Round 3 Transcript for Chuck Mertz

Chuck Mertz (CM): On the line with us right now, live from London, Patrick Cockburn makes his third appearance on This is Hell this year, to tell us about his most recent writing on the war in Iraq.

Patrick is the middle-east corrospondent for the London based newspaper "The Independent". You can check out their website at www.independent.co.uk. He was one of only a handful of journalists who remained in Baghdad throughout the war.

Patrick is the author of "The Occupation", nominated for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award for non-fiction. Over the last couple of weeks he was in Iraq and posted numerous articles at his brother's website, counterpunch.org, as well as on "The Independent".

Patrick, it’s great to have you back on the show.

Patrick Cockburn (PC): Well, thank you for having me.

CM: It’s great to hear your voice too, this week... well, let me get to this whole situation with the meeting that happened in Baghdad this week. The United States met with Iran, which is very unprecedented, as to the future of security within Iraq. They came up with a security agreement in order to work together to stop the Sunni insurgency. Does this mean that the United States and Iran are now allies in Iraq?

PC: I doubt it. Maybe they should be, but the meeting began with sort of a shouting match... the administration in Washington is still denouncing Iran as supplying arms to Shia insurgents and generally causing mayhem in Iraq. So maybe it’s probably in the interest of the U.S. to have an agreement with Iran, but we’re a long way from it yet.

CM: How would such an agreement affect relations with Saudi Arabia, seeing as how Saudi Arabia has been reportedly providing funding for the Sunni resistance?

PC: Well, you know, that question goes right to the heart of the war in Iraq, and I don’t think it’s really much understood outside Iraq. There’s a very bizarre aspect to American policy which is, on the one hand, the U.S. is fighting a Sunni insurgency, and at the same time it is blaming this on Iran, which is Shia, 95% Shia.

In fact, it’s fairly obvious that the main supporters of the insurgency are Saudi Arabia. Going by the number of people arrested, half of the suicide bombers come from Saudi Arabia. Much of the money comes from Saudi Arabia. So this is quite easy to demonstrate that the administration has been completely, almost completely silent on this, until only occasionally mentioning it.

So at the moment the US supports the Iraqi government, and funny enough, Iran supports the Iraqi government as well. But they‘re in contention as to who should be the major influence there. But in the long term, I don’t think you can have peace without an agreement between the U.S. and Iran.

CM: What impact does this agreement this week have on any potential military strike by the United States that has concerned so many people here in the United States by the U.S. against suspected Iranian nuclear sites?

PC: I suppose it’s a small positive indicator, but certainly sitting in Iraq, the impression I get is that the war that’s going on at the moment is within the administration as to whether they should have a strike or not, that they haven’t made up their mind. If they do go for a strike, then the sort of agreement we had this week will just go by the way.

CM: According to BBC reports – because you wrote that Turkey’s prime minister has threatened the invasion of Northern Iraq if talks fail with Iraq and the U.S. on curbing the activities of Turkish-Kurd guerrillas. But according to BBC reports, newly elected Prime Minister Reccip Tyyep Erdogan, of the Justice and Development Party, won partly because of the support he received from Kurds after saying during his campaign that he would not invade Kurdistan to go after the Kurdish Workers Party, which is viewed as a terrorist organization that has done incursions into Turkey.

So what is the likelihood, now that Erdogan is the Prime Minister of Turkey, for a potential invasion of Kurdistan?

PC: I think the chances have gone down a little since the election. Before the election, the Turks were talking this up a lot, not just the political leaders, but the army, and they were doing it every day. The Iraqi Kurds were getting very nervous that the Turkish army was going to come across the border, the Foreign Minister of Iraq, Asha Zibarri, said, ‘Look, there are about 140,000 Turkish troops amassed just on the other side of the border.’

Now what they were saying-- what the Iraqi Kurdish leaders were saying at the time is what’s really critical is how the Turkish Prime Minister and his Party do in the election if they lose a lot of votes, because they feel that other parties have beaten the patriotic drum, have said they’re soft on following the PKK (that’s the Turkish-Kurdish guerrillas who have bases in Northern Iraq) following them into Iraq. Then post-election this is all pretty complicated – post-election they may feel they’ve got to show how tough they are, how patriotic they are, and launch an invasion.

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