Iraq: Islamic Power: Intelligence: Is Iran Provoking the Unrest?

As they struggled to explain the unnerving drop-off in Shi'ite support for the occupation, some U.S. officials suggested a familiar foe might be helping to stoke the uprising. "We know the Iranians have been meddling," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters last week. "And it's unhelpful to have neighboring countries meddling in the affairs of Iraq."

The Bush Administration has long suspected Iran of trying to stir up opposition to U.S. forces in Iraq. Since the beginning of the occupation, the U.S. has monitored the moves of Iran's most powerful Shi'ite clerics, who supported the ouster of one longtime enemy, Saddam Hussein, but now bristle at the presence of another one, the U.S., on their doorstep. Muqtada al-Sadr, the anti-American Iraqi cleric who launched the Shi'ite revolt, has ties to some conservative Iranian clerics. Current and former U.S. officials say Iran has also funneled money and weapons to other Shi'ite militias in Iraq. U.S. intelligence officials believe Iranian spies continue to slip across Iran's 900-mile border with Iraq, melting in among the thousands of Iranians who have resumed pilgrimages to the Shi'ite holy sites in Iraq.

But is Iran actively aiding the revolt against the U.S.? That isn't clear. At the same press conference in which he accused Iran of "meddling," Rumsfeld said he wasn't aware of evidence that Iran was providing direct assistance to al-Sadr's militia. "We're watching it carefully," says a senior coalition military official. "We haven't seen a lot of evidence that suggests that." U.S. intelligence officials say the Tehran-funded Badr corps, the biggest Shi'ite militia, has stayed on the sidelines of the uprising, at least so far. Says a senior U.S. intelligence official: "The Iranians screw around, and they meddle, and they get involved, but I don't think they're instigating."

Iranian insiders say the regime doesn't want to see an unpredictable demagogue like al-Sadr amass power in Iraq. "Al-Sadr is too radical for a majority of Iranians," says a source in Tehran with close ties to Iranian President Mohammed Khatami. At the same time, a chaotic power vacuum could jeopardize Iranian hopes of profiting in the new Iraq. Iran sees Iraq as a critical trading pipeline with the rest of the Middle East, from which it has been locked out for decades.

According to U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials, Tehran's spymasters believe that once the transition to a new Iraqi government comes about, they will probably get what they want: the U.S. out and a pro-Iran, Shi'ite-led government in. Both the top Iraqi Shi'ite leader, Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani, and Iran's close ally on Iraq's interim Governing Council, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, will probably gain positions of influence after the U.S. hands over authority. A senior U.S. diplomat with experience in the region says Iran "will do everything it can to avoid confrontation."