Iraq's long-suppressed Shiite Muslims want to shape their own future after Saddam Hussein's downfall, not set up an Iranian-style Islamic republic, Iraqi Shiite leaders and analysts say.
Meanwhile, Washington's growing hostility towards Iran may antagonize Iraq's Shiite majority, harm prospects for Iraq's postwar stability and even prompt Tehran to meddle in earnest.
"We are Iraqis, not Iranians," said Adel Abdel-Mehdi, an aide to Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).
"If the Shiites take their fair share in governing Iraq, there will be stability in this country," he said. "But if our isolation continues under different pretexts, such as being influenced by Iran, then chaos will prevail."
The US and Britain have recently turned up the heat on Iran, accusing it of interfering in Iraq.
Tehran has dismissed the charges, which fatten an already thick dossier of US complaints against Iran. Washington also accuses Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, backing international terrorism and undermining Middle East peace efforts.
Iran's grievances against Washington include what it sees as a long history of US interference in its affairs, US support for Israel and for Iraq in its 1980 to 1988 war with Iran.
Iraq's top US administrator Paul Bremer said on Wednesday he was troubled by increased Iranian activity in Iraq which could result in serious problems for Iran if it went too far.
He said Iran was sending guerrillas across the border, who under the mask of restarting social services would form an armed movement.
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, often identified with Washington hawks who want a tough policy against Iran, said he would not let Iraq's neighbors create an Iranian-style theocracy in the country.
But Rumsfeld's presumption that Iran wants to replicate its troubled ruling system in Iraq and that Iraqi Shiites would happily follow Tehran's lead are open to challenge.
"I don't believe Iranians are so naive as to intervene in Iraq's affairs. This would be like gambling in a losing game," said Fateh Kashef al-Ghata, representative of al-Hawza, the highest Shiite theology school in the shrine city of Najaf.
"In 1980, yes, we wanted an Iranian-style state in Iraq, but after 1990, Iran's role began to erode," Ghata said. "Now, in 2003, no, we don't want an Islamic state. Even Iran doesn't want an Islamic state now."
Few among Iraq's diverse community of Shiites, who have little social or political cohesion, want to confront US and British forces that defeated their deadly foe Saddam.
But many fear they could be victims again if US forces start seeing them as a fifth column for Iran's supposed ambitions -- much as Saddam's Sunni-dominated Baathists did.
The Shiites, aware the world's eyes are on them, are taking a pragmatic line toward the US-led forces now ruling Iraq, but are quietly preparing for possible confrontation.
About a million Iraqi Shiites took refuge in Iran or were deported during 35 years of Baathist rule. Many of them married and built their lives there. US accusations that Iran has sent agents flooding across the border bemuse Iraqi Shiites.
"Iran has not sent anybody from Iran into Iraq. It is we Iraqis who returned from Iran," said a member of SCIRI's Badr Brigade militia, trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guards.
Iraqi analyst Wamidh Nazmi said there was no sign of Iranian infiltration, but US accusations could become a self-fulfilling prophecy if Tehran really felt threatened.
"If Iran was sure Washington would attack it, Iran could use its influence to make the Shiite groups resist US forces and it would make Iraq a battlefront. I fear this could happen," Nazmi said.
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