Iraqi’s Trip to Iran Accents an Unsettling Friendship

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki is set to begin a state visit to neighboring Iran on Monday in a trip that would spotlight the close relations between the U.S.-backed government here and a Tehran regime at loggerheads with Washington.

The Iraqi leader plans a two-day visit “to discuss security and political matters and strengthen the relations between the two countries,” government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said..

Traditional enemies that warred in the 1980s, Iraq and Iran have grown close since a Shiite-led government with strong links to Tehran won electoral control of Iraq last year.

Shiite mullahs hold the reins of power in Iran, where Sunni Muslims -- the other major sect of Islam -- are a distinct minority.

Iraqi leaders such as President Jalal Talabani and Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih have made state visits to Iran on diplomatic and trade missions. As prime minister last year, Ibrahim Jafari also visited Tehran. The Iranian government sees a strategic and commercial advantage in courting the new Baghdad leadership.

Maliki’s visit would underscore an emerging regional Shiite alliance that deeply troubles the Bush administration and much of the Arab world.

Sunni Muslims rule most Arab lands, where Shiites often are restive minorities. Many Arab leaders fear growth of a Shiite crescent and militancy emanating from the newfound Iraq-Iran friendship.

The two nations’ embrace is an unintended consequence of the U.S.-led toppling of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim who repressed Iraq’s Shiite majority and viewed Persian Iran as a historic and bitter rival.

Shiites’ rise to power in Iraq is viewed as signaling a power shift in the Arab world with far-reaching consequences yet unknown.

Today, Iranian products line the shelves of Iraqi shops and Iranians join pilgrimages to Shiite shrines in the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala. Iranian currency even circulates in some Iraqi border towns.

Such commerce and interaction was unheard of during the Hussein regime, which tightly controlled Iranian visitors and influence.

Many Iraqi Shiite lawmakers, including Maliki, have warm relationships with Iran and took refuge there for many years from Hussein’s Baath Party dictatorship. Maliki, a longtime Islamist who lived for years in exile in Iran and Syria, is making his first visit to Iran since being elected prime minister in May.

From the standpoint of some in the Bush administration, Iran belongs to what the White House has called “an axis of evil” and is bent on acquiring nuclear weapons and arming militant Shiite groups such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah (Party of God), an Iranian client.

U.S. officials suspect that Iran has bankrolled Shiite politicians in Iraq and may be arming powerful Shiite militias, though proof of such aid has not emerged publicly. U.S. field commanders in Iraq regularly refer to armor-piercing roadside bombs as Iranian-made.

Nonetheless, some experts say the Bush administration probably has recognized that Baghdad and Tehran will inevitably grow closer and that fanning anti-Iranian sentiments here could be counterproductive. Moreover, some observers argue, Iran could eventually assist the U.S. agenda in creating a functional Iraqi government.

A greater Iranian role in stabilizing Iraq “seems to me to be a necessary step forward, even if that ultimately means considerable Iranian influence over the government in Baghdad,” said Charles A. Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University and former National Security Council director for European affairs. “That influence already exists, and it would be in America’s interest to try and support that relationship.”

But whether closer ties between Iraq and Iran will ultimately increase stability remains a question.

The Tehran-Baghdad thaw is a major irritant to Iraq’s Sunni minority, which fears an Iranian takeover. Iraq’s Sunni Arabs, from the man on the street to politicians and insurgents, routinely denounce certain Shiite politicians and clerics as pawns of Iran.

Despite the diplomatic ties, the two oil-rich nations have many differences, and each harbors a certain distrust of the other.

Their distinct ethnic makeups -- Iraq is Arab, Iran is Persian -- have contributed to their historical rivalries.

Iraqi officials have reported occasional skirmishes along the two nations’ long border. Iraq’s Ministry of Defense disclosed Friday that Iranian authorities had detained five Iraqi soldiers near the border; no other news was available Saturday on the five.

Meanwhile, sectarian violence continued in Iraq, though authorities reported no major incidents as hundreds of thousands of Shiites descended on the southern shrine city of Karbala for a religious celebration.

Eight people were reported slain in Baqubah, northeast of Baghdad, where, as in the capital, unrelenting civil conflict pits Shiites against Sunnis.

The Associated Press reported six bullet-riddled bodies were found on the streets of Mahmoudiya, a mixed Shiite-Sunni city south of Baghdad that has seen ferocious internecine violence.

And the design director of the state-funded Al Sabah newspaper, Abdul-Kareem Rubaie, was assassinated in a drive-by shooting in Baghdad. That ambush came a few days after a car bomb outside the newspaper’s offices killed two and wounded more than two dozen.

Scores of journalists and other media workers have been slain in the Iraq conflict.

Bombs and other attacks in Baghdad and the northern cities of Kirkuk and Baiji killed at least eight and wounded more than a dozen, authorities said.

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patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com

solomon.moore@latimes.com

Times staff writers Saif Rashee and Shamil Aziz and special correspondents in Baghdad, Tikrit and Baqubah contributed to this report.