Tehran Weighs Its Options

Iran is constantly evaluating its options in this intra-Shiite struggle. Although Iran is closest to ISCI, Tehran's leaders may be worried about the party's long-term viability. Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim has lung cancer--last year he spent many weeks in Iran for treatment--and his son and likely successor, Amar al-Hakim, is young and inexperienced. In addition, Iran is well aware that many Iraqi Shiites, who fought against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, despise ISCI as traitors. "They're hated," says Hiltermann, who has studied ISCI closely. So despite Sadr's nationalist inclinations and his apparent distaste for the Iranian leadership, Iran has sought to build ties to the upstart cleric.

Iran's efforts to cultivate ties with Sadr, and vice versa, operate on two levels: first, directly with Sadr and his top lieutenants; and second, by reaching deep into Sadr's JAM militia. With an estimated 60,000 men under arms, the JAM is not a disciplined fighting force but a loosely organized, franchise-like network of armed gangs in towns and neighborhoods. Sensing an opportunity to take advantage of this lack of discipline, Iran launched a systematic effort to win the allegiance of local and regional JAM commanders, according to a wide range of analysts. Iran's goal may have been to turn the JAM into a version of Lebanon's Hezbollah, dependent on Iran for arms and money.

The so-called Special Groups emerged, according to the Pentagon, as a catch-all rubric for Sadrist fighters who, starting about a year ago, emerged as the deadliest foes of US occupation forces. After tens of thousands of former Sunni resistance fighters joined the Anbar Province Sahwa ("Awakening") militia under the command of Iraqi tribal chiefs--part of a pronounced US tilt toward the Sunnis in Iraq in 2006--the United States began to battle a wave of attacks in Shiite areas south and east of Baghdad by hard-line Shiites who opposed the US-Sunni accord. By mid-2007 these insurgents were responsible for three-fourths of the casualties inflicted on American troops, according to the US military. The Pentagon called the attackers "Iranian-backed JAM Special Groups" and accused them of using highly effective armor-piercing bombs manufactured in Iran called "explosively formed penetrators."

Nearly all analysts interviewed for this story believe that Iran has supplied at least some of the weapons being used by Shiite insurgents, although the physical evidence presented by the Pentagon was less than overwhelming. "I don't think we've got a lot of intelligence about what Iran is really doing," says David Mack of the Middle East Institute, who twice served as a diplomat in Iraq during his career. "We see the effects of certain kinds of weapons that arguably were made in Iran." The Pentagon admits that so far it has failed to intercept any shipments crossing the Iranian border into Iraq. But the military insists that Iran is involved, and it says that US and Iraqi forces have captured numerous fighters trained in Iran and at least one top Hezbollah commander from Lebanon. Some skeptics of the Pentagon's claims suggest that Iranian weapons that find their way into Iraq are being smuggled by independent or rogue elements of the IRGC Quds Force without Supreme Leader Khamenei's knowledge, but that seems unlikely. Mahan Abedin calls the idea "ludicrous," adding, "If the IRGC is doing anything in Iraq, that would be officially sanctioned. When it comes to matters of such importance, there is no scope for behaving outside well-established parameters. Make no mistake about that. The IRGC is a highly disciplined organization. It's an ideological force, and a lot of thinking and planning has gone into its hierarchy. It is a highly surveilled organization, controlled very tightly."

Though willing to blame Iran and elements of the JAM, the US command in Iraq is careful not to blame Sadr himself. According to Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, the communications division chief of the multinational forces in Iraq, Iraqi agents of Iran tapped small groups of Iraqis, twenty to forty at a time, to be sent across the border into Iran. "They were trained and then sent back in these quote-unquote 'Special Groups,'" he says. "They were sent back as small cells.... They would wind up a lot of little toy monsters. They sent them across the border and started turning them loose." Although many of these cells, scattered through Baghdad, Diyala and the south, called themselves followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, the precise degree of their loyalty to Sadr's organization is impossible to measure. The US military, at least, considers them distinct. "What happened was, eventually, they completely separated from Muqtada al-Sadr's JAM and they are operating as a rogue element outside of JAM and outside of Sadr's control," says Smith.

By late summer, Sadr's movement had suffered great losses and seemed to be in deep trouble. Whether rogue or not, the Special Groups were under heavy attack by a joint US-Iraqi offensive. Clashes with the more disciplined and better-armed Badr Corps were also taking a toll among Sadr's forces. In late August a climactic battle between JAM and Badr forces in Karbala, Iraq's second-holiest shrine city, left scores dead, and as many as 500 Sadrists were arrested. Within days, Sadr declared a unilateral six-month cease-fire.

The cease-fire came at an opportune moment for Sadr. In contrast to Badr-linked death squads, which were blamed for precisely targeted killings, at least some of Sadr's deputies and commanders had been tied to horrific violence against Sunnis in ethnic cleansing campaigns, especially in Baghdad, often behaving more like gangsters than a political army. The cease-fire gave Sadr the opportunity to reign in the most undisciplined elements.

It's unclear exactly what motivated Sadr to declare the cease-fire, but its effect was electric. Not only did Sadr's forces lay down their arms but violence linked to the Special Groups fell off dramatically, too. Casualties among Americans, which had reached near zero in Sunni Anbar Province because of the Awakening movement, fell precipitously in the capital and southern Iraq. A few weeks later, in October, Sadr and Hakim signed a shaky peace agreement, one that was reportedly brokered by Iran. "According to [the pan-Arab daily] Al Hayat, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei was present when the accord between Sadr and Hakim in October was reached," says Sam Parker, an Iraq expert at the US Institute of Peace. (By mid-February the agreement had apparently collapsed.)

The fact that both the JAM and the Special Groups simultaneously observed the cease-fire announced by Sadr could mean that the supposedly rogue units in the JAM are not so rogue at all. "It tells me that [Sadr] has more control than we think," says Wayne White. Another possibility is that, quietly and behind the scenes, Iran used its influence--including a cutoff in the supply of arms and money--to restrain Shiite fighters. "I think there is a robust relationship now between Sadr and the Iranians," says White. "Both Iran and Sadr read the surge the same way. Thousands...fled south from Baghdad to Shia sanctuaries or to Iran.... They just decamped. Why confront the Americans at peak strength? They can just wait for the American surge forces to leave." Indeed, an extensive recent report in the Christian Science Monitor suggested that Sadr is using the lull to consolidate his militia. And he has created a special force, the so-called Golden Ones, to enforce JAM discipline.

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