Pat Dollard

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Kansas City Star:

BAGHDAD – Hussein Athab visited Iran three times after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The political science professor took in Iran’s religious sites and admired Iraq’s bigger, richer and stronger Shiite Muslim neighbor to the east.

But his esteem for Iran’s government has since plummeted due to what he and many others in Iraq view as Iranian meddling and subversion in his native city of Basra.

“We thought Iran would extend the hand of friendship,” said Athab, himself a Shiite. “But it looks like Iran considers Iraq a playing card, and we don’t want to be used as a playing card.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad travels today to an Iraq far more leery of his country than in the period soon after the collapse of Hussein’s vehemently anti-Iranian regime.

Publicly, Iraq’s politicians welcome the firebrand president’s arrival. But privately, Iraqi officials say Ahmadinejad and the adventurous clique surrounding him are part of the problem.

Though Iraq is predominantly Arab and Iran is Persian, ties between Tehran and Baghdad’s current Shiite-dominated leadership run deep.

But even among Iraq’s Shiite Muslim majority that has long looked to Iranian co-religionists as protectors and patrons, a palpable wariness has welled up about Tehran’s strategic ambitions and tactical maneuvers in their country. Many conclude that Iraq has become a battleground in a 30-year feud between the United States and Iran, and that Tehran has few qualms about sacrificing Iraqi lives and stability for its strategic goals.

“There’s a problem because the Iranians feel threatened by the Americans, and they want to act tit for tat with the Americans,” said Haydar Abadi, a high-ranking adviser to the Iraqi government. “Whenever Americans pressure Iran outside Iraq, the Iranians respond in Iraq. We’re paying for this in blood.”

Abadi and other Iraqi leaders said they would use Ahmadinejad’s visit as an opportunity to warn Iranians about their behavior in Iraq, including U.S. military allegations that Iran has smuggled powerful explosive devices and other weapons to militia groups.

On Saturday, Ahmadinejad disputed accusations that Iran is meddling in Iraqi affairs and fueling violence.

“Iran has no need to intervene in Iraq. It is friendly to all groups in Iraq. Isn’t it ridiculous that those who have deployed 160,000 troops in Iraq accuse us of intervening there?” the Iranian state-run news agency, IRNA, quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

Iraqi officials are also struggling to defuse what they view as the rationale for Iran’s transgressions: the fear that the U.S. troop presence in Iraq will be used to undermine the Tehran government. Both Iraq’s Kurds and Shiites have vigorously lobbied leaders in Washington and Tehran to set aside their differences, at least when it comes to stabilizing Iraq.

“Instead of being a court of conflict and clashes between the two countries, officials in Iraq are still putting great efforts to improve this relationship between the three parties,” said Sheik Hamid Muala. “Instead of being a place for war, (Iraq) will be a place for peace.”