Ware: “Tehran Was in the Room”
CNN’s Michael Ware talks to Matt Duss about Iran’s deep influence in Iraq and the key role Iran played in constructing the US-Iraq security agreement:
WARE: Iran has a whip hand, or a key hand at least, within the political framework there. So during these negotiations between Baghdad and Washington, Tehran — whether we like it or not — was in the room. Tehran, in some ways, in some fashion, is a party to this agreement. And you’ll see that some of the sticking points and some of the nuances within the negotiations were issues that were very close to the heart of Tehran.
The incredibly operational successes of the counterinsurgency tactics David Petraeus brought to Iraq in 2007 shouldn’t distract us from the extent to which the invasion of Iraq has been a costly strategic debacle. And nothing that’s happened in Iraq since 2007 has changed that. But because the whole thing unfolded in a strategic vacuum absent any ability of the highest levels of the American government to define America’s interests in the region or come up with a way to advance them.
20 Responses to “Ware: “Tehran Was in the Room””
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November 18th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
They darn well better have been in the room.
Iran can scotch any deal we wish to strike in Iraq. They can throw the entire country into chaos if they wanted to.
If we didn’t get at least implicit buy-in from the Iranians, it would have been gross negligence.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Whenever someone tries to spin the treaty (let’s call it what it is) as some kind of Bush “victory,” I always ask, what did we win? The Iranians and the Iraqi Shiites won as a result of the U.S. invasion, America is coming away empty-handed.
November 18th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Well, there definitely was a victory. The problem is that the winners are Iran and China. China gets a sweet new oil deal and Iran controls the government. I thought this was all about the oil, and we didn’t even get that. Obviously, we were always going to redefine the goal after the fact. But what do we say our goal was now?
November 18th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
We paid off the Sunnis in Anbar, who had also gotten scared after the Shi’ites had ethnically cleansed Baghdad. That was the key: paying people off combined with (largely accidental) divide et impera.
Truly new ideas. I doubt if they predate anatomically modern humans.
November 18th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
The incredibly operational successes of the counterinsurgency tactics David Petraeus brought to Iraq in 2007 shouldn’t distract us from the extent to which the invasion of Iraq has been a costly strategic debacle.
It’s been a human and economic debacle. The strategic setbacks are vastly over-rated, and the US can quickly recover from them, if “recover” is the right term. In fact, one of these ballyhooed “setbacks” – the elevation of quasi-democratic Iran into greater regional parity with the thoroughly non-democratic monarchy Saudi Arabia, and the end of the permanent Iraq-Iran Cold War – isn’t really a setback at all in my view, but a positive development for the region.
Liberal pundits and posers who aspire to Seriousness like to complain about alleged strategic setbacks, because they think that’s how real grownups talk. They are terrified of appearing like weak, pacifistic softs to the VSP mandarins whose dicks they constantly suck for approval, and they lack the moral guts to address the fundamental issue: that the war was an illegal and barbarous slaughter of innocents, conducted by murdering criminals. The fact that we still can’t get establishment “progressives” to discuss the human cost literally sickens me. My stomach is turning as I write.
Yes, the US has lost a certain amount of global presence and influence that depended on a puffed-up and phony appearance of power that never actually had a firm foundation in the power fundamentals. It was an over-inflated post-Cold War power bubble in need of a healthy correction. Has our strategic position weakened? Not really. Personally, I feel healthier, like a company that has just canceled several losing product lines of pure crap and re-focussed on quality and the fundamentals.
if Big and Dumb America has been bankrupted, and restructured as Lean and Mean America, then maybe we’re better off strategically.
November 18th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
“It’s been a human and economic debacle.”
Well, let’s see. We’re killing Iraqis at about the same rate as Saddam. Unemployment is worse. Lots of infrastructure is destroyed. We’ve expanded the prisons and introduced new and fun ways to torture people. Oil production is only now returning, just when it isn’t really needed. So, yes it’s a debacle. But aren’t all wars debacles under those measurements? Unless you can rape and pillage, war just ain’t profitable. And if you can’t do that, it still isn’t humane. It’s just a really bad way of solving problems.
November 18th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Matt: “incredibly operational successes of the counterinsurgency tactics David Petraeus brought to Iraq in 2007″
I see Matt has now turned to sucking up to Petraeus in advance of his trying the same bullshit tactics in Afghanistan – where they will fail just as miserably as they did in Iraq – in fact, worse.
Matt, get a fucking clue. There WERE NO “incredible operational successes” in 2007. That’s been established over and over by everybody who has looked at the sequence of events. Had it not been for the Sunni insurgents deciding to stop trying to fight both the US and the Shia at the same time (and the mild increase in US troops and their location being primarily in Baghdad did not influence that much), and al-Sadr standing down for his own reasons, and the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad mostly ASSISTED by the presence of more US troops there, nothing would have changed.
But, no, Matt insists that Afghanistan is the “good war” and therefore since Petraeus is now in charge of that, Petraeus is now a “good guy” we all have to support uncritically.
Christ, Matt’s a pimp now.
November 19th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Matt: “incredibly operational successes of the counterinsurgency tactics David Petraeus brought to Iraq in 2007″
Whoa! the word I am looking for you Mr Yglesia is gullible! the “success” or temporaray cease-fire is a result of bribing all parties involved en-mass to avoid confrontation.
Try to get your news from reliable sources next time, will ya?
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