Oh, no....

This is not good news.

Baghdad (Agencie France Presse, April 15) A senior Iranian diplomat was gunned down in Iraq a day after Tehran sent a peace mission to help end a standoff between US forces and militant Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.

A high-ranking foreign ministry official who is heading the delegation said the assassination was "most certainly" linked to his visit. ...

An AFP correspondent saw the body of first secretary Khalil Naimi lying in his bullet-riddled car on a Baghdad street after his murder.

Two bullets had pierced the windshield and eight bullet holes were visible on the driver's door.

On Wednesday, Kamal Kharazi, Iran's Foreign Minister, said that the Iranian delegation was in Iraq to "help in improving the situation ... and solving the crisis." In the wake of the murder, however, a member of the delegation, Iranian foreign ministry official Hossein Sadeghi, said the visit "definitely is not designed to mediate any standoff or any confrontation. The purpose of it is assessing the general situation in Iraq." AFP said it was unclear if the apparent change was related to Kharazi's death.

There are also conflicting statements as to how it came to be that the Iranians were in Iraq. They said it was at the request of the US; the US insists it was the British who raised it and the US simply declined to oppose it.

Inside Iraq Thursday, coalition officials sought to play down Iran's role.

"We are not involved in any discussions with the Iranians regarding Sadr," said senior civilian spokesman Dan Senor. The crisis over Sadr "has to be solved by Iraqis, not Iranians."

This comes amid a variety of somewhat confusing statements coming out of Sadr's people which variously emphasize and downplay portions of previous statements. What's clear is that Sadr has taken down the rhetoric a couple of orders of magnitude since people did not respond to his calls for a mass uprising to drive out occupation forces. Apparently Plan B is still in formulation.

This is in line with what I suggested just yesterday.

But the murder of Khalil Naimi adds a very dark note. First, it seems clear this was an assassination. The possibility it was a revenge killing from the Iran-Iraq war can't be ruled out, as far as I know, but considering the planning involved and the fact that there were at least two shooters (as bullets went through both the windshield and the driver's door), a political assassination seems far more likely. But why? Who gains?

Certainly not Sadr. Or the US. Despite both trying to hold the Iranians at arms length publicly, the possibility of a face-saving way out was too great a possibility to be rejected. So who?

Some years ago in a much different context, I wrote that one of the downsides of being the leader of a movement is "the risk of generating a tide that can carry you places you're not sure you want to go." My concern here is that that's what happening: that Sadr is looking for a way out but that someone doesn't want that to happen. Someone, some force, some agency, some I don't know what to call it, doesn't want a "peaceful" settlement, i.e., one that doesn't involve bloodshed and that mass uprising Sadr may well have expected and never got. I suggested that Sadr might well embrace martyrdom and even bring it on himself. I wonder now if someone - in pursuit of the "greater good of Islam", no doubt - is trying to bring it on for him.

Yes, I'm worried.