From the London Times via the estimable Allah :

Some senior Sunni insurgents believe that Al-Qaeda in Iraq shares the agenda of Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias to plunge the country into ever more violent sectarian conflict rather than concentrating on the fight against the US-led coalition. Late last year Salam al-Zubaie, Iraq’s deputy prime minister, began secret talks with the Sunni groupswith the aim of coaxing them away from Al-Qaeda. He held meetings with commanders of groups including the 20th Revolutionary Brigade, the general command of the Iraqi armed forces, the Islamic Army of Iraq, the Ba’ath party and the Salah al-Deen al-Ayyubi Brigade… A senior commander in the Islamic Army said Zubaie had promised not only to help to unify the Sunni groups but also to provide them with financial and logistical support to stop Iranian infiltration.

Given his playful intellect, Allah considers several possible ways to parse this news (and it’s worth your time to read it all), to which I’d like to add one that may help understand some of the fascinating developments in Iraq, and also the region more broadly. That has to do with the nature of al Qaeda.

I think there is a case to be made for the view that al Qaeda as such no longer exists. Its shattered remnant limped into Iran after the liberation of Afghanistan, and the top leadership has operated from Iran ever since. At a minimum, Zawahiri et. al. (I think bin Laden died of his medical problems some time ago; we haven’t seen him on video for something going on three years) are subject to an Iranian veto. Al Qaeda may now be an integrated component of the Iranian terror network: Hizbollah, Islamic Jihad, Revolutionary Guards/Qods Force, Hamas.

Most Iraqis don’t like Iran, and despite considerable enthusiasm for killing us, given the choice they’d rather kill Iranians. And they–whether Sunni or Shi’ite–certainly don’t want to be part of a Greater Islamic Republic, and they are sick and tired of the overadvertized civil war, which they rightly understand to be manipulated by the Iranians, who support both sides in every sort of conflict within Iraq.

So that first line from the Times could be extended to include Shi’ites as well as Sunnis. And that means the Iranian strategy–to create such mayhem that we would have to leave–hasn’t succeeded, and may be failing.

Maybe their best chance for success is to sell it to Congress. You can be sure that the Pelosis and Wolfs who have sat alongside Bashar Assad of late will have heard that theme.