Retired military officer Robert Maginnis offers a hard-headed overview of Iran/al Sadr’s role in Iraq:

Since the US began its security surge in February, Sadr has launched a counter-surge with Iran’s help aimed at America’s growing anti-war sentiment hoping to precipitate a US withdraw.

Tehran’s Revolutionary Guard has successfully fueled the Shia counter-surge. In July, Shiite militiamen staged three-quarters of the attacks that killed and wounded US forces said Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, the Multinational Corps-Iraq commander. The number of Iranians working with the Shia militia is in dispute but Major General Rick Lynch, the US commander south of Baghdad, said over 50 members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s Qods (Jerusalem) Force are believed to be directing, facilitating or supporting attacks in his area of operations.

Unlike the dilettantes and the Bush administration’s see-no-Iran flaks pretending that attacks on the coalition are the work of rogue elements, Maginnis puts his finger on Iran and al Sadr as the real culprits. He extends this theme to Iran’s larger goals:

The steps toward making Iraq a client are on course. Mahdi “Special Groups” are helping with the Shia-ization of Iraq by killing opponents and running non-Shias out. Tehran is helping remake Mahdi leaders into an Iraqi version of Hezbollah to play both ideological and military roles. Iran has embedded hundreds of Revolutionary Guards agents throughout Iraq to act as a check on the sources of power. Once these steps are complete, Tehran will push its influence throughout the Persian Gulf.

His piece is well worth a read, but I don’t endorse some of the author’s perceptions. For instance, he writes:

Iraqi Shiite and Iranian ambitions may not materialize without a shift in America’s strategy. Last week, anticipating Congress’ impatience to withdraw from Iraq and the stepped up Iranian and extremist efforts to promote that outcome, President Bush upped the rhetorical ante by linking an American withdrawal to the real possibility that extremists like Sadr will take over that country.

Iranian ambitions are materializing, (surely Maginnis won’t dispute his own assertion that “the steps toward making Iraq a client are on course”) and this process is happening because of Coalition strategy, not in spite of it. Iran has arrived at its position of strength because Bush and Blair gifted the entire south to Iran/al Sadr. The US stand-down will be the premeditated culmination of four years of phony war, not a refutation of Bush’s goals. The president’s rhetoric is merely aimed at concealing that reality, and at laying groundwork for someone else to take the blame for Bush’s deliberate failure to fight to win.

Here’s a double miss:

Accepting Iraq as a glass half full will sustain the surge giving the Iraqi people time to resolve their complex political differences and possibly put that nation on a path toward a better life for them and the rest of us.

The surge will do no such thing, and its main goals are to prevent the appearance of failure and to preserve an entity for the Coalition to transfer its responsibilities to. (A Baghdad in flames would make our departure look like the flight from Saigon.) Further, our military collapse in Anbar and support for our former enemies there has created an autonomous Sunni sub-state with its own military –- hardly evidence we’re trying to move Iraqis toward “resolving complex political differences.”

(For more on these objections, see DP post Useless In Basra.)

Maginnis also omits to tie al Sadr’s recently-declared truce to our Grand Bargain with Iran. Here’s how I put that in recent post Michael Totten Reports On Our Relationship With Al Sadr:

Here’s the deal. You Iranians and your proxy leave us alone, we leave you alone. You let us declare “mission accomplished” and withdraw with our political ass intact, we let you keep your power base intact so you end up in charge of the place:

Neighborhoods all over Baghdad are being cleared of terrorists and insurgents as part of the surge. American soldiers are pushing them out of the city and moving into small houses and stations themselves in the neighborhoods where they can maintain security 24 hours a day. But Sadr City is still a no-go zone for American troops. I asked several high-ranking officers why, but they either don’t know or they don’t want to tell me.

I’ve written that same thought dozens of times in different ways during the past couple of years (in this post, for instance), and now we’re entering the endgame. No doubt the White House is gratified by the bafflement of right-wing observers who can’t see the forest for the trees.

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