Many observers have assumed that Saddam Hussein’s execution was yet
another Iraqi “milestone” timed to serve the needs of a struggling
American president. Milestone it was, but indications now suggest that
this was, on the contrary, a marker that Washington was desperate to
forestall. And for good reason: in pressing for Saddam’s execution, Iran
appears to have reached over America’s head and graphically demonstrated
that it is now the preeminent political force inside Iraq.

The Bush administration’s provocative posture towards Iran in recent
days could thus say more about what has already happened than about what
is yet to come. From the vantage point of the Oval Office, raising the
specter of a military confrontation with Iran may in fact seem
preferable to facing the greatest humiliation of all: the
acknowledgement of an Iranian victory in Iraq. Yet it now appears that
Saddam’s ignominious end was exactly that: victor’s justice — Iranian
victor’s justice. It is a message from Iran to Iraq’s Sunnis that it is
Iran, and not the U.S, that is now the dominant force in Iraq. Iran may
have been diplomatic enough to call Saddam’s execution a “victory for
the Iraqi people,” but the blunt message heard across the region is that
Iran will not relent in asserting its title as the region’s leading
power.

Soon after the hanging, fears from various elements in the region were
expressed by one Gulf commentator who wrote that “If Iranian hegemony is
really implanted [in Iraq] — and that phase has begun to be evident —
then it is incumbent on all the political activists in the country [to
realize] that we will be facing a ‘Sunni holocaust,’ and any whiff of
civil war will mean assured Sunni victims.” [Translation from [1]
Missing Links.] This commentator’s sentiment echoes another warning last
month made by Saudi cleric, Sheikh Musa bin Abdelaziz, who claimed that
“Iran has become more dangerous than Israel itself.”

One of Iraq’s Sunni political leaders, Salih Muahaed al-Mutleq,
unequivocally asserts that Iran had a decisive role in Saddam’s
execution. And while Sunni rumors about Iran’s role in the execution
circulate in Iraq and across the region, the circumstantial evidence
that Iran was behind Saddam’s end continues to mount. Furthermore, while
the execution caused a mini-firestorm in Washington and European
capitals, in Iraq the video of the hanging has widened the chasm between
Sunni and Shia. Saddam’s execution is now viewed much like Lenin’s
murder of the Romanov family, nearly one century ago — everyone now
knows there’s no going back.

In fact, as our correspondent in the city reports, Baghdad citizens
nearly universally agree, if there was any doubt about whether the
nation is in the middle of a bloody civil war, Saddam’s execution has
put those doubts to rest. Not only is the execution blamed by Sunnis and
moderate Shias alike on Nouri al-Maliki, the decision to execute the
former dictator on the Eid al-Adha is viewed as a direct insult to
Sunnis.

Salih Muahaed al-Mutleq, the leader of the Sunni-supported Iraqi
National Dialogue Front (the fifth largest political list in the Iraqi
National Assembly), said in a telephone interview that it was a mistake
to view Saddam’s execution “solely as an American decision.” This is, he
said, “a common mistake in Iraq and particularly among Sunnis. It is
also a mistake for the Americans to view the execution as somehow a
miscalculation. This was an Iranian decision and it was directed against
all Sunnis.”

Mutleq’s views might be dismissed as typically Sunni, but as one of the
chief negotiators for the Sunnis over the writing of the Constitution,
Mutleq is in a better position to understand Maliki, and the Dawa Party,
than (in his words) “the class of scholars in Washington who style
themselves Iraq experts.” Mutleq derives his credibility from his
history as an outspoken Saddam critic — albeit the leader of a community
in which Saddam might be expected to retain significant popularity. “I
am personally against Saddam and I wanted him to be tried and punished
for his crimes against the Iraqi people,” Mutleq said. “But the way that
Maliki behaved showed that the hanging was motivated by sectarian
hatreds. The significance of its impact on Iraqis and Sunnis cannot be
underestimated. It is now clear that it was implemented not by official
elements, in spite of Maliki’s approval, as much as it was by the
al-Mahdi criminal militias.”

Dr. Kheir al-Deen Haseeb, the Director General of the Center of Arab
Unity Studies in Baghdad — a man widely viewed, like Mutlek, as a
well-known Sunni anti-Saddam activist (he was imprisoned and tortured by
Saddam’s secret police before leaving his country) — also blames Maliki
for the way in which Saddam’s execution went forward. “Everyone focuses
on the cries of ‘Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada ,’” he says. “But the place
where Saddam was hanged was carefully chosen to show Sunnis that none of
them are safe. It was chosen because it is highly sectarian. The
Al-Kadimiyah area is fully Shia. Why would they take him there if this
was not a sectarian murder, but a legal execution? In normal cases all
executions take place in Baghdad Central Prison.” Haseeb is not only
outspoken in his condemnation of the execution, but enraged by those who
believe that the execution was “botched” — that it was a matter of
simply incompetence on the part of the Maliki government that
embarrassed them. “This was done quite purposely. There was no
embarrassment involved,” he says.

Haseeb also condemns the idea that the videotaping of the execution was
a matter of circumstance. “This was well-planned,” he says, “and was
carried out by a member of the Iraqi Parliament. The parliamentary
member who did this is Mariam al-Rayes.” (Repeated calls to Ms. Al-Rayes
for her response to this claim were not returned. We note that there is
some disagreement on this point, — it was earlier reported by [2]
Newsweek that the recording was made by Ali Al Massedy, Iraqi Prime
Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s official videographer.) Haseeb is quietly
certain that it was Al-Rayes, a former member of the National Assembly
and Nouri al-Maliki’s foreign policy advisor, who did the taping.
Al-Rayes is emerging as one of Prime Minister Maliki’s most important
advisors, and was outspoken in criticizing Arab governments who did not
quash protests that erupted following the execution. There should be no
period of mourning for the dictator, Al-Rayes said in the wake of the
execution, and those Arab nations who called for mourning should be
viewed as enemies of the Iraqi people. “This is a confiscation of the
rights of thousands of Iraqis who died under the oppression of the
[Saddam] regime,” she said.

Another hint of Iran’s role in the execution comes from a recent [3] BBC
report, stating that the execution took place “at an especially
constructed gallows at a compound that once served as the military
intelligence headquarters of the former regime. This was the building
where those accused of aiding Iraq’s former foe, Iran, were brought
during the Sunni ascendancy.”

The message for the Bush Administration should be clear: shifts in
military strategy cannot undo the fact that the political struggle for
Iraq has already been lost.