMD, they triggered an automatic policy against Iraq having them, which closed off an argument -- not really a raging argument -- in the administration. It was important, but not earth-shattering.'

What that indicates is that there were many different reasons for invading Iraq -- as we know. Anti-war people have assumed that it either had to be because of the supposed existence of WMD or to create a democracy in Iraq. But such a simplistic analysis surely bears no relation to the complexities of the situation. Iraq was a rogue state and a global danger because of Saddam's association with WMD programmes, international terror and regional expansion. But it was not only one rogue state among many that threatened the west, but one whose fate had a strategic impact on the others. Taking out Saddam would therefore kill many birds with one stone. Or so the theory went.

And Chalabi himself was at the centre of some extremely complex geopolitical manoeuvring. As Friedman observes:

'We suspect that the Pentagon intelligence offices and the CIA both knew all about Chalabi's relation to Iranian intelligence. The argument was not over that, but over whether this disqualified his intelligence. The Pentagon had made up its mind for strategic reasons to invade Iraq. Chalabi's intelligence was of use in internal disputes in the administration, but decided nothing in terms of policy. The CIA, understanding that Chalabi was not really a source in the conventional sense but was a geopolitical pawn, did not like the game, but didn't call the Department of Defense on it until after DOD got into trouble in Iraq -- and the CIA wanted to make certain that everyone knew it wasn't their mistake.

'Chalabi was a minor player in a dance between Iran and the United States that began on Sept. 11 and is still under way. The United States wants a close relationship with Iran in order to split the Islamic world and force the Saudis to collaborate with the Americans. The Iranians want to use the United States in order to become the dominant power in the Persian Gulf. Each wants the other to be its hammer. In all of this, Chalabi was only an actor in a bit part.

'The one place in which he was significant was negative -- he kept the United States in the dark about the impending guerrilla war. That was where he really helped Iran, because it was the guerrilla war that locked the United States into a dependency on the Iraqi Shia that went much farther than the United States desired, and from which the United States is only now starting to extricate itself. That is a major act of duplicity, but it is a sin of omission, not commission.

'In a way, the Americans and the Iranians used Chalabi for their own purposes. The Iranians used him to screen information from the Americans more than to give false information. The Americans used him to try to convince the Iranians that they had a sufficient degree of control over the situation and that it was in their interests to maintain stability in the Shiite regions. At this point, it is honestly impossible to tell who got the better of whom. But this much is certain. Chalabi, for all his cleverness, is just another used-up spook, trusted by no one, trusting even fewer. Geopolitics trumps conspiracy every time.'

Unfortunately, the ideologues, fellow travellers and dupes of the anti-war lobby have got this precisely the other way round.

Posted by melanie at May 31, 2004