I januari rapporterade CNN om att bevisen för att Iran bedriver ett proxykrig mot USA i Irak hopar sig:

Iranian-U.S. tensions have been ratcheted up recently, with two U.S. officials theorizing about the possibility that Iran was involved in a January 20 attack that killed five U.S. soldiers.

Two officials from separate U.S. government agencies said Tuesday the Pentagon is investigating whether the attack on a military compound in Karbala was carried out by Iranians or Iranian-trained operatives.

”People are looking at it seriously,” one of the officials said, adding that the Iranian connection was a leading theory in the investigation.

The second official said: ”We believe it’s possible the executors of the attack were Iranian or Iranian-trained.”

Och:

Al-Maliki said the Americans were basing their hunches about Iranian activities in Iraq on intelligence they’ve amassed.

Some Iraqis speculate that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps carried out the attack in retaliation for the January 11 capture by U.S. forces of five of its members in Irbil, according to a Time.com article published Tuesday.

Här är en viktig detalj; håll detta i minnet: ”The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has a reputation for taking harsh and unrelenting revenge on its enemies, the Time.com article says. The five Iranians remain in U.S. custody”.

New York Times rapporterar idag att Irak tackar Iran för att terrorattackerna i Irak har minskat på sistone:

Speaking about Iran, he [the Iraqi government’s spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh] said that that government had helped to persuade the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr to ask his Mahdi militia to halt attacks. Mr. Sadr ordered his militia to stop using weapons in early September, and officials say that the militia’s relative restraint has helped improve stability. They say it also seems to have helped decrease the frequency of attacks with explosively formed penetrators, a powerful type of bomb that can pierce heavy armor.

Om detta är sant då är det inget annat än ett direkt medgivande att Iran har legat bakom mördandet av massor med amerikanska soldater i Irak. Det är ett indirekt medgivande att Iran har fört ett krig i Irak mot USA.

New York Times skriver också: ”Mr. Dabbagh’s comments echoed those of the American military here, who in recent days have gone out of their way to publicly acknowledge Iran’s role in helping to slow the flow of weapons into the country”.

Frågan är varför Iran helt plötsligt har valt att göra detta. New York Times:

Mr. Dabbagh said that the turning point came when Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki visited Iran in August and met with the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the Shiite shrine city of Mashad. Mr. Maliki told the Iranian leader that “Iran had to choose whether to support the government or any other party, and Iraq will decide according to which they choose,” Mr. Dabbagh said. The Iranians promised to help and have done so, he said.

Jag har spontant lite svårt att tro på detta. Med vilken kraft bakom orden kan al-Maliki få Irans Khamenei att minska på stödet till al-Sadr? Här är en ledtråd från CNN-artikeln: ”The Bush administration has authorized U.S. forces to kill or capture Iranian agents plotting attacks in Iraq, a U.S. national security official said last week. The policy, approved by President Bush in the last couple of months, is aimed at Iranian agents planning attacks with Iraqi militiamen, the official said”. Wikipedia ger oss lite andra ledtrådar:

The stability of Maliki’s government depends on a tenuous peace between Moqtada al-Sadr, who controls one of the largest voting blocs in parliament, and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who leads the United Iraqi Alliance and the country’s largest Shi’a party, the Islamic Iraqi Supreme Council. A generations-long feud between their families has carried over into a personal and political rivalry between the men, and their militias have periodically clashed.

In October 2006, doubts grew concerning Maliki’s willingness or ability to defeat Shi’a militias. Maliki criticized an American-led raid that targeted a militia leader because, he asserted, it had been conducted without his government’s approval. In 2007, sources inside the Iraqi and American militaries indicated that Maliki’s ”Office of the Commander-in-Chief” within his government was pushing a Shiite agenda and overruling government ministers.

Min egen gissning är alltså att al-Maliki och Khamenei har ett oroväckande bra förhållande till varandra. Om de inte länge har haft ett sådant här förhållande så är det klart att al-Maliki ville skapa ett sådant efter sitt möte med Khamenei i somras.

Radio Free Europe hade i samband med detta möte en lång intervju med irakanalytikern Kathleen Ridolfo som hade detta att säga om Al-Malikis möte i Iran: ”Al-Maliki is, of course, a Shi’ite leader and the Shi’ites have very close ties to Iran and so there are a lot of questions in the minds of some observers wondering whether or not this is aimed at colluding or in some way strengthening those ties between the [Iraqi] Shi’ites and the Iranian regime or whether the talks are more general.”

Så detta är min gissning: Ju snabbare det blir lugnt i Irak, desto snabbare kan amerikanerna lämna landet. Ju snabbare amerikanerna kan lämna landet, desto snabbare kan al-Maliki förverkliga Irans maktövertagande över Irak.

Med i kalkylen finns dock det faktum att USA nyligen släppte 9 iranier som de tidigare hade arresterat, som misstänkta för terrorism, mot USA. ”U.S. military officials said the men were no longer considered a threat, but they did not elaborate”, skrev Washington Post den 10 november. Men är det sant? De gav ingen som helst motivering för dessa påståenden. När de väl arresterades så var det under mycket misstänksamma förhållanden. I samma artikel kunde man läsa:

The circumstances of the capture of the seven other detainees, taken into custody as early as Nov. 20, 2004, were described briefly in a military statement. Two were captured in a raid ”to disrupt al-Qaeda operations in Iraq” and one during an ”intelligence-driven raid aimed at capturing a senior insurgent.” At least two were captured in western Anbar province: one while allegedly fleeing the scene of a mortar attack in Fallujah, the other during a raid in Ramadi. A sixth Iranian citizen was detained at an unspecified border checkpoint, and the seventh was taken into custody in Qadisiyah in southern Iraq for ”illegal entry into Iraq from Iran,” according to the military’s statement.

Är det möjligt att USA nu har gått med på en affär med Iran, allt för att åstadkomma mer lugn i Irak? Varje gång USA har haft en affär med Iran, av en diplomatisk natur, har resultatet varit att USA ger Iran någonting ofta i utbyte mot att Iran släpper kidnappade amerikaner, bara för att Iran strax därefter kidnappar, mordhotar och sedan mördar amerikaner. (Affärerna som mynnade ut i den så kallade Iran-Contra-skandalen är ett perfekt exempel på detta.)

Efter ett av dessa diplomatiska möten förklarade USA:s representant Ryan Crocker följande (CNN 2007/07/24):

U.S. officials have accused Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Quds Force elements of interfering in the Iraq by supplying Shiite Muslim militias with weaponry and training, and fueling the sectarian warfare that U.S. and Iraqi troops are trying to tamp down.

Repeating what U.S. military officials have said, Crocker said there are people in U.S. custody who have spoken of Iranian involvement in Iraq and that captured munitions show evidence of Iran-related involvement.

”There’s no question in our mind that the support is going on,” said Crocker, who maintained that it would be in Iran’s interest to bring its actions in line with its rhetoric.

Och: ”He [Irans representant Hassan Kazemi Qomi] said his delegation also demanded the release of five Iranians detained in Iraq by U.S. forces, AP reported”.

Så redan då visste i princip alla att Iran sponsrade terrorism i Irak. USA hade arresterat människor misstänkta för detta. Sedan släpper USA helt plötsligt de flesta av dem och Iran är samtidigt väldigt tillmötesgående med Al-Malikis krav, krav som han också blev ombedd att framföra från amerikanernas, på att minska sitt stöd till al-Sadrs Mahdiarmé. Är allt detta bara ett enda stort sammanträffande? Jag tror inte det. Här är en anledning: ”‘Over the roughly two months since our last meeting, we’ve actually seen militia-related activity that can be attributed to Iranian support go up, and not down,’ Crocker said”. Med denna bakgrund tycker jag att det förefaller klart att Bushadministrationen i sin desperation att få lugn i Irak, har gått med på att göra en affär med Iran. Nu verkar det snarare som att USA har släppt iranska terrorister i utbyte mot att Iran lovar att inte mörda lika många amerikaner som tidigare. Det finns saker som talar för det. Middle East Times:

Iranian officials indicated that Friday’s move was a prelude to the release of the remaining 11 detainees, but it was unclear whether the release of the nine was part of a US-Iranian deal on Iraq.

Analysts say that although Tehran has constantly denied aiding Iraqi insurgents, it might have agreed to use its influence to control the Iraqi militias and press them to stop targeting US troops in return for the release of these prisoners and the other 11.

Om tidigare affärer med Iran lämnade Iran starkare och USA svagare, vad skulle då inte en affär av detta slag betyda? Betyder detta att USA är ute efter att få lugn i Irak till varje pris, även om det sker till priset av att man hjälper till att göra en iransk lydstat av Irak? Hur kan en sådan här uppgörelse sluta i annat än en katastrof?