Are reports that Iranian influence in Iraq is growing by the day, true? According to columnist Abdullah al-Etabi of Iraq’s Sotal Iraq, the Iraqi people find the assertions of Iranian President Ahmadinejad that the two countries have a ‘common enemy’ offensive, and he painstakingly outlines why Iran and Iraq do not share a common enemy, and the many ways in which the interests and values of the two countries differ.
For Sotal Iraq, Abdullah al-Etabi writes in small part:
Statements made by Iranian President Ahmadinejad during a press conference with Minister of Education Khodair al-Khozaei have triggered a wave of astonishment among Iraqis, particularly when Ahmadinejad spoke of how our two countries face a “common enemy.”
We don’t know what the Iranian president bases his opinions on. But it is clear that the new Iraq is distinguished by a political experience completely different from that in Iran. Iraq is a pluralistic county where a consensus must be found among different blocs, parties and currents in society. We have an active National Assembly with a boisterous political opposition and a diverse media that includes dozens of newspapers and satellite channels.
Who is this “common enemy” referred to by the Iranian president? Is it, as Iran claims, the West or the Zionists, both of which exchange ambassadors with Iraq, train its officers and upgrade its military and oil installations? Or is the common enemy the Gulf States and Turkey, with which Iraqi trade has reached record levels? Or is the common enemy the people in the region who have begun to raise their voices against the glaring contradiction of Iran’s foreign policy, which stands with the Assad regime in its savage repression of freedom in Syria?
I think the statements of President Ahmadinejad represent a bald-faced attempt to draw Iraq into Iran’s extremist trench with the goal of making Iraq foot the bill for Iran’s foreign policy hostility toward the West and the United States.
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