Just who is Iran supposed to be backing in Iraq?

The puppet government we installed in Iraq are Shiite, right? They hung Saddam who was a Sunni, right? The so called insurgents are Sunnis killing Shiites. We are supposed to believe Iran is backing the Sunni? That doesn't seem logical to me. Wouldn't it be logical other countries that are Sunni such as Saudi Arabia would be backing the insurgency. What am I missing here?

the entire Middle East. That's what I gather from chimpy's words.

he never lies....

that's the same logic I've bought into as well. Doesn't make sense for Iranian 'weapons' to be used by the Sunni.

As far as any Saudi connection...they may be paying for the weaponry but they certainly aren't manufacturing anything.

all the shit we gave them.

:thumbsup:

Improvised Electronic Devices.

The real bombs are massive warheads deposited in heavy packages and connected to remote detonators. It is easy to analyze them for radio signal receptivity and explosives residue, something the bomb squad in Boston didn't do.

The armaments were manufactured by the US and sold to Iraq, Iran
AND Saudi in order to keep them at each others throats and prevent
them from sell any oil to the Soviets.

So we should just take their word for it and not worry our pretty little heads about who's a Shia and who's a Sunni. Our Dear Leader never has!

sw

so they're helping folks take potshots at us even though we're helping prop up their ally Maliki.

Crazy stuff.

The Iranians are in fact backing the largest shiite political organization, and always have. They most certainly are supporting shiite militias. However those militias are not 'the insurgency' that is attacking both our occupation forces and the nominal government. The insurgency is almost entirely ethnic sunni and is supported, as the OP rightly notes, both other sunni groups in the region.

"so they're helping folks take potshots at us" - your claim is not substantiated by any actual evidence that I know of.

You mean John Burns citing official US bullshit, such as "Iran May Have Trained Attackers That Killed 5 American Soldiers"? Or did you have something actually substantial there? Do the words Judy Miller mean anything to you? John Burns appears to be filling for her Neocon Evangilist position.

See Alex Cockburn on the NYT and its role these days: http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn01062007.html


CNN's Ware on the other hand is a good guy.

Ah you seem to have gotten confused about what Ware is taking about with respect to Iran and Iran's involvement in Iraq.

Perhaps, as you do not provide any actual links, you are referring to this transcript http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0701/26/acd.01.html.

Iran is certainly heavily involved with shiite political and militia organizations in Iran, as are we. In an odd conflation of interests, Iran and the US are backing overlapping sets of Shiite groups. However, and I seem to be having to explain this here on DU over and over again, the insurgency is almost entirely sunni ethnic. Yes of course Iran is involved in Iraq as a backer of shiite interests. What Iran is not involved in, and will not be involved in until we turn our guns on the major shiite militias, is the insurgency against our occupation forces and the shiite dominated official government.

They are all insurgents and Iran attacked us on 9/11!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:sarcasm:

to ensure there is no challenge to Shia rule in Iraq. Iran's goal is a swath of influence that extends from Iran through Iraq into Lebanon (Hezbollah). From there they will challenge Sunni Saudi Arabia for dominance of the Middle East.

There is no insurgency - only civil (or religious) war.

for power. The Sunni's do seem somewhat more united.

But this is a tribal fight -not religious. It is not a religious thing here.

Iran is just playing both sides against the middle - to the extent "Iran" and not "Iranian tribes" are envolved. I have big questions about just which Iranian sides are in this.

Doubt that helps, but it is true.

Joe

Except in the sense that tribes of indigenous people live in remote areas and have little participation in Iranian government, like Native American tribes.

Is that what you meant?

Most Iranians are Caucasian city-dwellers like yourself.

They consider themselves Persians, just as you'd consider yourself
White Anglo Saxon American, or Irish-American, or African American.

Shi'ites in Iran are united under a single religious denomination -- an official state religion in which religious minorities are semi-protected but sometimes discriminated against, just like Orthodox Judaism in Israel.

Shi'ites in IRAQ are not a tribe, they are a religious group broken into denominations run by different ulemi (patriarchs), just like Protestants.

Tribes in Iraq are clan affairs, village based. Many Iraqis vote the way their village elders tell them to. (Sheikhs = clan leaders, are the village elders, and are sometimes ELECTED by the male members of the clan, a little fact most Americans don't know about tribal anthropology, and basically serve as justice of the peace for that region.)

But that is because tribal elders are the only reliable justice system in Iraq. England used to have this form of justice, and technically we still do. It is called "common law".

E.g. a marriage attested to by a sherriff or municipal elder might be considered a "common law marriage".

But that doesn't make the parties tribal in nature. They are based on loyalty to large, wealthy organizations sponsored by individuals, including ulemi and prominent businessmen who have their own private security guards (militias) to protect them from assassination.

Protestants are divided into followers of Jim Wallis, Lutheran Evangelicals (liberal) Bill Graham (center-right) and James Dobson. Et cetera.

Since the Iraq we created is a theocracy, they have formed political parties, much as they would if the US were a war-torn theocracy.

It is intra-party warfare, not "tribal" warfare.

Amerians need to stop calling people "tribal" when they mean "ethnic"
or religious. You would never call Northern Ireland "tribal militias".

You (nor Wesley Clark) would not call the Bosnians "tribal".
You wouldn't call the North vs. South ethnic divide in the US "tribal",
or the divide between black and white Louisianans.

But I bet you'd call the genocide in Rwanda "tribal", even though it
wasn't. (It was a government-directed massacre of a minority ethnic
group, like the Jews in Germany.) It displays a disturbing degree of
unawareness on the part of almost all Americans.

You have to have big fake reasons for your war, they are out manufacturing them.

the religious Shiites and the mullahs and the ayatollahs.