As the March 7 Iraqi parliamentary elections draw near, American media have focused on renewed allegations of Iranian meddling. Over the past week General Odierno and U.S. ambassador to Baghdad Chris Hill presented a united front in accusing Iraqi officials Ahmed Chalabi and Ali Faisal al-Lami of being improperly influenced by Iran in their decision to disqualify some 300 Iraqi politicians for allegedly being too close to Saddam Hussein’s Bath Party. (Reidar Visser has been exhaustively covering this saga on his blog).
But how is the story playing in Iran? For one take, I made a quick scan of the past week’s Iraq coverage in Hossein Shariatmadari’s Kayhan , a stalwart pro-regime daily. Rather than admitting (or even celebrating) Iranian influence in Iraq as one might suspect from Kayhan’s usual ultra-nationalist coverage, Kayhan’s editors seem most interested in exposing nefarious influences from Washington and other Arab states.
One article played-up a quote from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemning the millions of dollars in bribe money that Arab states (*Riyadh*, coughs the author a few paragraphs later) have allegedly funneled into the country to support Sunni candidates. Another piece took this narrative one step further, casting ISCI leader Ammar al-Hakim as the protector of Iraqi sovereignty in the face of American occupation and sectarian Saudi meddling.
Kayhan never confronts the de-Baathification controversy head on, but works its agenda obliquely, reporting protests in five Iraqi cities against the “return of Baathists.” Its coverage looks to take the spotlight off Iranian influence in Iraq, shining it instead on the American occupiers and neighboring Arab states. Both Prime Minister Maliki and Ammar al-Hakim are quoted favorably, cast as leaders concerned with protecting Iraqi sovereignty from foreign designs — not at all surprising given they are both Shia politicians that enjoy warm relations with Tehran.
As Iraq’s elections season heats up, the Iranian position is more and more resembling a mirror opposite of the American one: both states seek to position themselves as advocates of Iraqi sovereignty while casting the other as the meddling outsider (In recent statements Christopher Hill was careful to nuance his take on Iranian influence, but the overall U.S. messaging against Iranian meddling has not been so subtle). Iran seems to have won the first round with the successful barring of alleged Baathist candidates, but we’ll have to wait a few more weeks to see if the pro-Iranian parties dominate at the polls.
With Obama committed to the U.S. troop drawdown, this will likely prove the most consequential Iraqi election (and post-election politicking) to date. As this plays out, we hope to continue bringing you perspectives from Iranian media and elsewhere around the Gulf.
PS. We’ve created a Twitter list of some of the key tweeters on Iran-GCC relations. You can follow it here.
-WW
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