Iran Won’t Let This Election Slip
In the thick of the war in the 1980s, if you had told an Iraqi citizen that, within a generation, his nation would be allied with his nation’s archenemy, Iran, he would have strenuously, violently objected. Nevertheless, here we are.
Iraq plans to stage an election in 11 days. Iran is wrapping up a masterful strategy to turn that election in its favor. This should bring Tehran’s long-held dream of transforming Iraq into a client state one big step closer to fulfillment.
It’s been a long road. That war in the ’80s was the project of a regime dedicated to spreading the Islamic Revolution. After cementing power in 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini turned his extreme version of Islam into state policy, writing into the Iranian constitution the nation’s obligation to “constantly strive to bring about the political, economic and cultural unity of the Islamic world.” Neighboring Iraq—with its majority Shiite population and its 900-mile border with Iran, not to mention its tremendous oil wealth and its relatively diminutive size (one fourth Iran’s geography; one third Iran’s population)—was a natural starting point.
Khomeini saw Saddam Hussein as the primary obstacle impeding the revolution. He directly appealed to Iraqis to boot him, calling him a “puppet of Satan.” Saddam, feeling threatened, responded by invading Iran on Sept. 22, 1980. Khomeini viewed Hussein’s assault as “a rebellion of blasphemy against Islam.” The resulting war was brutal, devastating and inconclusive, costing each side about a million people and half a trillion dollars, and yielding no gains. When a UN ceasefire brought it to a standstill in 1988, Khomeini’s military was sapped of strength and morale, and his country lay in economic ruin.
Still, his regime never gave up its plans for Iraq. It simply began working an alternative plan—a plan that involved what Middle East analyst Alireza Jafarzadeh calls “a complex program of infiltration at every level.” Iran poured resources into trying to destabilize Iraq from within by penetrating it economically, politically, religiously and socially, as well as through propaganda, intelligence gathering and terrorism. Hussein had turned Iraq into a blood enemy, and the Islamic Republic wanted nothing more than to see him gone.
The regime was given an important assist in 1991. After Saddam tried to replenish his depleted war chest by invading Kuwait, a U.S.-led coalition punished him. Not only did the Gulf War diminish Saddam’s resources, it also punctured the secular Arab nationalist movement he had symbolized. The resulting ideological vacuum left plenty of room for Islamic extremism to flourish.
And flourish it did. Iran looked to seize the leadership of the burgeoning movement by stepping up its support for terrorist groups throughout the region. The trend caught the eye of Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry. “Much of the world is unaware of what a powerful and dangerous force the Islamic camp is becoming,” he wrote in the July 1992 issue. “Iran is a natural leader for many of them today. Iran also has a goal to lead this group.” In July 1993, he suggested the possibility of Iran taking over “control [of] the oil of other Middle East oil producers.”
In December 1994, Mr. Flurry wrote an article with this provocative headline: “Is Iraq About to Fall to Iran?” “The most powerful [Muslim] country in the Middle East is Iran,” he wrote. “Can you imagine the power they would have if they gained control of Iraq, the second-largest oil-producing country in the world?”
Remarkable question. For nearly two decades now, the Trumpet has repeated it, consistently warning of an Iranian takeover of Iraq. Why? Because of a forecast that goes back much, much further. Believe it or not, advance news of Iran’s success in bringing Iraq to heel was recorded three millennia ago. More on that in a moment.
In 2003, the U.S. handed Iran an astonishing gift. In deposing Saddam Hussein, not only did America eliminate the primary obstacle impeding Iran’s revolution, it also eliminated the only force holding together the ethnic, national and religious patchwork that is Iraq. Iran seized the opportunity. “Immediately after the coalition invasion of March 2003, Iran’s leaders exploited the situation and launched a no-holds-barred mission to control Iraq’s elections, militias, and power structure at every level,” Jafarzadeh wrote. Thanks to the U.S.-led invasion, “The door to Iraq flung open, [and] they leaped at their chance to fulfill their long-held goal of installing an Islamic Republic in Iraq that mirrored their own” (The Iran Threat).
This strategy has been an enormous success. By 2005, when Iraq held its first national elections, the depth of Iran’s political and social penetration had become quite apparent. After Tehran’s brazen campaign to influence the election—deluging Shiite political funds with cash, coaching Iran-sympathetic candidates, buying off unemployed Iraqis, getting Shiite clergy to insist their followers vote, even sending as many as half a million Iranians across the border to cast ballots—a Shia-led alliance grabbed just shy of an outright majority of parliamentary seats. One hard-line Iranian newspaper called it “the creation of the first Islamic state in the Arab world.”
As impressive as that victory was, however, Iran is determined to do even better in the coming election. Last summer, Tehran rallied Iraqi Shiites to form a single political bloc, the Iraqi National Coalition (inc). It poured money into the project, using hundreds of front companies. It also flooded Iraq with Iraqis, including “professional agitators,” who had fled to Iran during Saddam’s reign, and put tens of thousands, including some inside the government, on the payroll of the Revolutionary Guard Corp.
The prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, tried to play tough with Iran and opted not to join the inc. Iran responded in December by sending its troops to occupy an Iraqi oil well—a stern reminder of its ability to create havoc within Iraq at will. Maliki subsequently submitted, agreeing to join his party in coalition with the inc.
To further ensure a Shiite victory, last month Iraq’s unelected electoral commission banned about 500 Sunni candidates from the election, eliminating those most opposed to Iranian influence in Iraq. Joe Biden visited Iraq to urge Iraqi officials to reconsider, but after an appeals court overturned the ban, the Maliki government overruled the court and then blasted the U.S. for interfering. The episode vividly illustrated just how weak America’s influence in Iraq has become—and how undeniably strong Iran’s. Last week, America’s commanding general in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, revealed that Ahmed Chalabi, who controls the electoral commission, is linked to Iran’s Guard Corps.
Now a major Sunni political bloc says it will boycott the election. This will guarantee a Shiite landslide victory—and also, probably, a spike in Sunni violence. The Sunnis have been checkmated, and they know it.
America has also been checkmated—and Iran knows it. The Obama administration is escalating the war in Afghanistan and desperately wants out of Iraq. It plans to pull nearly half of its 96,000 troops this summer, and Robert Gates said Monday that only a “considerable deterioration” in Iraqi security would delay that timetable. America’s exit—and Iran’s triumph—is inevitable.
Khomenei described the Iran-Iraq War as a divine blessing that would help spread the revolution. That proved false. But surely he would be ecstatic to see what those carrying his mantle today have achieved: a successful multi-front offensive—ironically, with the unwitting aid of the U.S.—aimed at fulfilling his dream of bringing Iraq under Iranian control.
And that 3,000-year-old advance news of this development shows that there has, in fact, been divine involvement. The Trumpet’s interest in this trend centers on the prophecy of Daniel 11:40—a prophecy to unfold “at the time of the end”—our time today. It describes a geopolitical power, “the king of the south,” involved in a critical sequence of end-time events. From the early 1990s, Mr. Flurry began to see that Iran, leading the radical Islamic camp, would fulfill that role. That combined with an even earlier prophecy, recorded in Psalm 83, indicating that Iraq would be aligned with that power—and, thus, that a dramatic political upheaval within Iraq such as we’ve witnessed over the past decade was inevitable. (This remarkable passage is explained in our booklet The King of the South.)
Observers are saying that, given Iran’s expanding influence and America’s imminent withdrawal, Iraq’s future is in doubt. Not true. It is sure. Watch it unfold, and acknowledge how it dramatically proves the reliability of biblical prophecy!