Bush warns Tehran to keep out of Iraq's Shia strongholds

The Bush administration issued a sharp warning to Iran yesterday, telling it not to interfere in largely Shia southern Iraq, amid signs that Washington has been caught off guard by the strength of radical Islam in that part of the country.

Speaking after reports that Iran – the stronghold of Shia Islam in the Gulf region – had sent agents across the border, the White House made clear it would not tolerate outside meddling in the daunting task of creating a stable political system from the ashes of the Saddam Hussein regime.

"We've made clear we would oppose any outside interference in Iraq's road to democracy," said Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman. Infiltration of agents to destabilise the Shia community, which makes up 60 per cent of the Iraqi population, "would clearly fall into that category". American anxieties have been heightened by the large crowds gathered for a religious festival in the Shia holy city of Karbala and by numerous rallies of protesters demanding an end to US "occupation" as leading Shia clerics fight for influence.

The line in Washington, for public consumption at least, is that an outpouring of emotion was only to be expected after the long persecution of the Shia faith by Saddam's regime – and the very ability to protest is proof that basic civil liberties are returning to Iraq.

And the alleged efforts of Iranian agents to organise Shia groups are not deemed any great source of concern. Developments were being monitored, said General David McKiernan, the commander of US ground forces in Iraq, but he added: "Right now, the Shia and any Iranian-influenced Shia actions are not an overt threat."

For many observers, the Shia resurgence is proof of what they feared from the outset – that the Bush administration, led by over-optimistic, highly politicised assumptions at the Pentagon in particular, had not done its homework for the aftermath of war.

Walter Lang, a former Pentagon intelligence specialist on the Middle East, told the Washington Post yesterday: "We're flying blind on this, it's a classic case of politics and intelligence." The policy community had "absolutely whipped" intelligence specialists, he said.

The result has been a spate of heady predictions that invading American troops would be greeted as liberators by an ecstatic population.

Instead, Washington policymakers have watched as Shia groups re-emerged and leading clerics became the de facto rulers of individual cities such as Kut, which is close to the Iranian border. In these areas, Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress who is backed by the Pentagon, has made little impact despite being a Shia himself.

American officials maintain that all will be well in the end and that Iraq will turn, not into a theocratic Islamic state such as Iran but into a friendly democracy along Turkish lines. Mr Fleischer said: "I think it's a given it will be an Islamic leader – it's an Islamic country. But that's different from an Islamic dictatorship."

But the US is looking less ready to commit for the long term and to work to resist Iranian-style fundamentalism. Officials were taken aback by the murder of Abdul Majid al-Khoei, a Shia cleric sympathetic to the US and Britain, and by the fervent opposition to Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's most senior Shia cleric, within days of the fall of Baghdad.