NCRI – Iranian regime’s involvement in Samarra bombing in Iraq was studied by Investment Business Daily in an analysis below:
Iraq: So who bombed the Golden Mosque? Sunnis are pointing the finger at Tehran, while Tehran blames the U.S. The deeper question is this: Who has the most to fear from Iraqi democracy?
It may be years, if ever, before the case is closed to everyone’s satisfaction on the Feb. 22 blast at the Shiite shrine in Samarra. Meantime, we’ll hear plenty of theories, from the plausible to the paranoid. Here are two.
The first, which seems widely held among Iraq’s Sunnis and at least some secular Shiites, is that Iran did it. This week, the deputy governor of the Iraqi province of Salah ad-Din, the heavily Sunni area where the Samarra shrine is found, said preliminary investigations “point to the involvement of Iran’s Intelligence Ministry.”
Far more imaginative is the theory being pushed aggressively by Iran’s government and press organs. In this version of events, the bombing is a U.S.-Zionist-British plot, designed to further the cause of dividing and conquering Iraq’s Muslims.
According to the Iranian newspaper Jomhuri-ye Eslami, the Americans were displeased with the outcome of Iraq’s elections, so they “tried to attack the cultural basis of Muslim nations, namely Islam.” This conspiracy started with the “publication of insolent cartoons” in Denmark. It continued with the outrage at Samarra.
Gholamali Haddad-Adel, speaker of Iran’s Parliament, explained things this way: “Following the repeated failure of the occupiers of Iraq during the elections in the country, as well as the whole region, it can easily be understood that the perpetrators’ objective had been to disturb Iraq’s domestic situation and prevent peace and stability in the country.”
But to what end? Here Tehran’s logic self-destructs. The most likely beneficiary of a disunited Iraq would be its rival and neighbor, Iran. So if the Iranian tale is true, the U.S. and the mullahs are working together to promote Iran’s hegemony in the Mideast. This story is so bizarre that we wonder why Tehran was so quick to promote it. Is the regime covering its tracks by playing on Middle Eastern obsessions about supposed U.S. and Israeli conspiracies?
The theory that Iran engineered the shrine attack has problems of its own. It serves Sunni interests, and one normally would not suspect Shiite theocrats in an act of vandalism against one of Shi’a Islam’s holy sites.
On the other hand, the attack was carried out with a precision — targeting a golden dome built in 1905 — that suggests the attackers sought to provoke Shiite outrage without destroying the oldest and holiest parts of the shrine.
Also, it was clearly meant to touch off violence against the Sunnis. And who stood to benefit from that? The real winners are the militiamen and other troublemakers on the Shiite side who could tap the rage to boost their own power. Maybe Iran or its allies didn’t bomb the dome. But if they didn’t, the act worked in their favor.
At least it worked up to a point. As we write this, the specter of a sectarian war in Iraq has faded though daily acts of terrorism continue. Most Shiites and Sunnis seem to realize they are better off united than at each other’s throats.
It also must have occurred to them that not all their neighbors wish them well. Iran’s dictatorship has plenty of reason to fear a united Iraq capable of standing up to military threats and setting a contagious example of freedom. Iraqis may not know who bombed the dome, but they’re learning who their real enemies are.
