Meet Me in Baghdad

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What to Read on Iranian Politics

Suzanne Maloney

An annotated Foreign Affairs syllabus on Iranian politics.

Iraq is the focal point of a strategic competition between Iran and the United States. Ever since U.S. forces invaded Iraq in 2003, Iran has relentlessly sought to impose its will on the country and expand its power in the region. Although not entirely successful, it has gained strategic depth in Iraq and has been able to use the support it garners from Iraqi Shias and Kurds to disrupt those U.S. operations that run counter to its agenda. And when U.S. and Iranian interests overlap, the Islamic Republic has been able to support the United States in ways that enhance its own power. The apparent contradiction in Iran's activities makes Iran what I call a "spoiler power" in Iraq; it is insufficiently powerful to impose its own agenda on Iraq but influential enough to disrupt U.S. operations through asymmetrical means. Over time, Iran's behavior as a spoiler power has also undermined the United States' ability to contain it.

The Bush administration's thunderous march to Baghdad in 2003 shocked and awed all the way to Tehran. Feeling encircled by the U.S. troops operating across its eastern border in Afghanistan and then across its western border in Iraq, the Islamic Republic feared that it would be the next target. Yet by removing Saddam Hussein -- the person who had inflicted more destruction on Iran than anyone else in centuries -- the U.S. invasion also handed Tehran a priceless strategic gift: the opportunity to promote a friendly Shiite government in Saddam's stead. The Islamic Republic decided to respond to the situation with a three-pronged strategy: it sought to empower Shias in Iraq, make the occupation of Iraq as difficult and costly for the United States as possible without directly confronting U.S. troops, and develop a retaliatory capability inside Iraq to deter the United States from attacking Iran.

When the United States dissolved the Iraqi army soon after its invasion, moreover, it opened the door for Shias, including those who supported Iran, to join the reconstituted security forces. It also allowed the Iranian security forces to establish their network inside Iraq. On top of that, Iran was already the most important backer of the two largest Shiite organizations in Iraq: the Dawa and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a party that boasted a corresponding militia with some 15,000 Revolutionary Guard-trained fighters. It also shared excellent relations with the two main Kurdish political parties and Iraq's Shiite clerical establishment. All of this ensured Iran's influence within the new Iraq.

In the early phase of the occupation, then Iranian President Muhammad Khatami apparently expressed willingness to cooperate with the United States in Iraq, just as the two countries had worked together in Afghanistan to dismantle the Taliban. Washington declined the offer, and Iran responded in kind. It demanded the withdrawal of U.S. troops; questioned the legitimacy of the U.S.-backed transitional government, the Coalition Provisional Authority; and called for the formation of an indigenous Iraqi government. Just as U.S. President George W. Bush was calling for democracy in Iraq, the Islamic Republic pushed aggressively for national elections there. Tehran's ayatollahs recognized that, if held, elections would surely bring Iraq's Shia majority to power.

Iranian leaders were not fully confident, however, in the reliability of their partners, SCIRI and the Dawa, both of which were cooperating with the United States, or in their ability to govern Iraq. So they hedged their bets by supporting other Shiite groups -- especially the Mahdi Army, led by Muqtada al-Sadr, an Iraqi cleric who was critical of Iran but ready to fight U.S. troops. Tehran saw the young cleric as a useful idiot who sometimes needed to be restrained. In mid-2004, for example, Washington voiced concerns that confrontations between U.S. troops and the Mahdi Army in southern Iraq could delay elections scheduled for 2005. Tehran promptly sent a delegation to pressure Sadr to end the uprising. Eventually, by the end of August 2004, Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani brokered a cease-fire. The elections were held as scheduled, and a coalition of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance and the two main Kurdish parties -- all of which were on friendly terms with Iran -- won control.

This was a major victory for Iran, but the situation soon spun out of control. Iraq quickly descended into a bloody sectarian war, which culminated in al Qaeda's 2006 destruction of al-Askari mosque, a holy Shiite shrine. Although AQI sought to provoke war between Shias and Sunnis throughout the Islamic world, the violence largely did not spread outside of Iraq. Fearing that a sectarian war would complicate the rise of Shias to power, Iran and Sistani called for Shias to resist retaliating against Sunnis. In conjunction with the U.S. military surge, which began shortly thereafter, the efforts started to stabilize Iraq.