Desecration Hijr bin Adi al-Kindi's Shrine

At the end of a story today by Thomas Erdbrink and Hania Mourtada about the desecration of a Shiite shrine in a Damascus suburb by Syrian rebels readers are treated to a rare unvarnished -- albeit brief -- description of the Iranian perspective on Islamic sectarian conflict:

Iranian officials blamed the United States and Israel, saying they were supporting the Syrian rebels and Sunni extremist forces in the region. 

“They have launched a war between Shiites and Sunnis,” Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said Sunday. “They plant bombs in Pakistan and Iraq, and recently the Zionist regime has hit Syria. We should be careful about colonizers and Israel.” 

Iran’s ideological narrative is that there are no real conflicts between the sects, but that Western powers and Iran’s enemies in the region deliberately mislead certain Muslim groups. Its leaders blame ultraconservative Wahhabis and Salafists, who they say are backed by the United States and Israel, through their regional allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar. 

“This Syrian so-called front, Al Nusra, is the symbol of Saudi Arabia and Qatar,” said Mojtaba Bigdeli, a former leader of a Shiite pressure group. “We respect Sunni shrines. We do not desecrate them. We may form self-sacrifice battalions to react to the Wahhabis and Salafists in Syria. For sure we will not remain silent.”

Any regular consumer of the news will have to acknowledge that the Iranian "ideological narrative" is more consistent than the one coming from the United States government. The United States says it acts in support of popular democracy and human rights, but then it tacitly approves a brutal crackdown on Arab Spring activists in Bahrain, not to mention decades of occupation by Israel in the West Bank; its chief allies in the Persian Gulf region are among the most despotic, unegalitarian states on the planet.

What's the rationale for aiding rebel groups in Syria? -- Freedom? Democracy? There are few secular fighters left in the Syrian opposition. So the United States is on the brink of arming the very people we've been engaging in global warfare since 9/11. It's crazy. The U.S. must think that through its gulf state allies it can control the Al Qaeda types. But time and again this has proven to be folly. The desecration of Hijr bin Adi al-Kindi's shrine is the latest example.

Predictably, the United States is sticking to its flimsy story that it is the Assad government not the opposition that is responsible for the use of nerve gas. No proof is supplied, just bald assertion; that and a whispering campaign has begun against Carla Del Ponte. This from today's frontpage story, "White House Holds Firm on Cautious Path in Syria Crisis," by Mark Landler and Eric Schmitt:

The assertion that there is evidence suggesting the rebels have used sarin was made by Carla Del Ponte, a former chief prosecutor for international criminal tribunals that investigated Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia who is now serving on a commission looking into human rights abuses in Syria. 

But that commission later issued a statement clarifying that it had not reached a conclusion about which side used the gas, and the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, added the administration’s doubts. 

“We are highly skeptical of the suggestion that the opposition could have or did use chemical weapons,” Mr. Carney said. “We find it highly likely that any chemical weapon use that has taken place in Syria was done by the Assad regime. And that remains our position.” 

A senior State Department official told reporters that the United States took Ms. Del Ponte’s allegations seriously, but said of the rebels, “We have no information that they have either the capability or the intent to deploy or use such weapons.” 

Another senior official noted that Ms. Del Ponte was not a member of another United Nations panel that is investigating chemical weapons.

With the rebels' desecration of Shiite shrines threatening a huge expansion of the war, I'm not hopeful that Obama is going to do the right thing. At a certain point, when the warhawks get amped up and Israeli bombs are falling, there's not much (apparently) that even POTUS can do.