'Iranian influence in Iraq based on speculation'

The commander of British-led forces in south-eastern Iraq said today that concerns expressed about Iranian efforts to influence events in Iraq are based more on speculation than on facts.

The remark by Maj Gen Jim Dutton of the Royal Marines contrasted with criticisms of Iran by US officials, including Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who have said repeatedly that Iran is interfering in Iraq’s internal affairs.

Rumsfeld said yesterday that Iran is opposing Iraq’s efforts to build a democracy.

“There’s no question but that Iran is a problem for Iraq as well in terms of their developing a reasonably representative system,” Rumsfeld said in remarks to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. “The last thing the Iranians want is to see Iraq succeed as a democracy, as a representative system, as a moderate state. It’s exactly in conflict with the situation in Iran, which has a small handful of clerics who run the country.”

Dutton, speaking from Basra by telephone with reporters at the Pentagon, said he doubts that most Iraqis in that part of the country would favour adapting an Iranian-style theocracy.

“My understanding of the Iraqis of southern Iraq is that they have a very different view of politics and that very few of them would wish to have a similar political system as the Iranians do,” Dutton said.

He noted that Iraqis in Basra and Maysan share a border as well as a history with the Iranians.

“There are perfectly legitimate reasons for Iraqis to want to cross into Iran and Iranians to want to cross into Iraq,” Dutton said, but they are constrained by a shortage of legal border-crossing points.

The Iraqis have a plan with the Iranians to open up the first border crossing in Maysan province, Dutton said.

Dutton is commander of a multi-national coalition force in an area of Iraq where the Shiite branch of the Muslim faith is predominant, as it is in Iran. Much of central and western Iraq, by contrast, is predominantly Sunni Muslim, and it was the Sunnis who ruled the country under former President Saddam Hussein.

Asked what evidence he has seen of harmful Iranian involvement in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad in 2003, Dutton said, “The question of Iranian involvement is always a difficult one because there’s a lot of speculation about it and not many facts.”

He said, for example, that it’s unclear whether Iran is moving weapons into Iraq.

Dutton said Iraqi authorities 10 days ago made a large seizure of illegal weapons on Route 6, which runs north from Basra to Amarah in Maysan province.

“We don’t know exactly where that came from,” he said. “We are keen to find out and investigations are ongoing. There have been suggestions that they could have come from Iran, but I certainly can’t prove that.”

Iran and Iraq fought a decade-long war in the 1980s.