As I’ve been saying all along, the only ones who really stood to benefit, and those who really took advantage of the al-Askariya shrine bombing, is Moqtada al-Sadr and his counterparts in Iran. Now, a preliminary investigation by the deputy governor of Saladin, where the Shia holy city of Samarra and the shrine is located, has yielded that the perpetrators of the bombing was most like… dun dun dun… Iran!

The deputy governor of the Iraqi province of Saladin, where the holy city of Samarra is situated, said preliminary investigation was pointing to Iran????????s role in the bombing of the city????????s revered Shiite shrine last week.

???????The investigations carried out so far about the explosion in the resting place of Imam al-Hadi and Imam Hassan al-Askari in Samarra point to the involvement of the Iranian regime????????s Intelligence Ministry???????, Abdullah Hossein Jabbara announced. He was referring to Iran????????s secret police, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, which is known to be actively operating in Iraq.

Jabbara said Iraqi security forces had obtained intelligence clearly showing that Iran was involved in carrying out ???????terrorist attacks??????? in the Sunni-dominated province and ???????assisting terrorists to create insecurity in Iraq???????.

I’m just waiting for the windbags like Juan Cole at his ironically named Informed Comment to pipe up with dribble like, “Oh, but why would a Shiite government attack a holy Shiite shrine??” Well, guess what: the only religion that the government of Iran follows is that of power. This is where the mullahs’ true loyalty is, not to Allah or the nation’s people, but to preserving and expanding their own power. It’s the same reason they’ll hold their deepest alliance with a secular, pan-Arab regime like Syria.

Iranian intelligence figures have confessed in the past to blowing up Shia holy shrines, as with the bombing of the shrine of the eighth Imam located in Mashhad, Iran. Iranian state radio has even confessed that the government has planted bombs in holy Shia cities in Iraq in order to cause chaos.

What this investigation means for Iraq is profound in many ways should the full investigation settle on this result. It will completely discredit groups affiliated with Iran, especially its puppet Moqtada al-Sadr. It will have the effect of turning Iraqi Shias against Iran. And it will have the effect of allowing them to reconcile with their Sunni brothers, as they come to realize who the real enemy of their country is. Let me say it again: Iran.