Iranian Roulette

The very two-faced nature of Iran's activities toward Iraq have always been regarded as an issue, but for some reason it's not always clear what their intent is. To me, it seems fairly clear that Iranian diplomacy is very clearly aimed at undermining the American effort while at the same time attempting to win over the anti-American elements in Iraq. That would explain their ridiculous, ham-handed subterfuge regarding the speedboats, and offer some insight into this particular maneuver:

"Gen. David Petraeus disclosed the reversal to reporters after a meeting with President Bush who was visiting troops in Kuwait.

'In this year, EFPs have gone up, actually, over the last 10 days by a factor of two or three, and frankly we're trying to determine why that might be,' Petraeus said."

I'll wait for a trend to form before I say anything rash (it took months for Surge progress to become a trend for the media, so fair is fair), but I'm going to go way out on a limb and suggest that the Iranians did it.

Iranian ambitions toward Iraq have been fairly obvious: they want to kick the US out and at the very least establish an alliance with the Shia who will be in power should the US effort fail and the Iranian effort succeed - JAM, among others. Not surprisingly, they've been gaming at this by trying to attend diplomatic meetings with Iraqi officials, while stoking anti-American sentiment by trying to subvert the security gains or make the US look like liars (see the speedboat article). The entire point is to make the Anti-American populace of Iraq feel that Iran is trying to help them remove the Americans while at the same time generating some sort of good will with that same demographic - which unfortunately isn't a small one, as al-Sadr's popularity could attest to.

The Iranians are very clearly throwing their hat in with the malcontents of Iraq, and are probably doing so more aggressively because security keeps improving. Odds are, they've pushed up EFP importation to try to boost the perception that security is failing, because it isn't. The Iranians don't need an unfriendly state right next door, and they are fairly well afraid of American influence on the region - we do have them surrounded, which is something to bear in mind.

All that said, beyond diplomatic efforts that should be increased towards Iran, there's not much for it other than to keep our heads down and keep working. Things will eventually get good enough that subterfuge won't play, but for now, the solution to everything is the same one: keep moving the ball forward. Security, jobs, services, and information - let the Iranians try to cope with that.