Rice and Gates Divided over Iran's Role in Iraq

A State Department official's assertion in late December that Iran had exerted a restraining influence on Iraqi Shiite militia violence signaled a major divergence of views between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates over how to portray Iran's role in Iraq.

In an interview with the Washington Post published Dec. 23, David Satterfield, a senior adviser to Rice and coordinator for Iraq, attributed to Iran a deliberate decision to help calm the situation in Iraq rather than to inflame it. Satterfield told the Washington Post that the decline in the number of attacks by Mahdi Army militiamen since August "has to be attributed to an Iranian policy decision" and suggested that the policy decision had been made "at the most senior level."

Satterfield did not say that the new Iranian policy line was permanent, but he insisted that there had been such a "consistent and sustained diminution in certain kinds of violence by certain kinds of folks" that it could not be explained solely on the basis of internal factors in Iraq.

U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker also told the Post that "the freeze on JAM [the Iraqi acronym for the Mahdi Army] operations that began four months ago would not exist without Iranian approval."

Those positive descriptions of the recent Iranian role in Iraq came just after Defense Secretary Gates had refused to endorse such an assessment. At a press conference on Dec. 21, Gates was asked whether he had "seen any additional or more current information to suggest maybe Iran is playing a more constructive role in trying to seal its border from arms shipments and so on?"

He replied, "No, not yet."

Significantly, however, Gates also passed up the opportunity to say that Iran was playing a "destabilizing role" in Iraq. Instead he said simply that the "jury is out" on the issue.

Gates mentioned the success of military operations against the Mahdi Army as well as the "ceasefire that has been put in place" as factors in the decline in attacks and said, "[W]e don't have a good feeling…or any confidence in terms of how to weigh these different things."

These differing views on whether Iran has been playing a positive role in Iraq are the first clear evidence of a split between Gates and Rice over how to deal with Iran. Rice's State Department is now leaning toward treating Iran as something other than an outright enemy in regard to Iraq, whereas Gates is not ready to soften the administration's position of casting suspicion on Iranian intentions.

Gates was the last administration official to denounce Iran in harsh terms over Iraq, declaring in a speech at a Persian Gulf security conference in Bahrain Dec. 8, "Everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos, no matter the strategic value or cost in the blood of innocents."

That rhetoric was almost certainly aimed, however, at avoiding a stampede away from the administration's efforts to pressure Iran on its uranium enrichment program in the wake of the stunning publication of the national intelligence estimate's conclusion that Iran had abandoned covert nuclear weapons work in 2003.

Gates hinted in comments to reporters when he arrived in Bahrain that he was much less certain of the Iranian intention than his rhetoric at the conference would have suggested. He mentioned the call by Shiite Mahdi Army leader Muqtada al-Sadr for a ceasefire as a key factor in the improved security in the Baghdad area, along with the reduction in attacks by armour-piercing rounds which had long been blamed on Iran.

Gates appeared to suggest that he did not rule out an Iranian contribution to the improvement, saying it was "too early to tell" whether the reduction in militia attacks since August was due to successful military efforts to disrupt Mahdi Army networks or "what the Iranians may or may not be doing".