By Cernig
Here's a story that isn't getting much play here in the U.S. as yet -
Iraq's national security adviser said on Friday he strongly opposed any military attack on Iran and, in contrast to the Bush administration's policy, said the option should not even be considered.
"Attacking Iran? I say a big fat no. It's a fatal mistake," Mowaffak al-Rubaie said. "It should never be an option at all."
...Rubaie said any attack on Iran would set the whole Middle East ablaze and Iraq would suffer most.
"It is not a strategy. It's a mistake of Chernobyl magnitude," he said, referring to the 1986 nuclear disaster in the former Soviet Union.
"The whole area will be in flames, and Iraq will be the battlefield for all this, and we will pay heavily," Rubaie said at an event in Washington hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
"What we need from the United States government is to engage seriously with Iran," he said.
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker has held several meetings with his Iranian counterpart over Tehran's role in Iraq, but Crocker said last month that the talks had yielded little.
Rubaie suggested the United States should engage in a broader dialogue with Iran to see what Tehran would be prepared to accept in return for acceding to U.S. demands.
"We need to discuss these issues seriously and we need to unify our position and coordinate our position -- we, the government of Iraq, with the United States government," he said. Meanwhile, all and sundry in the US continue to ignore Cheney's push for war with Iran - with his anonymous officials fanning out to push the "Syrian nukes" meme. (As a total aside - does anyone believe that Cheney's henchman David Addington doesn't infuence Mike McConnell's decisions?)
Likewise ignored in the U.S. is the telling fact that today's announcemnent of a cease-fire between the Sadrist militia and that of SCIRI is very much a victory for Iran.
With the cream of the U.S. Army sitting at the end of a tenuous supply line in Iraq, ignoring such considerations while banging the war drum is at best folly and certainly not something the Iranian leadership is likely to forget. |
|