"The Iraq war has featured a changing cast of U.S. adversaries. Saddam Hussein. Sunni insurgents. Foreign fighters. Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.In the latest shift, the two top U.S. officials in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, focused in this week's congressional testimony on "special groups" — Iranian-backed militias — as the greatest long-term threat to Iraqi democracy.
On Thursday, President Bush endorsed the officials' troop recommendations and again recast the enemy. Iraq, he said toward the end of his speech, is "the convergence point for two of the greatest threats to America in this new century: al-Qaeda and Iran."
Dealing with Iran, and the militias it backs, is not as straightforward as dealing with al-Qaeda. Iran is a country, not a terror network. It's a rising power in the region, vying for influence with the United States. It has the potential to make great mischief, both in Iraq and through its sponsorship of Middle East militants.
In fact, the United States and Iran are facing off in a duel almost as complex as that between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. This requires a whole range of tools, beyond Bush's bellicose warning on Thursday that Tehran "has a choice to make." One key is to reinforce the sense of nationalism among Iraqi Shiites, many of whom are wary of too much Iranian influence, don't want to be sucked into the extremism of Iran's ayatollahs and have lingering resentment from the Iran-Iraq war."
This article shows the United States' growing fear of Iran's presence in Iraq. Though Iran has been instigating Iraqi's against the United States, it will not be as sraightforward it was for the United States to control Iran as it was to control Iraq.
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