CTA Symposium: Iraq v. Mahdi Army

Center for Threats Awareness ^ | April 7, 2008 | Ralph Peters, Bill Roggio, Michael Ledeen, and Omar Fadhil

[moderatewolverine]

The recent offensive operations taken by the Iraqi government against the Mahdi Army (Jaish al-Mahdi - JAM) of Muqtada al-Sadr have received much analysis and commentary since the onset. Each of the ensuing analysis and commentary offerings have agreed that the Maliki government’s military actions and the Mahdi Army response are revelatory in nature. But that is where the agreement seems to end, as there appears a divergence regarding precisely what has been revealed: Who has operated and enjoys the position of strength, Maliki and the Iraqi government and military forces, or the Mahdi Army forces of Muqtada al-Sadr, which operate at the behest of the Iranian Quds Force and General Qassem Suleimani?

We at the Center for Threat Awareness (CTA) believe the answers in the end are neither black nor white, but rather grey in nature. To engage the subject and make sense of the divergent analyses, ThreatsWatch has assembled a panel of experts.

Bill Roggio, Military Operations analyst of The Long War Journal, recently returned from another tour embedded with Coalition Forces in Iraq.

Ralph Peters, LTC (Ret.) US Army, Defense and National Security analyst and author who has reported from Iraq multiple times.

Dr. Michael Ledeen, Iran specialist and historian, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who writes on Iran at Faster, Please!.

And Iraqi citizens Mohammed and Omar Fadhil of ITM Blog (Iraq The Model), editors at Pajamas Media.

Gentlemen, thank you for joining us.

Bill Roggio, please open the discussion by briefly laying out the scope of operations and counter-operations taken recently, and tell us where things stand operationally at current.

[moderatewolverine]

A little dated, but still worth reading.

[wildbill]

Long read but worth it.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Just posted this:

Iraq says to document Iran "interference"

with an update from the Washington Post:

**************************EXCERPT************************

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh called reporters late Sunday night to clarify remarks he made at a news conference earlier in the day, when he appeared to say that there was no hard evidence that Iran was allowing weapons to come into Iraq. Dabbagh said his comments had been misinterpreted.

"There is an interference and evidence that they have interfered in Iraqi affairs," Dabbagh said in an interview arranged by a U.S. official. When asked how he would characterize the proof that Iranian weapons are flowing into Iraq, he said: "It is a concrete evidence."

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Yes,...a Great read...more should see it.

[Marine_Uncle]

Many important points brought out in the multi-interview. No one negated what the others had to say.
So many discussions could be started on so many things that where said. I would just high light the statement being made, where the Iranians would prefer to be bombed if it where to bring down the Mullahs, but not for the sake of disrupting their nuclear program. A majority of them just may not understand what having a breeder reactor of a type that can produce plutonium that can go into making atomic bombs, means in the reality of things. I wonder if most of them realize their leaders could have opted for the Russians to cell them fuel for their reactor(s), and haul off the spent fuel cells that would have contained the plutonium, that would have painted a much different picture. And of course that would then mean they don't need to create the technologies used to gas diffuse by centrifuge enriched uranium U235.
If Iran had played ball, things would have been quite a bit different for them.