Why did the neocons put such enormous faith in Ahmed Chalabi, an exile with a shady past and no standing with Iraqis? One word: Israel. They saw the invasion of Iraq as the precondition for a reorganization of the Middle East that would solve Israel's strategic problems, without the need for an accommodation with either the Palestinians or the existing Arab states. Chalabi assured them that the Iraqi democracy he would build would develop diplomatic and trade ties with Israel, and eschew Arab nationalism.

Now some influential allies believe those assurances were part of an elaborate con, and that Chalabi has betrayed his promises on Israel while cozying up to Iranian Shia leaders. Whether because of intentional deception or a realistic calculation of what the Iraqi people will accept, it's clear that Chalabi won't be delivering on his bright promises to ally a democratic Iraq with Israel. Had the neocons not been deluded by gross ignorance of the Arab world and blinded by wishful thinking, they would have realized that the chances that Chalabi or any other Iraqi leader could deliver on such promises were always remote. In fact, they need have looked no further than the Israeli media: A long piece in Israel's Jerusalem Report magazine published nine days before the war began last year featured Israelis who dismissed Chalabi's promises about Israel as a political ploy, "a means by which to appeal to the Jewish lobby and, in turn, the administration."

"Chalabi has no use for Israel. He knew all along that this was a nonstarter," says Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer who led covert U.S. operations inside Iraq in the mid-1990s aimed at toppling Saddam. "Chalabi knows exactly what Israel stands for in Iraq and in Iran, with or without Saddam. The idea of building the pipeline to Haifa, or rapprochement with Iran ... I'm sure he told [the neocons] these things could happen, that he played to their prejudices and said, 'This is the new Middle East,' but he didn't believe any of it. That's the way Chalabi operates."

"He was willing to ally with anyone to get where he is now, whether it was the neocons, the Israelis or the Iranians," adds Baer. "He wanted back into Iraq and nothing was going to stop him."

It could have been predicted that Chalabi would want to deal with Israel's enemies in Iran. He and his relatives have made that clear. As Iraq's defense minister, Ali Allawi, says, "We have a lot of problems in common with Iran. If we could involve them in a regional security agreement with us, that would be very fruitful." Still, Chalabi's visit to Iran last December and his repeated assertions that peace in Iraq requires peace with Iran first alarmed, then embittered, his old friends.

Chalabi's neoconservative friends, however, seem to have looked away from evidence that the businessman has always allied himself with whomever can help him the most. In the 1980s, Chalabi's scandal-plagued Petra Bank funneled money to Amal, a Shia militia allied with Iran in Lebanon. And according to a former CIA case officer who worked in Iraq, Chalabi had close ties to the Iranian regime when he was in Kurdish Northern Iraq in the mid-1990s trying to foment resistance to Saddam. He even dealt with Saddam himself when the price was right, and initiated a method to finance the dictator's trade with Jordan in the 1980s through his Petra Bank.

Chalabi's Arab admirers say they knew he'd never make good on his promises to ally with Israel. "I was worried that he was going to do business with the Zionists," confesses Moh'd Asad, the managing director of the Amman, Jordan-based International Investment Arabian Group, an industrial and agricultural exporter, who is one of Chalabi's Palestinian friends and business partners. "He told me not to worry, that he just needed the Jews in order to get what he wanted from Washington, and that he would turn on them after that."

Ahmed Chalabi refused to speak to Salon. He has denounced U.N. envoy Brahimi as an "Arab nationalist" and compared the U.S. decision to bring back some former Iraqi soldiers to "allowing Nazis into the German government immediately after World War II." Douglas Feith, Chalabi's longtime ally and sponsor, also declined a request for an interview. Nevertheless, the outline of the new conflict between the Shiite former exile and his erstwhile sponsors is clear, based on interviews with Iraqi officials, U.S. military personnel and intelligence officers, and politically connected Israelis.

The crux of the conflict is Iran, and whether the U.S. should try to make a deal with the Islamic Republic to enlist its support for peace in Iraq. Before and immediately after the war, the neoconservative position was that U.S. empowerment of the long-disenfranchised Shia community would make possible an Iraqi government that would make a "warm peace" with Israel. This in turn would pressure the rest of the Arab world to make a similar peace, without the need to concede land to the Palestinians.

This was, of course, a pipe dream: The Shia community in Iraq, like the Sunni community, is overwhelmingly anti-Israel, and the entire range of its leadership has close ties with Iran. Belatedly realizing that Chalabi's promise to build a secular, pro-Israel Shiite government is not going to come true, in the past couple of months the neocons in the Defense Department have tried to come up with a new plan. Feith, Wolfowitz and others are backing away from the Shia, due to their ties to Iran as well as Chalabi's deceptions. They are trying to cobble together a coalition of rehabilitated Sunni Muslim Iraqi Army officers and Kurdish leaders backed by their militias that would have Shia participation, but in a reduced role. For proponents of this strategy, the front-runner to be prime minister of the next version of the transitional government is Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, the founder and leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

This policy has very little support. It's opposed by those neocons who still back Ahmed Chalabi and his Shia allies -- including influential former Defense Policy Board chair Richard Perle, along with neocon intellectuals Michael Ledeen, Bernard Lewis and Barbara Lerner. Although they like Talabani, they oppose the tilt toward the Sunnis, and some are still adamant that Chalabi play a role. "He's effective in bringing groups of Iraqis together, something he's done for many years," Perle said on CNN on March 28. "He believes in democracy. I have complete confidence in him, and I hope the people of Iraq are wise enough to see his benefits."

The shift in strategy toward Talabani is also being dismissed, for different reasons, by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, John Negroponte, the new ambassador to Iraq, and the uniformed military. They look at the Iraqi population statistics, which show a Shia majority; a map of the country, which shows a long, hard-to-defend border with Iran; and the U.S. military order of battle, which shows overstretched armed forces, and conclude there cannot be a stable Iraqi government that isn't led by the majority Shia.

Even the Kurds have their doubts about the new rise in their standing with the neocons. Richard Galustian, a British security contractor in Iraq who works closely with the Kurdish authorities, says, "The political elevation of the Kurds within Iraq will be very unpopular with other Iraqis, and will be treated with caution by the Kurdish leaders themselves. Many will be skeptical of the ability of the U.S. administration to sustain and remain consistent in any new relationships." If the Americans can turn on the Shia, the reasoning goes, why couldn't they later turn on the Kurds?

President Bush's ability to impose order on this mess is not obvious, and he doesn't have more than a couple of weeks to figure out a solution. With photographs of U.S. troops torturing and abusing Iraqi prisoners inflaming the Arab world, U.S. casualties soaring, the June 30 date to turn over sovereignty looming and no exit strategy in sight, Bush's Iraq adventure has turned into a deadly mess that seems certain to make the U.S. more at risk from terrorism, not less. Bush brought this trouble on himself by buying into the neocons' interpretation of the dynamics of the Middle East, and into Ahmed Chalabi's plans for Iraq -- maybe most disastrously by buying Chalabi's assurances that a secular government dominated by Israel-friendly Shia was possible. If Bush and the neocons wanted to know about Chalabi's real deal-making nature, the signs were there for them to read. But they didn't want to know.

Chalabi appears to have recognized that the neocons, while ruthless, realistic and effective in bureaucratic politics, were remarkably ignorant about the situation in Iraq, and willing to buy a fantasy of how the country's politics worked. So he sold it to them.

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