In an earlier post, “Zarqawi and Zion,” I argued that Right Zionists like Michael Ledeen represent an ideological mirror image of Zarqawi because they both wanted to fight the same war, albeit on opposite sides. Both wanted to make Iraq the central battleground of a regional war over the balance of power in the Gulf. Right Zionists favor a Persian Gulf dominated by Shiites and Zarqawi sought to preserve the Arab Gulf as a stronghold of Sunni power.
All of this seems so unlikely, however, when reading Michael Ledeen’s June 16, 2006 article, “Nonsense: Don’t Read What You Are into the Big Document of Iraq” about the “the much ballyhooed document found in Iraq and published with great gravitas all over the world.” The document in question–that is, an English translation provided to the media by Iraqi National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie–is HERE.
Here is the part that Ledeen seems to find upsetting/laughable:
[T]he whole thrust of the document is that Iran is a sweet innocent, actually an ally of the United States in Iraq, and that the terrorists should do everything possible to foster conflict between Iran and the Americans.
Ledeen begins his column with a question lots of folks have asked when his name comes up:
“So how exactly do you figure out when something is real, and when it’s a deception?”
Good question. His conclusion, in this instance:
I think the Iranians put out this sort of nonsense so that we’ll have trouble figuring out what’s real. And by the way, it wasn’t found in Zarqawi’s house, contrary to the triumphant announcement from the office of the Iraqi prime minister. So it’s certainly not a Last Testament. It’s just nonsense.
Why does Ledeen go so far out his way to claim that the US-backed government in Iraq and the government in Iran has perpetrated a massive deception? Surely it is not because he doesn’t wish it were true. Ledeen is the most strident advocate of such an alliance between the United States and Iran.
The disagreement between Zarqawi and Ledeen was that Zarqawi thought this alliance was already in the works while Ledeen has been frustrated by the slow pace of such an alliance. Ledeen’s most common refrain? Faster Please.
The “Big” posthumously published Zarqawi document was not the first time that Zarqawi “allegedly alleged” that Ledeen’s regional vision had already been consummated.
In early June 2006 Zarqawi allegedly lashed out at Lebanon’s Iran-backed, Shiite Hizbollah movement:
The head of the Iraqi branch of Al-Qaeda, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, called Thursday for the disarmament of the Lebanese Shiite fundamentalist movement Hezbollah, according to an audio message posted on the Internet.Zarqawi accused Hezbollah of serving as a “shield protecting the Zionist enemy (Israel) against the strikes of the mujahedeen in Lebanon,” in an apparent reference to Sunni Arab militants loyal to the Al-Qaeda network.
“Why should Hezbollah be exempt from the… Taef accords” which brought an end to fighting in Lebanon’s 15-year civil war, a voice purporting to be Iraq’s most wanted man asked in the lengthy audio message whose authenticity could not be verified.
“Hezbollah is an independent state inside Lebanon… It puts forth lying slogans about Palestinian liberation when in fact it serves as a security wall (for Israel) and prevents Sunnis from crossing its borders.”
As the Telegraph commented at the time of these reports,
[Zarqawi] strangely echoed Israeli and western demands by denouncing Hizbollah as “an independent state inside Lebanon” and demanded that it should be disarmed.
For Ledeen, the only real problem with this characterization is that it is premature. Right Zionists have not yet managed to achieve the long-term goal of aligning Lebanon’s Shiites with Israel.
Don’t take my word for it, though. Here is David Wurmser, Cheney’s Middle East expert, on the subject (from his 1999 book, Tyranny’s Ally, profiled in my article “Beyond Incompetence“):
“Liberating the centers of learning in Najaf and Karbala in the wake of Saddam’s demise would offer the region and the West a chance to…reinstate the traditional dynamic among Lebanon’s Shiites. Prying the Lebanese Shi’ites away from a defunct Iranian Revolution and reacquainting them with the Iraqi Shiite community could significantly help to shift the region’s balance… A collapse of Iraq’s Baathism could be the catalyst for the implosion of Assad’s regime in Syria and, though the Shiite community, of the Islamic revolution in Iran as well.”
The problem, for Ledeen, is that Zarqawi was jumping the gun, so to speak.
Ledeen may be right that the incumbent regime in Iran has done everything possible to find common ground with Arab regimes. Hence recent news out of Iran that the current regime has very warm relations with Saudi Arabia and that both countries seek to ease tensions over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Right Zionists at Middle East Media Research Institute (where Meyrav Wurmser–married to David Wurmser, cited above–served as Executive Director) are quick to note the longer-term basis for Arab hostility to Iranian nuclear ambitions. That is for another day, however, when Right Zionists can once again support an Iranian nuclear program. Until then, they must explain how Arab hostility toward Israel has led some to offer qualified support for the incumbent Iranian regime.
For Right Zionists, everything turns on regime change in Iran. Then comes the new regional balance of power against which Zarqawi fought. Zarqawi died fighting a war that Ledeen thinks has barely begun. Hence Ledeen: faster please.
I think Ledeen is both clever and funny – also, he has bought a new and woollier sweater, which shows he is on a charm offensive. However, here he is arguing that the fakeness of the document implies that its statements are actually double-bluffs, which I do not accept.