"It’s almost as absurd as Ahmadi-Nejad blaming the evil Zionists and Americans for it."

Far more absurd. Try it the other way around, if somebody blew up the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem would you suspect an international zionist organisation that was trying to cause trouble, or somebody who wasn't zionist at all?

If anybody in iran did this, and it ever got out, they'd be in severe trouble in iran.

So, is there actual evidence about al Zarqawi or is that just the natural suspect? They're the ones we want to blame for anything that goes wrong. Anybody else, we might need to negotiate with and ally with somewhat. But these guys are our all-purpose bad guys that we'll never have to be friendly with no matter what.

Posted by: J Thomas at March 2, 2006 08:03 PM | Permalink to this comment

Agreed that the chances of Iranian involvement are slim, but I suspect that one of the things driving the speculation is the apocalyptic tendencies that have manifested at late among the Hojjatieh movement adherents in the Iranian government of whom Ahmadinejad is among. The problem with this view is that it's essentially a reverse Khatami - when Khatami was in power, Western observers tried to argue that he had the power to implement real Gorbachev-style reforms in the Iranian system. He didn't, but now people are reading that same power into Ahmadinejad while ignoring the lessons we learned with Khatami.

On a more practical matter, there is also the issue that Iran's preferred proxy Sadr has benefited enormously from the recent violence and according to most media reports his followers have been behind the majority of it while he sits back and piously denies any involvement, enabling him to have his cake and eat it too. That, however, doesn't require a conspiracy to explain, just simple opportunism.

Posted by: Dan Darling at March 2, 2006 09:17 PM | Permalink to this comment

I look forward to your piece. I'll be sure to read it and possibly argue when it gets posted.

An Iranian intelligence officer in the '90s admitted to being connected to the group that bombed the holy shrine of the 8th Imam. That's why I wouldn't be surprised. The risks are enormous, but so are the rewards...

Posted by: Robert Mayer at March 2, 2006 10:20 PM | Permalink to this comment

I agree with Robert. I look forward to your post, but Sadr's post-attack grab for power seemed to well organized, too pre-planned. When Al Queda attacks it goes for people, like the attacks during Ashura a couple of years ago. Iran also has a history of doing stuff like this and you don't need Robert's connections to former Persian inteligence officers to know it.
It's just the same as Hitler burning down the Reichstag, it provides Sadr with a pretext to increase the attacks on Sunni's, be more open with his militia, and present himself as Mr. Law and Order (and Mr. Peacemaker).
I'm sure Iran figures that once it has total mastery of the southern Iraq (and perhaps Bagdad) there'll be enough oil money to build a bigger and shinier new shrine.

Posted by: ElamBend at March 2, 2006 10:49 PM | Permalink to this comment

_If_ it is true that the "the explosives were arranged to collapse the dome while leaving the critical tombs of the Eleventh and Tenth Imams unharmed," http://www.spectator.org/blogger.asp?BlogID=2022

Then it would appear to have been done by Shi'ites. I can't imagine any non-Shi'ites making that effort.

Posted by: PD Shaw at March 2, 2006 11:08 PM | Permalink to this comment

Robert, the situation you describe about the 8th imam looks vastly more complicated on a quick search.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Mujahedin_of_Iran

Here's MEK, which describes itself as muslim and marxist but which in practice is opposed to fundamentalist islam and opposed to simple-minded marxism. They announced they bombed the shrine. Later a persian intelligence officer who was arrested for assassinating opposition figures admitted under interrogation that his group had contacts with MEK.

This does not sound like strong evidence of iranian government action.

_IF_ the American Spectator speculations turn out true, that's compatible with action by agents of the iranian government. But consider their track record.

For that matter iran has much closer connection to SCIRI than Sadr.

Posted by: J Thomas at March 3, 2006 02:34 AM | Permalink to this comment

"For that matter iran has much closer connection to SCIRI than Sadr."

as i hope Dan will explain, its far more complex than that.

Posted by: liberalhawk at March 3, 2006 04:26 PM | Permalink to this comment

There are factions within SCIRI as well as within Badr and I think that calling all of them Iranian stooges at this point is highly misleading. Keep in mind that it was Jaafari, who heralds from Dawaa (one of the other two parties often cited as an Iranian pawn) that said that Iraq would remain neutral even if US attacked the Iranian nuclear facilities. Moreover, SCIRI is currently a major player in Iraq and has desire to upset that situation by stirring up violence. If things do go straight to hell there, then they lose all their electoral gains, pure and simple.

Posted by: Dan Darling at March 3, 2006 06:17 PM | Permalink to this comment

I suspect the point is that the Iranians have good relations with just about all the Iraqi Shia factions, as well as some of the Kurdish factions - and whatever the outcome of the haggling over the central government, the entente cordiale that began to develop after Jafaari came to power will continue; that's not the worst outcome in the world, even if Jafaari is a Chomsky fan!

Insofar as this is not the Bush administration's preferred outcome, as it conflicts with larger strategic aims, we're currently stuck with a repeat of the 2005 scenario when there was a full court press to pull of the arithmetically impossible feat of maintiaining Allawi in power. Obviously, this created a vacuum in the February to April period last year, which enabled the insurgency to flourish; the same thing is happening again, and it's in this vacuum that attacks on sacred sites can have highly leveraged effects.

The al Askariya attack will never be claimed - it's an "information bomb" that allows every sectarian/ideological group to view the act through the prism of its own hostility, propels the process of social fragmentation and adds further impetus to the cycle of retaliatory killing. Insofar as it scuppers the formation of a government by pulling apart the Shia and religious Sunni religious factions that could be drafted in to the government process via Sadr's mediation, this serves the extreme Jihadi/Baathist agendas. Al Qaeda is sophisticated enough to incorporate elements of ambiguity into its actions - they're multi-dimensional killers, have specific goals in mind, and know how to "play" people.

Contrary to the Spectator report, Jafaari was quoted after visiting the site as to there being extensive damage to the tombs of the imams.

Posted by: dan at March 3, 2006 06:57 PM | Permalink to this comment

It is known for certain that Zarqawi has been to Iran and has received support from some faction or another in Iran. Therefore there remains the posibility that Iran helped Zarqawi bomb the Samarra Mosque. The odds, while slight, are somewhere between zero and something higher than zero. Any other assertion, in the absence of any facts one way or the other, is absurd.

Posted by: Kenneth at March 3, 2006 08:11 PM | Permalink to this comment

"Insofar as it scuppers the formation of a government by pulling apart the Shia and religious Sunni religious factions that could be drafted in to the government process via Sadr's mediation,"

See this is the meme that seems so weird to me - the shia doing the most reprisal killings arent the Badr brigades, its the Mahdi army. Does Sadr really have no control over his followers?

Seems to me that the game now isnt putting Allawi in power as PM, its breaking the UIA, and getting a coalition of SCIRI, the Sunnis, Kurds, and Allawi. Allawi maybe as Interior Minister.

The problem then becomes not the parliamentary math, but the situation on the streets, where the govt is then opposed by both the AQ/baathist insurgency, and by the Sadrists, and the Interior ministry forces are not immediately useful. It becomes US troops plus the Iraqi Army against the insurgents and the Sadrists.

Posted by: liberalhawk at March 3, 2006 08:52 PM | Permalink to this comment

It sounds like almost all of the reasoning here is coming from a few facts and a lot of reasonable assumptions.

Who did the first bombing? People want to assume al Zarqawi/al Qaeda because that's the sort of thing those crazed killers would do. But there's no evidence at all about who actually did it.

Based on who benefits, Mossad is at least as good a bet. The main reason to suppose it wasn't Mossad is that they ought to be deferring to US interests. However, if they have taken a cold hard rational look at the likelihoods, they've probably decided that the USA is going to fail and they need to look after themselves as best they can.

Then there's the question who did reprisals. If al Sadr successfully restrained his followers from doing reprisals, it would follow that the reprisals against sunni areas close to Sadrist areas were done by somebody else to make Sadr look bad. Any confirmation about who did it? No, just reasonable assumptions based on location.

Then there's the assumption that USA is trying to disrupt the democratic process and disenfranchise the assemblymen who won the majority. What possible value could that get us? And yet it sounds like the sort of thing we'd try....

Too many logical assumptions. Not enough data.

Posted by: J Thomas at March 3, 2006 10:36 PM | Permalink to this comment

I don't know who did it, and I'm not going to speculate as to who did it. But I know that if I were an Iraqi politician who put national unity first, I'd sure as hell be pointing the finger at Iran right now, evidence or no evidence. Better to have everyone pissed at Iran than pissed at the the Sunnis.

-Dan Larsen

Posted by: Dan Larsen at March 4, 2006 01:05 AM | Permalink to this comment

Dan, consider that most Shia parties are on good terms with iran.

Wouldn't it make more sense to point the finger at israel, whom everybody already hates?

Which in fact some iraqi politicians have been doing.

Posted by: J Thomas at March 4, 2006 03:25 AM | Permalink to this comment

it probbaly wasn't Iran,

but it probably was Zarqawi.

Do I have evidence? not direct evidence, how could I? But given that Zarqawi has I believe openly stated a goal of pursuing civil war in Iraq - that's what this action achieves. And he benefits the most from it - that nascent Sunni-Alqueda split will slam shut if the pressure on sunnis get too intense.

Posted by: glasnost at March 4, 2006 02:59 PM | Permalink to this comment

it probaly wasn't Iran,

but it probably was Zarqawi.

Do I have evidence? not direct evidence, how could I? But given that Zarqawi has I believe openly stated a goal of pursuing civil war in Iraq - that's what this action achieves. And he benefits the most from it - that nascent Sunni-Alqueda split will slam shut if the pressure on sunnis gets too intense.

Posted by: glasnost at March 4, 2006 03:01 PM | Permalink to this comment

As someone who doesn't have the intimate knowledge of all the players in this drama, but who operates on what I call "first principles", I think some of the posters are casting their nets too far. We have a large number of factions even within the Kurd, Shia, and Sunni groups, each of whom has a game plan that intends the accumlation of power and influence. Allegiances within this brew are going to be transient and practical. The enemy of my enemy is my friend - for the time being. As there is a great deal at stake and the outcome uncertain, I think it foolish to impose an overriding logic to the analysis. Moreover, we are starved for facts. I have seen no reliable information of what was and what was not destroyed at the shrine and the only consistent morsel of information was that no one was killed and it apparently wasn't a suicide bombing. I would add to that that this was not a structure built with all the safeguards of the Uniform Building Code and hence it probably didn't take all that much planning nor that much in explosive power to do the deed.

In the multiplayer political chess game that is ongoing, it is not above any of the players from Sadr to AQ to some small faction that was feeling marginalized to have pulled this off. I suspect that the truth will come out eventually. However, I don't think at this juncture the focus should be on who did it - it doesn't really matter. What does matter is that the reaction was relatively contained and it did not precipitate the civil war that its perpetrators probably hoped. (We certainly can rule out the possibility that the perpetrator was attempting to show the world that society in Iraq could withstand this outrage!) Yes, there were opportunists who have taken advantage of the chaos to perpetrate revenge killings and I suppose there were some zealot hotheads who did precisely what was intended by the hotheads. But in the larger picture, the intended effect did not materialize.

In my mind this focuses on what will be the ultimate issue in pacifying this country: either eliminating the private militias or incorporating them in the national security forces. Let us not forget that the prelude to the Nazi takeover of Germany was the presence of private armies that openly marched through the streets and acted to advance the will of the political contenders. Can anyone imagine such a private army existing within any of the true democracies ? (Don't tell me about the boy scouts, please.) This is the heart of the problem. So long as these private armies exist, they can forge their separate, private peace deals with the insurgency - something that I believe has sustained the insurgency as much as any foreign support. The enemy of my enemy again. . .

So, bending our individual or collective minds in pursuit of the answer of who blew up which shrine is fun, but not particularly productive. Iran will meddle. Sadr will make his private deals in his quest to supplant Sistini. The Kurds will keep their eyes on their de facto independence and on Kirkurk. And the Sunnis will try to figure out where they fit in the larger scheme. Meanwhile, each faction within each of those factions will make their short and long term deals which may not make sense to us, and may not make sense in the bigger picture, and might not make sense in the rear view mirror some years from now. But which make perfect sense to the perpetrators in real time.

Michael

Posted by: Michael Pecherer at March 4, 2006 06:35 PM | Permalink to this comment

Here is a very important story on a statement by Gen. George Casey on the subject of this thread.

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20060303-114405-5545r.htm

I stumbled upon it when, after the above post, I jumped over to the Powerline blog. It make two very important points: (1) the press grossly exaggerated the degree of sectarian violence after the shrine demolition, and (2) that the presence of the private militias contributes much to the problems at hand. As it supports my thesis, I am adding it as a postscript to my post above. I am sorry, but I don't know how to make an active link. If anyone would like to edify me on that score, please email me the instructions at michael@pecherer.com.

Thanks

Michael

Posted by: Michael Pecherer at March 4, 2006 06:47 PM | Permalink to this comment

Greg, your site overcame my html deficiencies. Happy days.

Michael

Posted by: Michael Pecherer at March 4, 2006 06:48 PM | Permalink to this comment