Death of a thug.
Mary Ann Weaver's Atlantic piece on Zarqawi really is well-timed, and as fascinating as everybody says.
One thing that strikes me as rather incredible in her telling is the Iranian leadership's tolerance of Zarqawi's rise to prominence despite his being a virulent Shiite-hater, moreso than bin Laden was comfortable with. And yet...
“We know Zarqawi better than he knows himself,” the high-level Jordanian intelligence official said. “And I can assure you that he never had any links to Saddam. Iran is quite a different matter. The Iranians have a policy: they want to control Iraq. And part of this policy has been to support Zarqawi, tactically but not strategically.”
“Such as?” I asked.
“In the beginning they gave him automatic weapons, uniforms, military equipment, when he was with the army of Ansar al-Islam. Now they essentially just turn a blind eye to his activities, and to those of al-Qaeda generally. The Iranians see Iraq as a fight against the Americans, and overall, they’ll get rid of Zarqawi and all of his people once the Americans are out.”
Zarqawi had told bin Laden that “Shiites should be executed”, and his useful idiocy to Iran has involved the group-targetted killing not only of countless Shiite civilians but also of various Iraqi Shiite religious leaders, all over the course of many months. Yet he and the fiercely religious Shiite leadership of Iran used and depended on each other for years.
In a part of the world in which everything we hear and read is defined in terms of religious sectarianism, there's just something breathtaking about that sort of realpolitik.
One thing that strikes me as rather incredible in her telling is the Iranian leadership's tolerance of Zarqawi's rise to prominence despite his being a virulent Shiite-hater, moreso than bin Laden was comfortable with. And yet...
“We know Zarqawi better than he knows himself,” the high-level Jordanian intelligence official said. “And I can assure you that he never had any links to Saddam. Iran is quite a different matter. The Iranians have a policy: they want to control Iraq. And part of this policy has been to support Zarqawi, tactically but not strategically.”
“Such as?” I asked.
“In the beginning they gave him automatic weapons, uniforms, military equipment, when he was with the army of Ansar al-Islam. Now they essentially just turn a blind eye to his activities, and to those of al-Qaeda generally. The Iranians see Iraq as a fight against the Americans, and overall, they’ll get rid of Zarqawi and all of his people once the Americans are out.”
Zarqawi had told bin Laden that “Shiites should be executed”, and his useful idiocy to Iran has involved the group-targetted killing not only of countless Shiite civilians but also of various Iraqi Shiite religious leaders, all over the course of many months. Yet he and the fiercely religious Shiite leadership of Iran used and depended on each other for years.
In a part of the world in which everything we hear and read is defined in terms of religious sectarianism, there's just something breathtaking about that sort of realpolitik.
2 Comments:
The Iranians practice realpolitik, while the Bush administration practices imaginärpolitik. The saddest thing is that this attitude still dominates in the realm of domestic politics where we are now dealing with the pressing constitutional crises of gay marriage and flag-burning. Pathetic.
imaginarpolitik. I like it.
Post a Comment
<< Home