An intensifying US campaign against Iran
Amid US charges of Iran's hand in Iraq's instability, some counsel caution.
from the August 24, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
The Halabja example
Such episodes echo past hostile US-Iran allegations, as in Somalia, since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Few examples are as clear-cut as that of Halabja, the Kurdish town in northern Iraq gassed by Saddam Hussein's troops in 1988 in a strike that left up to 5,000 civilians dead.
Iraq increasingly received the backing of the US and the West in its 1980s war against Iran. So US officials, to cast doubt that Iraq was solely responsible for such a war crime, began suggesting that Iran was also to blame.
"There is a rush to judgment [against Iran today], and this should be questioned, given the past and the outright dissembling that occurred [in 1988] when it was convenient to accuse the Iranians because the American ally Iraq was doing something totally embarrassing to the Reagan administration," says Joost Hiltermann, author of the recently published "A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja."
"These people have learned the lesson that this kind of lying works and will do it again," says Mr. Hiltermann, the Istanbul-based Middle East director for the International Crisis Group.
The charge against Iran took root so effectively in the media – this newspaper also published notable, unattributed examples of "good intelligence" that cited Iran's role – that until recently, references to the "Iraqi" gassing of Halabja yielded letters of complaint from readers, pointing out the Iranian role, and offering US government documents as proof.
The Halabja case suggests "an exceptional attempt at naked deception," says Hiltermann in his study, noting that 18 tons of Iraqi secret police and intelligence documents seized in northern Iraq in 1991 make frequent reference to Iraqi use of chemical weapons, but none about any chemical use by Iran.
Growing antipathy toward Iran
If anything, the level of antipathy toward Iran is higher today than two decades ago.
"We are confronting Iranian behavior across a variety of different fronts on a number of 'battlefields,' if you will," US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said last week. "We confront them on the ground in Iraq. Our military is doing that. We are confronting Iran diplomatically … with respect to their nuclear program."
"This administration has a track record of doing what it thinks is right, and doing it regardless [of the facts].... The debate is far less about 'Can it be true?' or 'Can it not be true?' " says Parsi. The bigger picture, he says, is a regional power struggle between a strengthening Iran and an America weakened by debacle in Iraq.
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