NEWS

WIRES

OTHER

Iran Policy Committee: Iraq Vote Overshadowed by Fraud

According to R. Bruce McColm, former Executive Director of Freedom House, IPC Board of Directors, "Early indications are that Prime Minister Maliki's State of Law coalition is neck and neck with former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's Iraqiya list. Within the Iraqi National Alliance, a Shiite coalition with support from Tehran, followers of Moqtada al Sadr fared well, but the Alliance as a whole appears to be third, a significantly weaker position from its current parliamentary share of seats."

According to IPC President and former member of the National Security Council staff in the Executive Office of the President, Professor Raymond Tanter, "Secular parties wish to create an Iraq that is nationalist with less sectarian strife; but losers inspired by Tehran seek to overturn the will of the Iraqi people through fraud. Ayad Allawi's Iraqiya list is comprised of a broad range of secular Shiites and Sunnis; Allawi's base of support consists mainly of Iraqis who reject the religious extremism of many of the other electoral choices. But the Iraqi National Alliance is an amalgam of Shiite extremists supported by Tehran."

General Thomas McInerney (Lt Gen, US Air Force Ret, chair of the IPC Advisory Council), said, "There is overwhelming evidence that Prime Minister Maliki's State of Law party, as well as Tehran's political proxies in Iraq, members of the Iraqi National Alliance, stole votes. Saleh al Mutlaq, a moderate Sunni banned from running by Shiite hard-liners, said, 'The votes belonging to Iraqiya have been transferred to the other lists, i.e. the rival lists, specifically to the State of Law list.'"

According to Professor Tanter, "During a 2007 interview for the IPC book Baghdad Ablaze: How to Extinguish the Fires in Iraq, Dr. Mutlaq told me that among his highest priorities was the elimination of the Iranian regime's negative influence on Iraqi politics."

General Paul Vallely (MG, US Army Ret, IPC Advisory Council) said, "According to Struan Stevenson, president of the EU delegation to Iraq, vote fraud was conducted at every stage of the voting process: the handling of absentee ballots, special voting for members of the police and security services, mishandling of ballots at polling stations, and tampering with the computer tabulation of vote totals. Despite such fraud, however, secular parties, members of the Iraqiya list, still fared well and will hold a comparable number of seats to Maliki's State of Law. As Iraq moves toward secular, less sectarian politics, President Obama is on course to withdraw all but about 50,000 troops by August from the total of some 96,000 American troops in Iraq today."

Iran Policy Committee
Prof. Raymond Tanter, 202-320-8434
rtanter@iranpolicy.org