Violence continues in Iraq as forces loyal to Iranian-backed militias fire on peaceful protesters. Details are sketchy, but security forces killed more than a dozen protesters in Karbala and, according to some reports, far more. Such violence was likely not an accident, but rather revenge for protesters having last week publicly criticized Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Qods Force chief Qassem Soleimani.
The brutality of Badr Corps and Asa’ib Ahl-e al-Haq militiamen and snipers against unarmed protesters on behalf of Prime Minister Abel Abdul-Mahdi has two purposes: First, it replays the strategy embraced by Bashar Assad at the beginning of the Syrian civil war eight and a half years ago: the futile hope that overwhelming violence and brutality will convince ordinary citizens to stay home. Second, it is meant to protect Iranian influence in the palace. Abel Abdul-Mahdi has historically been both weak and a political chameleon. He has, at various times, been a communist, Islamist, and democrat. At the time of his appointment to the premiership, he had resigned from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and claimed to be a technocrat. A visit shortly after to Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq leader Shaikh Humam Hamoudi, however, both belied Abdul-Mahdi’s supposed political independence and also highlighted Iranian influence.
There has long been a cartoonish notion in Washington and among many Western pundits that Iraqi Shi’ites are natural allies to Iran. This discounts the corrosive impact of centuries of Iranian condescension and arrogance toward their Arab neighbors. It also ignores the importance of Iraqi nationalism. While Iran has achieved influence in Iraq with the barrel of a gun, it has failed to win hearts and minds. The current protests show Iraqis have had enough, but Iran’s proxies rather kill than accept popular or democratic will.
This brings us to Iran. Every four years, Iranians go to elections and every four years pundits project hope on more reformist factions. German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel saw in Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani a force for moderation and sought to utilize trade to shepherd the Islamic Republic back into the world community. Tehran took the money and hooked German officials on the promise of more but did not change its behavior: quite the contrary, an Iranian hit squad attacked Kurdish dissidents in a Berlin café and, two years later, blew up the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright absolved Iran of its role in the Khobar Towers bombing because she saw an opportunity to engage with President Mohammad Khatami, especially after he proposed a “dialogue of civilizations.” Of course, Khatami did not fundamentally change the Islamic Republic, nor is it clear that he even tried. While he distracted Albright, then-Supreme National Security secretary Hassan Rouhani was secretly building Iran’s covert nuclear enrichment plant and diverting Iran’s newfound hard currency into its burgeoning ballistic missile program.
Secretary of State John Kerry, of course, harbored the same delusions. He befriended Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and either ignored or was blind to Zarif’s repeated lies. The result? A bad nuclear deal that reversed decades of nonproliferation precedent, and an explosion of bad Iranian behavior from Syria to Lebanon to Yemen to Iraq. His advisers then, and many in the State Department and Congress today, believed that the Green Movement that erupted in the aftermath of the 2009 fraudulent elections showed hope for reform.
The basic problem that those who believe that supporting so-called reformists can lead to gradual reform inside Iran is this: Popular will in Iran is subordinate to the Supreme Leader who derives his sovereignty from God, not from the people. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps exists primarily not to project Iranian influence abroad but to shield the Islamic Republic’s leadership from the will of the people. Simply put, there can be no muddle-through reform in Iran if the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps remains in power.
This is a lesson that current events in Iraq should highlight. If Iranian-backed militias are willing to gun down civilians in the street in order to preserve Iranian influence in Baghdad, how might they act if the challenge they faced was in Tehran instead?
Good intentions aside, there will be no-muddle through reform in Iran; there will only be a bloodbath.
Former journalists-turned-think tank scholars, ex-diplomats, and professional people-to-people dialogue participants may mean well, but they either ignore or project their own U.S. and European sentiments onto the Iranian security apparatus. For Iraqis, the current battle may be about government accountability and fighting corruption. For the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, what is going on in the streets of Baghdad, Karbala, and Basra may be a dry a run.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
