Shia awakening to problem with Iran

John Podhoretz:

COULD the surprising change in the worldview of Sunni Iraqis formerly hostile to the United States - the decision of tribes in a province we all but wrote off a year ago to ally with us against al-Qaeda-in-Iraq - be duplicated elsewhere in Iraq?

And could it be the way for the United States to score an unlikely quiet victory against Iran?

A senior administration official says it's already happening - following the model of the revolution in consciousness in Anbar province.

"You're seeing it start in Diyala," the official claims, referring to the province that runs from the northern outskirts of Iraq's capital, Baghdad, to the Syrian border. "And you're seeing it in some neighborhoods in Baghdad."

The official was speaking here solely about Sunni Iraqis - followers of one branch of Islam who make up only about 20 percent of Iraq's population but held most of the power in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

It was Sunnis who populated the anti-U.S. insurgency in the wake of Saddam's overthrow - and then found themselves swamped, bullied and terrorized by foreign fighters imported into Iraq by al Qaeda. In Anbar province, Sunni tribes realized that they'd joined up with a gang whose purpose was to create chaos in Iraq no matter the cost to Sunnis, and that they had better rethink their alliances.

This is clearly the model the United States is now pursuing across the Sunni triangle with Sunni Iraqis.

Now the question is: Could this change in perspective be duplicated among Shiite Iraqis who are allied not with al Qaeda but with neighboring Iran?

Could Shiites in Iraq be brought to see the Shiite nation of Iran not as a friendly guardian of their interests but rather as a foreign meddler whose true purpose is to sow dissension, poverty and war in Iraq?

...

Another senior administration official offered this hopeful nugget: "You're also beginning to see a phenomenon which we would want to encourage. If you can get Shiites to see Iranian-backed JAM special groups the way the Sunni in Anbar see al Qaeda, you may be able" to encourage Shiites to turn on Iran the way the Sunnis turned on al Qaeda.

If this is a realistic prospect, it is clearly the means to an astonishing turnabout in fortune not only for us but for the Iraqi people. And a potent defeat not only for al Qaeda but for Iran.

I think we are already starting to see this, and we will see more of it as the US turns its focus to these groups with the defeat of al Qaeda. Once they recognize that Iran is using them as a pawn in their war with the US they will be as angry with Iran as the Sunnis are with al Qaeda.