STAN: I’m no authority, but I don’t know of any special relations between the Sadrists and Iran. The SCIRI, or whatever it’s been recently re-named, is much closer to Iran. In any case, as is usually the case in international relations, the government in power is who external entities relate to, and it would be seriously risky for those external folk to do otherwise.

US Iraq intelligence summary classified SECRET on Iranian infiltration, Al-Sadr, Mahdi army, COA Scimitar, SCIRI and BADR corps, weapons and money laundering, etc. and dated June 23, 2006. The report has been privately verified by Wikileaks. Two small redactions were viewed as necessary to protect intelligence sources.

Wikileaks

Out of the dramatic developments of the past week, several questions arise, the principal being that the Bush administration’s triumphalism over the so-called Iraq “surge” strategy has become irredeemably farcical, and, two, US doublespeak has become badly exposed. What stands out is that Washington promoted the latest round of violence in Basra, whereas Iran cried halt to it. The awesome influence of Tehran has become all too apparent. How does Bush come to terms with it?

Bhadrakumar

President George W Bush’s self-described “defining moment” in Iraq amounted to this: General Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) , brokered a deal in Qom, Iran, between Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s envoys and Hadi al-Amri, the head of the Badr Organization and number two to Adbul Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) and a key player of the government in Baghdad. That sealed the end of the battle of Basra.

The IRGC was designated last year by Washington as a terrorist organization. Thus Iranian “terrorists” brokered a peace deal between the two largest Shi’ite parties in Iraq – ending a Baghdad government offensive that was fully authorized and supported by air power by Washington, according to Bush’s National Security Adviser Steven Hadley. Even under Bush logic, “the terrorists” won, and Iran won – once again.

Pepe Escobar

old stuff on Iraqi Kurdistan

from March 2003:

Without its Northern Front, the US
is more dependent than ever on using Kurdish
combatants to fight the Iraqis around the rich
oilfields near Kirkuk.

Fragile Turkey is beset by a severe economic crisis.
Its majority Muslim population has just elected a
moderate Islamic Party, and the popular opposition to
the war is overwhelming.

The Turkish ruling class cannot afford another
insurrection from Kurdish nationalists, and the
Turkish military has no intention of watching a
Kurdish state take form to their South. Turkey, inside
its stable exterior, is becoming a powder keg, and
Kurdistan is a furnace.

The political implications reach deep into Europe,
where one year ago the US saw the admission of Turkey
as advancing in the EU. Germany, for instance, has a
substantial population of Turks and Kurds, and the
German government has a real and justifiable fear that
open warfare in Iraqi Kurdistan will spill over into
the streets of Germany.

To mollify the Kurds, the US must hold back the
Turkish military, and the Kurds will certainly not
abandon their dream for an independent Kurdistan. To
appease the Turkish military, the US will have to
disarm the Kurds. And the Kurds, even as they sign the
deal with the devil, know it. The Kurds have no
intention of relinquishing their weapons, their
autonomy or their dream of an independent nation. The
Turks have no intention of allowing it. The US cannot
have it both ways.

Stay tuned.

FULL

actually it’s hard to come up with suitable historical analogies for the US, since history doesn’t repeat itself — as wossname said, “but it rhymes.”

it’s odd … everyone sitting around watching the great spinning top (with buzz saw attachments and spikes) that is the US hegemonic machinery, weaving and teetering drunkenly but still spinning, wobbling erratically in destructive arcs as it slows down, but still spinning, and we all wonder which will be the last wobble, where will it fall, who will be crushed under it.

^^^
Although in this case, the US is analagous to the fascist invaders. Maybe The Stalingrad of US hegemony ?

Now the parliamentary elections will go forward with the Mahdi intact and immensely popularized, and Hakim’s forces substantially weakened.

Sadr continues to reach out to non-partitionist Sunnis with a message of Iraqi nationalism… and sovereignty. This brings the heliborne evacuation of the Green Zone — the Dunkirk of US hegemony — a day closer. There is certainlly panic in the backrooms.