The Iranians have angrily condemned the kidnapping in Baghdad of one of their middle-ranking diplomats. They have announced that they hold the Americans responsible for the man’s safety and they believe that Washington was behind the seizure of the diplomat even though the men were wearing Iraqi Army uniforms. Their protest is undoubtedly informed by the US arrest last month of other Iranians in Irbil. The Americans claimed that those individuals were on a secret mission to local militants. The US authorities have, however, denied being involved in this latest kidnapping. Indeed, it is hard to see what they could gain by such an abduction, rather than the outright and open arrest of someone they suspected of fomenting local violence.
The unpleasant truth is that this kidnapping follows the pattern of past murderous terrorist actions against diplomats working in Iraq. Egyptian, Algerian, Pakistani and Bahraini envoys have all been the object of outrages in the last two years. It is therefore likely that the gang that has seized this unfortunate Iranian will murder him as a further terrorist atrocity. Or the man may be held for ransom.
For Tehran to say that it holds the Americans responsible for the diplomat’s safety because the US claims to be helping run Iraqi security is somewhat surprising. In so far that the chaos that has descended upon the luckless Iraqis has been brought about by the Bush invasion and its inexcusable lack of postwar planning, the Iranians are right. This is, at the same time, to overlook their own very tangible role in stirring up violence through the lawless militias such as Moqtada Sadr’s Mehdi Army. Both Washington and Tehran have much to answer for in terms of the savagery and bloodshed that is now taking place in Iraq. Each government bellows at the other about interfering in the country. Yet both ignore the inconvenient truth that neither of them has any business to be there in the first place.
As in Lebanon and perhaps also now the Palestinian territories, outside powers are using local rival factions to fight proxy wars for them. The Iranians are totally determined on giving the Bush White House a bloody nose in Iraq and the Bush White House is locked into its dangerously belligerent and confrontational approach to Iran, ostensibly over its nuclear program. The reality is, however, that Washington has neither forgiven nor forgotten the humiliating 1979 hostage-taking at the US Embassy in Tehran.
For Al-Qaeda fanatics and the die-hard Baathists who initiated the insurgency, the angry exchanges between Americans and Iranians are sweet music. They probably kidnapped the Iranian envoy in the hope of provoking just such a row. They have already succeeded in creating distrust and factional anger behind which they can hide with ever increasing security. Indeed they are now thriving on the mutual visceral dislike between the US and Iranian leaderships and the illogical insistence from both countries that the other is to blame for interfering in Iraq.
