Much of the U.S. pressure exerted on Iraq’s government with respect to China has reportedly taken place covertly and behind closed doors, keeping the Trump administration’s concerns over China’s growing ties to Iraq largely out of public view, perhaps over concerns that a public scuffle could exacerbate the U.S.-China “trade war” and endanger efforts to resolve it. Yet, whatever the reasons may be, evidence strongly suggests that the U.S. is equally concerned about China’s presence in Iraq as it is with Iran’s. This is because China has the means and the ability to dramatically undermine not only the U.S.’ control over Iraq’s oil sector but the entire petrodollar system on which the U.S.’ status as both a financial and military superpower directly depends.
Behind the curtain, a different narrative for Iraq-US Tensions
Iraq’s caretaker Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi gave a series of remarks on January 5, during a parliamentary session that received surprisingly little media attention. During the session, which also saw Iraq’s Parliament approve the removal of all foreign (including American) troops from the country, Abdul-Mahdi made a series of claims about the lead-up to the recent situation that placed Iraq at the heart of spiking U.S.-Iran tensions.
During that session, only part of Abdul-Mahdi’s statements were broadcast on television, after the Iraqi Speaker of the House — Mohammed Al-Halbousi, who has a close relationship with Washington — requested the video feed be cut. Al-Halbousi oddly attended the parliamentary session even though it was boycotted by his allied Sunni and Kurdish representatives.
Secretary of State Pompeo, left, walks alongside Al-Halbousi in Baghdad, Iraq on Jan. 9, 2019. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | Reuters
After the feed was cut, MPs who were present wrote down Abdul-Mahdi’s remarks, which were then given to the Arabic news outlet Ida’at. Per that transcript, Abdul-Mahdi stated that:
The Americans are the ones who destroyed the country and wreaked havoc on it. They have refused to finish building the electrical system and infrastructure projects. They have bargained for the reconstruction of Iraq in exchange for Iraq giving up 50% of oil imports. So, I refused and decided to go to China and concluded an important and strategic agreement with it. Today, Trump is trying to cancel this important agreement.”
Abdul-Mahdi continued his remarks, noting that pressure from the Trump administration over his negotiations and subsequent dealings with China grew substantially over time, even resulting in death threats to himself and his defense minister:
After my return from China, Trump called me and asked me to cancel the agreement, so I also refused, and he threatened [that there would be] massive demonstrations to topple me. Indeed, the demonstrations started and then Trump called, threatening to escalate in the event of non-cooperation and responding to his wishes, whereby a third party [presumed to be mercenaries or U.S. soldiers] would target both the demonstrators and security forces and kill them from atop the highest buildings and the US embassy in an attempt to pressure me and submit to his wishes and cancel the China agreement.”
“I did not respond and submitted my resignation and the Americans still insist to this day on canceling the China agreement. When the defense minister said that those killing the demonstrators was a third party, Trump called me immediately and physically threatened myself and the defense minister in the event that there was more talk about this third party.”
Very few English language outlets reported on Abdul-Mahdi’s comments. Tom Luongo, a Florida-based Independent Analyst and publisher of The Gold Goats ‘n Guns Newsletter, told MintPress that the likely reasons for the “surprising” media silence over Abdul-Mahdi’s claims were because “It never really made it out into official channels…” due to the cutting of the video feed during Iraq’s Parliamentary session and due to the fact that “it’s very inconvenient and the media — since Trump is doing what they want him to do, be belligerent with Iran, protected Israel’s interests there.”
“They aren’t going to contradict him on that if he’s playing ball,” Luongo added, before continuing that the media would nonetheless “hold onto it for future reference….If this comes out for real, they’ll use it against him later if he tries to leave Iraq.” “Everything in Washington is used as leverage,” he added.
Given the lack of media coverage and the cutting of the video feed of Abdul-Mahdi’s full remarks, it is worth pointing out that the narrative he laid out in his censored speech not only fits with the timeline of recent events he discusses but also the tactics known to have been employed behind closed doors by the Trump administration, particularly after Mike Pompeo left the CIA to become Secretary of State.
For instance, Abdul-Mahdi’s delegation to China ended on September 24, with the protests against his government that Trump reportedly threatened to start on October 1. Reports of a “third side” firing on Iraqi protesters were picked up by major media outlets at the time, such as in this BBC report which stated:
Reports say the security forces opened fire, but another account says unknown gunmen were responsible….a source in Karbala told the BBC that one of the dead was a guard at a nearby Shia shrine who happened to be passing by. The source also said the origin of the gunfire was unknown and it had targeted both the protesters and security forces. (emphasis added)”
U.S.-backed protests in other countries, such as in Ukraine in 2014, also saw evidence of a “third side” shooting both protesters and security forces alike.
After six weeks of intense protests, Abdul-Mahdi submitted his resignation on November 29, just a few days after Iraq’s Foreign Minister praised the new deals, including the “oil for reconstruction” deal, that had been signed with China. Abdul-Mahdi has since stayed on as Prime Minister in a caretaker role until Parliament decides on his replacement.
Abdul-Mahdi’s claims of the covert pressure by the Trump administration are buttressed by the use of similar tactics against Ecuador, where, in July 2018, a U.S. delegation at the United Nations threatened the nation with punitive trade measures and the withdrawal of military aid if Ecuador moved forward with the introduction of a UN resolution to “protect, promote and support breastfeeding.”
The New York Times reported at the time that the U.S. delegation was seeking to promote the interests of infant formula manufacturers. If the U.S. delegation is willing to use such pressure on nations for promoting breastfeeding over infant formula, it goes without saying that such behind-closed-doors pressure would be significantly more intense if a much more lucrative resource, e.g. oil, were involved.
Regarding Abdul-Mahdi’s claims, Luongo told MintPress that it is also worth considering that it could have been anyone in the Trump administration making threats to Abdul-Mahdi, not necessarily Trump himself. “What I won’t say directly is that I don’t know it was Trump at the other end of the phone calls. Mahdi, it is to his best advantage politically to blame everything on Trump. It could have been Mike Pompeo or Gina Haspel talking to Abdul-Mahdi… It could have been anyone, it most likely would be someone with plausible deniability….This [Mahdi’s claims] sounds credible… I firmly believe Trump is capable of making these threats but I don’t think Trump would make those threats directly like that, but it would absolutely be consistent with U.S. policy.”
Luongo also argued that the current tensions between U.S. and Iraqi leadership preceded the oil deal between Iraq and China by several weeks, “All of this starts with Prime Minister Mahdi starting the process of opening up the Iraq-Syria border crossing and that was announced in August. Then, the Israeli air attacks happened in September to try and stop that from happening, attacks on PMU forces on the border crossing along with the ammo dump attacks near Baghdad… This drew the Iraqis’ ire… Mahdi then tried to close the air space over Iraq, but how much of that he can enforce is a big question.”
As to why it would be to Mahdi’s advantage to blame Trump, Luongo stated that Mahdi “can make edicts all day long, but, in reality, how much can he actually restrain the U.S. or the Israelis from doing anything? Except for shame, diplomatic shame… To me, it [Mahdi’s claims] seems perfectly credible because, during all of this, Trump is probably or someone else is shaking him [Mahdi] down for the reconstruction of the oil fields [in Iraq]…Trump has explicitly stated “we want the oil.”’
As Luongo noted, Trump’s interest in the U.S. obtaining a significant share of Iraqi oil revenue is hardly a secret. Just last March, Trump asked Abdul-Mahdi “How about the oil?” at the end of a meeting at the White House, prompting Abdul-Mahdi to ask “What do you mean?” To which Trump responded “Well, we did a lot, we did a lot over there, we spent trillions over there, and a lot of people have been talking about the oil,” which was widely interpreted as Trump asking for part of Iraq’s oil revenue in exchange for the steep costs of the U.S.’ continuing its now unwelcome military presence in Iraq.
With Abdul-Mahdi having rejected Trump’s “oil for reconstruction” proposal in favor of China’s, it seems likely that the Trump administration would default to so-called “gangster diplomacy” tactics to pressure Iraq’s government into accepting Trump’s deal, especially given the fact that China’s deal was a much better offer. While Trump demanded half of Iraq’s oil revenue in exchange for completing reconstruction projects (according to Abdul-Mahdi), the deal that was signed between Iraq and China would see around 20 percent of Iraq’s oil revenue go to China in exchange for reconstruction. Aside from the potential loss in Iraq’s oil revenue, there are many reasons for the Trump administration to feel threatened by China’s recent dealings in Iraq.
The Iraq-China oil deal – a prelude to something more?
When Abdul-Mahdi’s delegation traveled to Beijing last September, the “oil for reconstruction” deal was only one of eight total agreements that were established. These agreements cover a range of areas, including financial, commercial, security, reconstruction, communication, culture, education and foreign affairs in addition to oil. Yet, the oil deal is by far the most significant.
Per the agreement, Chinese firms will work on various reconstruction projects in exchange for roughly 20 percent of Iraq’s oil exports, approximately 100,00 barrels per day, for a period of 20 years. According to Al-Monitor, Abdul-Mahdi had the following to say about the deal: “We agreed [with Beijing] to set up a joint investment fund, which the oil money will finance,” adding that the agreement prohibits China from monopolizing projects inside Iraq, forcing Bejing to work in cooperation with international firms.
The agreement is similar to one negotiated between Iraq and China in 2015 when Abdul-Mahdi was serving as Iraq’s oil minister. That year, Iraq joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative in a deal that also involved exchanging oil for investment, development and construction projects and saw China awarded several projects as a result. In a notable similarity to recent events, that deal was put on hold due to “political and security tensions” caused by unrest and the surge of ISIS in Iraq, that is until Abdul-Mahdi saw Iraq rejoin the initiative again late last year through the agreements his government signed with China last September.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, center left, meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, center right, in Beijing, Sept. 23, 2019. Lintao Zhang | AP
Notably, after recent tensions between the U.S. and Iraq over the assassination of Soleimani and the U.S.’ subsequent refusal to remove its troops from Iraq despite parliament’s demands, Iraq quietly announced that it would dramatically increase its oil exports to China to triple the amount established in the deal signed in September. Given Abdul-Mahdi’s recent claims about the true forces behind Iraq’s recent protests and Trump’s threats against him being directly related to his dealings with China, the move appears to be a not-so-veiled signal from Abdul-Mahdi to Washington that he plans to deepen Iraq’s partnership with China, at least for as long as he remains in his caretaker role.
Iraq’s decision to dramatically increase its oil exports to China came just one day after the U.S. government threatened to cut off Iraq’s access to its central bank account, currently held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, an account that currently holds $35 billion in Iraqi oil revenue. The account was set up after the U.S. invaded and began occupying Iraq in 2003 and Iraq currently removes between $1-2 billion per month to cover essential government expenses. Losing access to its oil revenue stored in that account would lead to the “collapse” of Iraq’s government, according to Iraqi government officials who spoke to AFP.
Though Trump publicly promised to rebuke Iraq for the expulsion of U.S. troops via sanctions, the threat to cut off Iraq’s access to its account at the NY Federal Reserve Bank was delivered privately and directly to the Prime Minister, adding further credibility to Abdul-Mahdi’s claims that Trump’s most aggressive attempts at pressuring Iraq’s government are made in private and directed towards the country’s Prime Minister.
Though Trump’s push this time was about preventing the expulsion of U.S. troops from Iraq, his reasons for doing so may also be related to concerns about China’s growing foothold in the region. Indeed, while Trump has now lost his desired share of Iraqi oil revenue (50 percent) to China’s counteroffer of 20 percent, the removal of U.S. troops from Iraq may see American troops replaced with their Chinese counterparts as well, according to Tom Luongo.
“All of this is about the U.S. maintaining the fiction that it needs to stay in Iraq…So, China moving in there is the moment where they get their toe hold for the Belt and Road [Initiative],” Luongo argued. “That helps to strengthen the economic relationship between Iraq, Iran and China and obviating the need for the Americans to stay there. At some point, China will have assets on the ground that they are going to want to defend militarily in the event of any major crisis. This brings us to the next thing we know, that Mahdi and the Chinese ambassador discussed that very thing in the wake of the Soleimani killing.”
Indeed, according to news reports, Zhang Yao — China’s ambassador to Iraq — “conveyed Beijing’s readiness to provide military assistance” should Iraq’s government request it soon after Soleimani’s assassination. Yao made the offer a day after Iraq’s parliament voted to expel American troops from the country. Though it is currently unknown how Abdul-Mahdi responded to the offer, the timing likely caused no shortage of concern among the Trump administration about its rapidly waning influence in Iraq. “You can see what’s coming here,” Luongo told MintPress of the recent Chinese offer to Iraq, “China, Russia and Iran are trying to cleave Iraq away from the United States and the U.S. is feeling very threatened by this.”
Russia is also playing a role in the current scenario as Iraq initiated talks with Moscow regarding the possible purchase of one of its air defense systems last September, the same month that Iraq signed eight deals, including the oil deal with China. Then, in the wake of Soleimani’s death, Russia again offered the air defense systems to Iraq to allow them to better defend their air space. In the past, the U.S. has threatened allied countries with sanctions and other measures if they purchase Russian air defense systems as opposed to those manufactured by U.S. companies.
The U.S.’ efforts to curb China’s growing influence and presence in Iraq amid these new strategic partnerships and agreements are limited, however, as the U.S. is increasingly relying on China as part of its Iran policy, specifically in its goal of reducing Iranian oil export to zero. China remains Iran’s main crude oil and condensate importer, even after it reduced its imports of Iranian oil significantly following U.S. pressure last year. Yet, the U.S. is now attempting to pressure China to stop buying Iranian oil completely or face sanctions while also attempting to privately sabotage the China-Iraq oil deal. It is highly unlikely China will concede to the U.S. on both, if any, of those fronts, meaning the U.S. may be forced to choose which policy front (Iran “containment” vs. Iraq’s oil dealings with China) it values more in the coming weeks and months.
Furthermore, the recent signing of the “phase one” trade deal with China revealed another potential facet of the U.S.’ increasingly complicated relationship with Iraq’s oil sector given that the trade deal involves selling U.S. oil and gas to China at very low cost, suggesting that the Trump administration may also see the Iraq-China oil deal result in Iraq emerging as a potential competitor for the U.S. in selling cheap oil to China, the world’s top oil importer.
The Petrodollar and the Phantom of the Petroyuan
In his televised statements last week following Iran’s military response to the U.S. assassination of General Soleimani, Trump insisted that the U.S.’ Middle East policy is no longer being directed by America’s vast oil requirements. He stated specifically that:
Over the last three years, under my leadership, our economy is stronger than ever before and America has achieved energy independence. These historic accomplishments changed our strategic priorities. These are accomplishments that nobody thought were possible. And options in the Middle East became available. We are now the number-one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world. We are independent, and we do not need Middle East oil. (emphasis added)”
Yet, given the centrality of the recent Iraq-China oil deal in guiding some of the Trump administration’s recent Middle East policy moves, this appears not to be the case. The distinction may lie in the fact that, while the U.S. may now be less dependent on oil imports from the Middle East, it still very much needs to continue to dominate how oil is traded and sold on international markets in order to maintain its status as both a global military and financial superpower.
Indeed, even if the U.S. is importing less Middle Eastern oil, the petrodollar system — first forged in the 1970s — requires that the U.S. maintains enough control over the global oil trade so that the world’s largest oil exporters, Iraq among them, continue to sell their oil in dollars. Were Iraq to sell oil in another currency, or trade oil for services, as it plans to do with China per the recently inked deal, a significant portion of Iraqi oil would cease to generate a demand for dollars, violating the key tenet of the petrodollar system.
Chinese representatives speak to defense personnel during a weapons expo organized by the Iraqi defense ministry in Baghdad, March, 2017. Karim Kadim | AP
As Kei Pritsker and Cale Holmes noted in an article last year for MintPress:
The takeaway from the petrodollar phenomenon is that as long as countries need oil, they will need the dollar. As long as countries demand dollars, the U.S. can continue to go into massive amounts of debt to fund its network of global military bases, Wall Street bailouts, nuclear missiles, and tax cuts for the rich.”
Thus, the use of the petrodollar has created a system whereby U.S. control of oil sales of the largest oil exporters is necessary, not just to buttress the dollar, but also to support its global military presence. Therefore, it is unsurprising that the issue of the U.S. troop presence in Iraq and the issue of Iraq’s push for oil independence against U.S. wishes have become intertwined. Notably, one of the architects of the petrodollar system and the man who infamously described U.S. soldiers as “dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy”, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, has been advising Trump and informing his China policy since 2016.
This take was also expressed by economist Michael Hudson, who recently noted that U.S. access to oil, dollarization and U.S. military strategy are intricately interwoven and that Trump’s recent Iraq policy is intended “to escalate America’s presence in Iraq to keep control of the region’s oil reserves,” and, as Hudson says, “to back Saudi Arabia’s Wahabi troops (ISIS, Al Qaeda in Iraq, Al Nusra and other divisions of what are actually America’s foreign legion) to support U.S. control of Near Eastern oil as a buttress of the U.S. dollar.”
Hudson further asserts that it was Qassem Soleimani’s efforts to promote Iraq’s oil independence at the expense of U.S. imperial ambitions that served one of the key motives behind his assassination.
America opposed General Suleimani above all because he was fighting against ISIS and other U.S.-backed terrorists in their attempt to break up Syria and replace Assad’s regime with a set of U.S.-compliant local leaders – the old British “divide and conquer” ploy. On occasion, Suleimani had cooperated with U.S. troops in fighting ISIS groups that got “out of line” meaning the U.S. party line. But every indication is that he was in Iraq to work with that government seeking to regain control of the oil fields that President Trump has bragged so loudly about grabbing. (emphasis added)”
Hudson adds that “…U.S. neocons feared Suleimani’s plan to help Iraq assert control of its oil and withstand the terrorist attacks supported by U.S. and Saudi’s on Iraq. That is what made his assassination an immediate drive.”
While other factors — such as pressure from U.S. allies such as Israel — also played a factor in the decision to kill Soleimani, the decision to assassinate him on Iraqi soil just hours before he was set to meet with Abdul-Mahdi in a diplomatic role suggests that the underlying tensions caused by Iraq’s push for oil independence and its oil deal with China did play a factor in the timing of his assassination. It also served as a threat to Abdul-Mahdi, who has claimed that the U.S. threatened to kill both him and his defense minister just weeks prior over tensions directly related to the push for independence of Iraq’s oil sector from the U.S.
It appears that the ever-present role of the petrodollar in guiding U.S. policy in the Middle East remains unchanged. The petrodollar has long been a driving factor behind the U.S.’ policy towards Iraq specifically, as one of the key triggers for the 2003 invasion of Iraq was Saddam Hussein’s decision to sell Iraqi oil in Euros opposed to dollars beginning in the year 2000. Just weeks before the invasion began, Hussein boasted that Iraq’s Euro-based oil revenue account was earning a higher interest rate than it would have been if it had continued to sell its oil in dollars, an apparent signal to other oil exporters that the petrodollar system was only really benefiting the United States at their own expense.
Beyond current efforts to stave off Iraq’s oil independence and keep its oil trade aligned with the U.S., the fact that the U.S. is now seeking to limit China’s ever-growing role in Iraq’s oil sector is also directly related to China’s publicly known efforts to create its own direct competitor to the petrodollar, the petroyuan.
Since 2017, China has made its plans for the petroyuan — a direct competitor to the petrodollar — no secret, particularly after China eclipsed the U.S. as the world’s largest importer of oil. As CNBC noted at the time:
The new strategy is to enlist the energy markets’ help: Beijing may introduce a new way to price oil in coming months — but unlike the contracts based on the U.S. dollar that currently dominate global markets, this benchmark would use China’s own currency. If there’s widespread adoption, as the Chinese hope, then that will mark a step toward challenging the greenback’s status as the world’s most powerful currency….The plan is to price oil in yuan using a gold-backed futures contract in Shanghai, but the road will be long and arduous.”
If the U.S. continues on its current path and pushes Iraq further into the arms of China and other U.S. rival states, it goes without saying that Iraq — now a part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative — may soon favor a petroyuan system over a petrodollar system, particularly as the current U.S. administration threatens to hold Iraq’s central bank account hostage for pursuing policies Washington finds unfavorable.
It could also explain why President Trump is so concerned about China’s growing foothold in Iraq, since it risks causing not only the end of the U.S. military hegemony in the country but could also lead to major trouble for the petrodollar system and the U.S.’ position as a global financial power. Trump’s policy aimed at stopping China and Iraq’s growing ties is clearly having the opposite effect, showing that this administration’s “gangster diplomacy” only serves to make the alternatives offered by countries like China and Russia all the more attractive.
Feature photo | Graphic by Claudio Cabrera for MintPress News
Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.
The Trump administration has given various justification for its assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani and commander Abu Mahdi al Muhandis. It claimed that there was an 'imminent threat' of an incident, even while not knowing what, where or when it would happen, that made the assassination necessary. Trump later said the threat was a planned bombing of four U.S. embassies. His defense secretary denied that.
Soleimani and Muhandis during a battle against ISIS
That has raised the suspicion that the decision to kill Soleimani had little to do with current events but was a long planned operation. NBC News now reports that this is exactly the case:
President Donald Trump authorized the killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani seven months ago if Iran's increased aggression resulted in the death of an American, according to five current and former senior administration officials.
The presidential directive in June came with the condition that Trump would have final signoff on any specific operation to kill Soleimani, officials said.
The idea to kill Soleimani, a regular General in an army with which the U.S. is not at war, came like many other bad ideas from John Bolton.
After Iran shot down a U.S. drone in June, John Bolton, Trump's national security adviser at the time, urged Trump to retaliate by signing off on an operation to kill Soleimani, officials said. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also wanted Trump to authorize the assassination, officials said.
But Trump rejected the idea, saying he'd take that step only if Iran crossed his red line: killing an American. The president's message was "that's only on the table if they hit Americans," according to a person briefed on the discussion.
Then unknown forces fired 30 short range missiles into a U.S. base near Kirkuk. The salvo was not intended to kill or wound anyone:
The rockets landed in a place and at a time when American and Iraqi personnel normally were not there and it was only by unlucky chance that Mr. Hamid was killed, American officials said.
Without presenting any evidence the U.S. accused Katib Hizbullah, an Iraqi Popular Militia Unit, of having launched the missiles. It launched airstrikes against a number of Katib Hizbullah positions near the Syrian border, hundreds of miles away from Kirkuk, and killed over 30 Iraqi security forces.
This led to demonstrations in Baghdad during which a crowd breached the outer wall of the U.S. embassy but soon retreated. Trump, who had attacked Hillary Clinton over the raid on the consulate/CIA station in Benghazi, did not want to get embarrassed with a full embassy breach.
The media claim that it was the embassy breach that the led to the activation of an operation that had already been planned for a year before Trump signed off on it seven months ago. As the New York Times describes it:
For the past 18 months, officials said, there had been discussions about whether to target General Suleimani. Figuring that it would be too difficult to hit him in Iran, officials contemplated going after him during one of his frequent visits to Syria or Iraq and focused on developing agents in seven different entities to report on his movements — the Syrian Army, the Quds Force in Damascus, Hezbollah in Damascus, the Damascus and Baghdad airports and the Kataib Hezbollah and Popular Mobilization forces in Iraq.
It was the embassy breach and a war-industry lobbyist who convinced Trump to finally pull the symbolical trigger:
Defense Secretary Mark Esper presented a series of response options to the president two weeks ago, including killing Soleimani. Esper presented the pros and cons of such an operation but made it clear that he was in favor of taking out Soleimani, officials said.
Trump signed off and it further developed from there.
There was no intelligence of any 'imminent threat' or anything like that.
This was an operation that had been worked on for 18 months. Trump signed off on it more than half a year ago. Those who had planned it just waited for a chance to execute it.
We can not even be sure that the embassy bombing had caused Trump to give the final go. It might have been that the CIA and Pentagon were just waiting for a chance to kill Soleimani and Muhandis, the leader of Katib Hizbullah, at the same time. Their meeting at Baghdad airport was not secret and provided the convenient opportunity they had been waiting for.
Together Soleimani and Muhandis were the glue that kept the many Shia factions in Iraq together. The armed ones as well as the political ones. Soleimani's replacement as Quds brigade leader, Brigadier General Ismail Qaani, is certainly a capable man. But his previous field of work was mainly east of Iran in Afghanistan and Pakistan and it will be difficult for him to fill Soleimani's role in Iraq:
After Soleimani’s death, Ayatollah Khamenei appointed Soleimani’s deputy Ismail Qaani to succeed him. Qaani does not speak Arabic, does not have an in-depth knowledge of Iraq, nor the insight of Soleimani and his ability to balance the different positions of Iraq’s factions with the opinions of Ayatollah Khamenei and the religious authorities in Najaf.
The question is how the successor of Soleimani will manage his new responsibility including the thorny issues in Iraq. The escalation of the Iranian-American conflict is, according to many, an escalation towards war and the destabilization of the region in which the rules of engagement have changed. The question remains how, and not whether all of this will impact the situation in Iraq.
Today the Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who has his own militia, and Iraqi PMU leaders met in Qom, Iran, to discuss how the foreign troops can be expelled from Iraq. Gen. Qaani will likely be there to give them advice.
Yesterday Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese Hizbullah, gave another speech. In it he called on the Kurds in Iraq to pay back their debt to Soleimani and Hizbullah, which is owed for their fight against ISIS, and to help to evict the foreign soldiers from Iraq:
85-Nasrallah: Now, the rest of the path. 1) Iraq: Iraq is the first country concerned w/responding to this crime, because it happened in Iraq, and because it targeted Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a great Iraqi commander, and because Soleimani defended Iraq.
86-Nasrallah: I ask Masoud Barazani to thank Soleimani for his efforts in defending Erbil and Kurdistan Region, because Soleimani was the only one to respond to your call. Soleimani and with him men from Hezbollah went to Erbil.
87-Nasrallah: Barazani was shaking from fear, but Soleimani and the brothers from Hezbollah helped you repulse this unprecedented threat; and now you must repay this good by being part of the effort to expel the Americans from Iraq and the region.
The Barzani family, which governs the Kurdish part of Iraq, has sold out to the Zionists and the United States a long time ago. It will certainly not support the resistance effort. But Nasrallah's request is highly embarrassing to the clan and to Masoud Barzani personally.
So far I only found this rather confusing response from him:
Nihad N. Arafat @NihadArafat - 7:44 UTC · Jan 13, 2020
The Kurdistan Regional Government’s response to the immoral speech uttered by Hassan Nasrallah through the anti-terror apparatus is a clear message from the regional government to those terrorists that the response to the terrorists must be through the anti-terror apparatus.
As military leader both Soleimani and Muhandis are certainly replaceable. The militia groups they created and led will continue to function.
But both men also played important political roles in Iraq and it will take some time to find adequate people to replace them in that. That makes it likely that the already simmering political situation in Iraq will soon boil over as the Shia factions will start to fight each other over the selection of a new Prime Minister and government.
The U.S. will welcome that as it will try do install a candidate that will reject the Iraqi parliament decision to remove the foreign forces from Iraqi territory.
For the United States to abandon proxy warfare and directly kill one of Iran’s most senior political figures has changed international politics in a fundamental way. It is a massive error. Its ramifications are profound and complex.
There is also a lesson to be learned here in that this morning there will be excitement and satisfaction in the palaces of Washington, Tel Aviv, Riyadh and Tehran. All of the political elites will see prospects for gain from the new fluidity. While for ordinary people in all those countries there is only the certainty of more conflict, death and economic loss, for the political elite, the arms manufacturers, the military and security services and allied interests, the hedge funds, speculators and oil companies, there are the sweet smells of cash and power.
Tehran will be pleased because the USA has just definitively lost Iraq. Iraq has a Shia majority and so naturally tends to ally with Iran. The only thing preventing that was the Arab nationalism of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Socialist Party. Bush and Blair were certainly fully informed that by destroying the Ba’ath system they were creating an Iranian/Iraqi nexus, but they decided that was containable. The “containment” consisted of a deliberate and profound push across the Middle East to oppose Shia influence in proxy wars everywhere.
This is the root cause of the disastrous war in Yemen, where the Zaidi-Shia would have been victorious long ago but for the sustained brutal aerial warfare on civilians carried out by the Western powers through Saudi Arabia. This anti-Shia western policy included the unwavering support for the Sunni Bahraini autocracy in the brutal suppression of its overwhelmingly Shia population. And of course it included the sustained and disastrous attempt to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria and replace it with pro-Saudi Sunni jihadists.
This switch in US foreign policy was known in the White House of 2007 as “the redirection”. It meant that Sunni jihadists like Al-Qaida and later al-Nusra were able to switch back to being valued allies of the United States. It redoubled the slavish tying of US foreign policy to Saudi interests. The axis was completed once Mohammad Bin Salman took control of Saudi Arabia. His predecessors had been coy about their de facto alliance with Israel. MBS felt no shyness about openly promoting Israeli interests, under the cloak of mutual alliance against Iran, calculating quite correctly that Arab street hatred of the Shia outweighed any solidarity with the Palestinians. Common enemies were easy for the USA/Saudi/Israeli alliance to identify; Iran, the Houthi, Assad and of course the Shia Hezbollah, the only military force to have given the Israelis a bloody nose. The Palestinians themselves are predominantly Sunni and their own Hamas was left friendless and isolated.
The principal difficulty of this policy for the USA of course is Iraq. Having imposed a rough democracy on Iraq, the governments were always likely to be Shia dominated and highly susceptible to Iranian influence. The USA had a continuing handle through dwindling occupying forces and through control of the process which produced the government. They also provided financial resources to partially restore the physical infrastructure the US and its allies had themselves destroyed, and of course to fund a near infinite pool of corruption.
That US influence was balanced by strong Iranian aligned militia forces who were an alternative source of strength to the government of Baghdad, and of course by the fact that the centre of Sunni tribal strength, the city of Falluja, had itself been obliterated by the United States, three times, in an act of genocide of Iraqi Sunni population.
Through all this the Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi had until now tiptoed with great care. Pro-Iranian yet a long term American client, his government maintained a form of impartiality based on an open hand to accept massive bribes from anybody. That is now over. He is pro-Iranian now.
Such precarious balance as there ever was in Iraq was upset this last two months when the US and Israelis transported more of their ISIL Sunni jihadists into Iraq, to escape the pincer of the Turkish, Russian and Syrian government forces. The Iranians were naturally not going to stand for this and Iranian militias were successfully destroying the ISIL remnants, which is why General Qassem Suleimani was in Iraq, why a US mercenary assisting ISIL was killed in an Iranian militia rocket attack, and why Syrian military representatives were being welcomed at Baghdad airport.
It is five years since I was last in the Green Zone in Baghdad, but it is extraordinarily heavily fortified with military barriers and checks every hundred yards, and there is no way the crowd could have been allowed to attack the US Embassy without active Iraqi government collusion. That profound political movement will have been set in stone by the US assassination of Suleimani. Tehran will now have a grip on Iraq that could prove to be unshakable.
Nevertheless, Tel Aviv and Riyadh will also be celebrating today at the idea that their dream of the USA destroying their regional rival Iran, as Iraq and Libya were destroyed, is coming closer. The USA could do this. The impact of technology on modern warfare should not be underestimated. There is a great deal of wishful thinking that fantasises about US military defeat, but it is simply unrealistic if the USA actually opted for full scale invasion. Technology is a far greater factor in warfare than it was in the 1960s. The USA could destroy Iran, but the cost and the ramifications would be enormous, and not only the entire Middle East but much of South Asia would be destabilised, including of course Pakistan. My reading of Trump remains that he is not a crazed Clinton type war hawk and it will not happen. We all have to pray it does not.
There will also today be rejoicing in Washington. There is nothing like an apparently successful military attack in a US re-election campaign. The Benghazi Embassy disaster left a deep scar upon the psyche of Trump’s support base in particular, and the message that Trump knows how to show the foreigners not to attack America is going down extremely well where it counts, whatever wise people on CNN may say.
So what happens now? Consolidating power in Iraq and finishing the destruction of ISIL in Iraq will be the wise advance that Iranian statesman can practically gain from these events. But that is, of course, not enough to redeem national honour. Something quick and spectacular is required for that. It is hard not to believe there must be a very real chance of action being taken against shipping in the Straits of Hormuz, which Iran can do with little prior preparation. Missile attacks on Saudi Arabia or Israel are also well within Iran’s capability, but it seems more probable that Iran will wish to strike a US target rather than a proxy. An Ambassador may be assassinated. Further missile strikes against US outposts in Iraq are also possible. All of these scenarios could very quickly lead to disastrous escalation.
In the short term, Trump in this situation needs either to pull out troops from Iraq or massively to reinforce them. The UK does not have the latter option, having neither men nor money, and should remove its 1400 troops now. Whether the “triumph” of killing Suleimani gives Trump enough political cover for an early pullout – the wise move – I am unsure. 2020 is going to be a very dangerous year indeed.
The day after two US drones fired missiles that killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, President Trump gave a press conference where he explained his action by saying: “We took action last night to stop a war. We do not take action to start a war.”
To what war was Trump referring?
In the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election, Trump’s ‘America First’ policy spooked the Israelis because it reeked of isolationism and possible divestment from the Middle East. As everyone (or at least everyone in Israel) ‘knows’, if the US left the Middle East, Israel would soon be ‘overrun by Muslim hordes’ and left with little option but to use its ‘Samson Option‘ and take as many of its Arab ‘enemies’ down with it.
These fears were assuaged, to some extent, by Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iranian nuclear deal, turn the sanction screws on Tehran, and move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Of course, these favors to Israel were, to a large extent, purchased in advance by way of a $25 million Trump campaign donation (the largest donor to any campaign in 2016) by Jewish casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. After Trump’s election win, Adelson gave another $5 million to his inauguration, the largest single presidential inaugural donation ever made. According to US politician Newt Gingrich, Adelson’s “central value” is Israel, and given that in 2013 Adelson said that the US “should drop a nuclear bomb on Iran”, I’m inclined to believe Gingrich.
But Israeli pathological fears of abandonment by the goyim are deeply entrenched and impossible to dispel, and no doubt were reawakened by a November 2018 interview that Trump gave to the Washington Post. When Trump was asked about whether sanctions should be imposed on Saudi Arabia for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, he responded: [emphasis mine]
“I just feel that it’s very, very important to maintain that relationship [with Riyadh]. It’s very important to have Saudi Arabia as an ally, if we’re going to stay in that part of the world. Now, are we going to stay in that part of the world?**One reason to is Israel. Oil is becoming less and less of a reason, because we’re producing more oil now than we’ve ever produced. So, you know, all of a sudden it gets to a point where you don’t have to stay there.”**
The 2003 invasion and destruction of Iraq and removal of Saddam Hussein was a plot hatched by US/Israeli Neocons to do away, once and for all, with (among other things) Ba’athism, an ideology that sought to unite several Middle Eastern nations under [nominally] secular, socialist pan-Arabism (a serious threat to Israel). While the chaos spread by the US invasion and occupation achieved that goal, it also opened the way for Iran to increase its influence among Iraq’s Shia Muslims – who constitute 65% of that country’s population – and who had been held in check by Saddam, a Sunni Muslim (Iran is 90% Shia). Over the last 10 years, this growing Iranian influence has led to increasingly strident calls from Israel for ‘something to be done’ about Iran.
In the last year we have seen repeated Israeli airstrikes on what are labeled ‘Iranian military targets’ across the Levant, including several Israeli airstrikes on Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, multiple coordinated attacks on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf – which, though initially blamed on Iran, did not provoke a war because regional investigations ‘proved inconclusive’ – and what was likely an Israeli false-flag operation targeting major Saudi oil refineries (also tepidly blamed on Iran).
The primary reason for Israel’s increasing anxiety about Iran is the significant progress that Iran has made in forming political and military alliances inside Iraq (a direct result of the Israel-inspired destruction of the country by the US) and across the wider region, and the fact that it is today the only country in the region with the human and military resources (and intent) to pose a threat to the Jewish state’s desire for regional hegemony.
Recently released diplomatic cables dating from 2014-15 detail the extent of Iran’s influence inside the Iraqi government, showing how Iranian intelligence officers have co-opted much of the Iraqi government’s cabinet, infiltrated its military leadership, and even tapped into a network of sources once run by the CIA. In the 4-5 years since then, Iranian influence has only grown and, from an Israeli perspective, reached a ‘red line’ point where Iraq could be used as a staging ground for attacks on Israel.
Given this, and Trump’s talk of there being “less and less reason” for the US to remain in the Middle East combined with the upcoming Iraqi parliament vote to officially demand the removal of US forces from the country, it’s likely that the killing of Soleimani was a negotiated (by Trump) alternative to a relatively imminent, large-scale Israeli attack on Iranian assets in Iraq, and possibly Iran itself. Such an attack would have sparked a real war between Israel and Iran, which would inevitably have drawn in the US. This is, I propose, what Trump meant when he said that “we took action last night to stop a war.”
In this scenario, public statements made by Trump administration officials that killing Soleimani was necessary to stop “significant strikes against Americans” in the region can be understood as necessary lies to cover up the truth: that rather than protecting its own immediate interests, the US government was acting to prevent Israel from doing something dangerously irrational that would threaten the lives of millions in the Middle East and beyond.
What US officials privately told their Iranian counterparts soon after the assassination fits this scenario. Rear-Admiral Ali Fadavi, deputy commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, told Iranian state television that “the Americans resorted to diplomatic measures” the very next morning. Fadavi said Washington asked Tehran to respond “in proportion.” They “even said that,**if you want to get revenge, get revenge in proportion to what we did”** which makes the entire situation seem like something of a sordid geopolitical game. This evening, rockets were fired at the US ‘green zone’ in Baghdad. Perhaps that is Tehran’s proportionate response.
Then again, it’s possible that there is more than mere geopolitical pragmatism motivating certain members of the Trump administration…
Stay tuned…z
The U.S.A. has been bombing Iraq for 29 years. And it looks like it’s not over yet:
Iraq War I: January—February 1991 (aka The Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm, liberation of Kuwait)
Iraq War I 1/2: February 1991—March 2003 (The rest of Bush I, Bill Clinton years, economic blockade and no-fly zone bombings)
Iraq War II: March 2003—December 2011 (aka Operation Iraqi Freedom, W. Bush’s invasion and war for the Shi’ite side)
Iraq War III: August 2014—December 2017 (aka Operation Inherent Resolve, the war against the Islamic State, which America had helped to build up in Syria but then launched this war to destroy, on behalf of the Shi’ite government in Baghdad, after ISIS had seized the predominately Sunni west of the country in the early summer of 2014 and declared the Islamic State “Caliphate”)
Iraq War III 1/2: December 2017—January 2020 (The “mopping-up” war against the remnants of ISIS which has had the U.S. still allied with the very same Shi’ite militias they fought Iraq War II and III for, but are now attacking)
Iraq War IV: Now—?
In 1953, the American CIA overthrew the elected prime minister of Iran in favor of the Shah Reza Pahlavi who ruled a dictatorship there for 26 years until in 1979 a popular revolution overthrew his government and installed the Shi’ite Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in power.
So in 1980, President Jimmy Carter’s government gave Iraq’s Saddam Hussein the green light to invade Iran, a war which the U.S. continued to support throughout the Ronald Reagan years, though they also sold weapons to the Iranian side at times.
But then in 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait in a dispute over debts from the recent war with Iran, with some encouragement by the U.S. government, leading to America’s Iraq War I, aka the first Gulf War or Operation Desert Storm at the beginning of 1991.
They said it was a quick and easy war, except in the aftermath, again with the encouragement of the U.S. government, the Iraqi majority Shi’ite population in alliance with the Sunni Kurds in Iraq’s north rose up to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s secular, Sunni Arab-dominated dictatorship.
But then President Bush Sr. changed his mind and let Saddam Hussein keep his attack helicopters and enough tanks to crush the uprising, leading to the deaths of more than 100,000 people.
Why did Bush Sr. change his mind? Because the Iraqi “traitors” among the Shi’ites who had chosen religious sect over ethnic and national sect during the 1980s, and had fled to Iran and fought on their side in the Iran-Iraq war, especially the Badr Brigade of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, had begun to come across the border from Iran to lead the revolution. The Americans realized they were reversing the 1980s policy of supporting Iraq’s Baathist regime to contain the Iranian Shi’ite revolution and were now importing it into Iraq. So Bush Sr. choked and called it off.
Next, protecting the Shi’ite and Kurdish population the U.S. had just encouraged and betrayed became the excuse for the U.S. to maintain it’s newly expanded military presence in Arabia. It was declared that the U.S. and UK, and originally France as well, would have to maintain “no-fly zones” over northern and southern Iraq for the duration, which were the occasion for hundreds of bombings throughout the 1990s.
At the same time they maintained the pre-war economic blockade against the country in the name of making the people so weak and desperate that they would rise up and overthrow the Hussein government for the U.S. now after their one chance had been spent. Hundreds of thousands of people were deprived to death.
The U.S. military presence in Arabia to wage this half-state of war against Iraq then became the major motivation for bin Laden and his associates, who had fought with U.S. support against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, to turn against the United States, which they did, beginning with the first World Trade Center bombing of 1993.
But Israel’s government, and the American neoconservative movement which was closely associated with it, was more concerned about Iran.
In 1996, neoconservative David Wurmser and his associates Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and a few others advised then-incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the best way to weaken Iranian influence in Syria and southern Lebanon would be to “focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.” Their friend the Iraqi exile and criminal Ahmed Chalabi, whose “Iraqi National Congress” had its headquarters in Tehran, said it was going to be great. The new Iraq will help America dominate Iran, cut off Hamas and Hezbollah and build an oil and water pipeline to Haifa!
When the consequences of staying in Saudi Arabia after Iraq War I came on September 11, 2001, the U.S. government, led by President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives they had appointed to high office, took the opportunity to launch Iraq War II to overthrow Saddam Hussein in March 2003.
But it did not work out like the neocons had promised.
Instead, essentially all they had done was pick up right where the Bush Sr. government left off. Less than a year into the occupation, the Shi’ite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani demanded one-man, one-vote democracy. This led directly to the rise of the also-Iranian-backed Shi’ite United Iraqi Alliance, who, under American supervision, wrote Iraq’s new constitution in late 2004 and won total control over the new parliament in the “purple-finger” elections of January 2005.
The Bush government was happy to deal with the Alliance’s Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Da’wa Party. Every Prime Minster since then has been from these two parties. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s military worked hand in glove with SCIRI and their militia, the Badr Corps. This was the very same Iranian-backed militia that had been living in Iran since 1980 and had fought on their side in the Iran-Iraq war; the very same men whose presence among the Shi’ite uprising against Hussein in 1991 had caused Bush’s father to withdraw support for the revolution. Now the U.S. was putting them directly in power.
In 2004 the U.S. launched the “El Salvador Option,” empowering the Badr Brigade to hunt down and torture and murder the leaders of the growing Sunni-based insurgency. General David Petraeus used SCIRI’s Badr Brigade as the core of the new Iraqi Army, and during the “surge” of 2007–2008 helped them win their civil war, giving them total dominance over the capital city of Baghdad and the central government of Iraq, while pushing the Sunni-based insurgency, and ultimately the predominately Sunni western parts of the country into the arms of al Qaeda in Iraq, aka the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI).
But in the middle of all this, they realized their mistake. The Israelis had already decided to play their own game with the Iraqi Kurds. The Saudi king was angry and had been financing the Sunni insurgency against the U.S. and the Shi’ite parties in the war. So the Bush administration decided to launch what they called “the Redirection.”
This was the plan to put the U.S. back on the side of its client Sunni kingdoms in Arabia, allied with Israel, Jordan and Turkey against the newly expanded Shi’ite alliance of Tehran, Damascus, Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon and now Baghdad, to try to somehow make up for the war they had just fought for the Shi’ite government in Iran that they all hated so much.
So that’s why Obama worked with Saudi and other regional allies to back al Qaeda in Iraq in Syria’s uprising against the Iranian-allied Baathist regime in Damascus. He wasn’t a secret Muslim terrorist from Kenya. He was George W. Bush.
However, instead of simply creating a bin Ladenite emirate in eastern Syria that would focus on moving west against the Assad government in Damascus, the Iraqi-led faction of al Qaeda in Syria, ISIS, decided to move east and conquer all of predominately Sunni western Iraq in June 2014. They then declared the establishment of a new bin Ladenite Islamic State straddling the old border between Iraq and Syria.
The “Islamo-fascist caliphate” of George W. Bush’s most ridiculous propaganda and Osama bin Laden’s wildest dreams had come to life – thanks to Bush’s Iraq War II and Obama’s overt action in Syria.
Though they resented the Shi’ites, the establishment of the Sunni-bin Ladenite Islamic State caliphate in Iraq was too much. A sort of Islamist Khmer Rouge, ISIS threatened America’s oil interests in Kurdistan and the Shi’ite regime in Baghdad as well as being an overall “embarrassment” for the Obama government.
So they launched Iraq War III in 2014–2017 to help the Iranian-backed Shi’ite Iraqi government and its paramilitary militias destroy the radical Sunni state they had built to spite the Iranian-Shi’ite regional alliance they had fought Iraq War II for.
Iranian influence in Syria was also only increased during this time as U.S. and allied support for the bin Ladenites necessitated the Assad regime’s turning to Iran and Hezbollah for defense against them, turning Syria from an Iranian ally to a dependent.
Which brings us to the recent conflict. More than 5,000 U.S. troops remain in country fighting Iraq War III 1/2 against what’s left of the ISIS insurgency in western Iraq. It is doing so in cooperation with the Shi’ite-dominated Baghdad government and its paramilitary forces such as the Badr Brigade, Katib Hezbollah and Asaib Al al-Haq.
But over the past six months or so the Israelis, with the cooperation of the U.S. have been launching air strikes against some of these militias. However, when one militia fired rockets at U.S. bases in response on December 27, killing a contractor and wounding two American soldiers, this was labeled the first day in history and pure “Iranian aggression,” though it is unknown whether Iran’s forces were truly involved in the attack.
The U.S. then attacked Katib Hezbollah bases, killing approximately 25 and causing a massive reaction among the major Shi’ite parties and leaders in the country and a controlled semi-riot at the U.S. embassy. No lives were truly threatened but this was clearly seen as a threat of a future Benghazi-type assault on the American embassy there.
In response, on January 3, Trump escalated massively by ordering the killing of the second or third most powerful man in Iran, Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s Qods Force – essentially their special operations command. Apparently, graffiti implicating Soleimani at the scene of the riot turned into his death warrant. (Endless accusations in the media that Iran and Soleimani were responsible for the deaths of 600 American soldiers in Iraq War II are false.)
It turns out that the protest was led in part by Hadi al-Ameri – the head of SCIRI’s Badr Brigade and member of the ruling coalition in parliament! And now his old close associates David Petraeus and Barack Obama are pretending not to know him.
Ironically, as Patrick Cockburn pointed out, this is all happening right when Iran and Soleimani’s reputation were at a low ebb in Iraq due to the Qods Force helping to organize a lethal over-reaction to the recent protest movement breaking out among the Shi’ites there. That’s over now.
Iran’s response may have come already in the form of the Iraqi Parliament’s vote on Sunday to expel U.S. forces (and file an official complaint against the U.S. at the United Nations).
If Ayatollah Khamenei is smart he’ll take this political victory as good enough and avoid further escalation of the violence, which could cost the U.S., Iraq and Iran all terribly: the U.S. has tens of thousands of troops and a zillion dollars’ worth of equipment within Iranian missile range in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi, Oman and UAE, as well as economic targets of unquantifiable value all up and down the west side of the Persian Gulf.
At the same time, the U.S. has enough firepower to completely decimate Iran, even without using nuclear weapons, if it came down to a real war. (By the way, is there anything in the world that Ayman al Zawahiri would like to see more than a U.S. war against the mullahs of Iran other than his own rear end on Pharaoh Sisi’s throne in Egypt?)
Mutually assured destruction has kept the relative peace thus far, but Americans should insist that the U.S. military leave Iraq immediately. Iraq War III is over. The “territorial caliphate,” as Trump calls it, has been destroyed and Baghdad’s sovereignty over western Iraq restored. If our best Iraqi allies that we’ve helped win two major wars in the last 17 years are such bad guys that we want to bomb their leaders, then now must be the perfect time to quit this war once and for all.
The U.S.A. has no real reason to fight Iran or their and our Iraqi friends. They do not threaten the American people. They only stand in the way of American political and military dominance over the Middle East. That ship has already sailed. If people are sad that Iran has increased its power and influence over the region in the past 20 years, they need to take that up with George W. Bush and Joe Biden. But there’s nothing we can do about it now.
Again, the U.S. has only a few thousand troops in the country to help these same Shi’ite forces fight against what’s left of AQI/ISIS. We do not have anything like the forces necessary to turn around and fight against the Shi’ite army and militias even if we had a good reason to do so.
Trump claims he ordered this killing to have the last word. To “stop a war not to start one.” As reckless as this is, it does seem to accurately reflect his intention. Secretary of State Pompeo immediately started calling for a time-out on Twitter, insisting that the U.S. was intent on “de-escalating” the conflict from here on.
On Sunday afternoon, Iran announced they were withdrawing from more of the restrictions in the 2015 nuclear deal the U.S. left two years ago. Even if they quit the whole deal now, it would mean little since they are still within the Non-Proliferation Treaty and Safeguards Agreements with the IAEA. However, we can expect the usual suspects to pretend to believe that they are embarking on a new nuclear weapons program starting presently.
But so far there is still no real crisis other than what our government has made.
Twenty-nine years of bombing one country is enough. Starting Iraq War IV out of spite over the results of Iraq Wars II and III would be the height of folly and assuredly an unmitigated disaster.
Instead, let’s call the whole thing off and bring our troops home.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States had “clear, unambiguous” intelligence that a top Iranian general was planning a significant campaign of violence against the United States when it decided to strike him, the top U.S. general said on Friday, warning Soleimani’s plots “might still happen.”
Army General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a small group of reporters “we fully comprehend the strategic consequences” associated with the strike against Qassem Soleimani, Tehran’s most prominent military commander.
But he said the risk of inaction exceeded the risk that killing him might dramatically escalate tensions with Tehran. “Is there risk? Damn right, there’s risk. But we’re working to mitigate it,” Milley said from his Pentagon office. (Reuters)
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This is pretty much in line with Trump’s pronouncement that our assassination of Soleimani along with Iraqi General Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was carried out to prevent a war not start one. Whatever information was presented to Trump painted a picture of imminent danger in his mind. What did the Pentagon see that was so imminent?
Well first let’s look at the mindset of the Pentagon concerning our presence in Iraq and Syria. These two recent quotes from Brett McGurk sums up that mindset.
"If we leave Iraq, that will just increase further the running room for Iran and Shia militia groups and also the vacuum that will see groups like ISIS fill and we'll be right back to where we were. So that would be a disaster."
"It's always been Soleimani's strategic game... to get us out of the Middle East. He wants to see us leave Syria, he wants to see us leave Iraq... I think if we leave Iraq after this, that would just be a real disastrous outcome..."
McGurk played a visible role in US policy in Iraq and Syria under Bush, Obama and Trump. Now he’s an NBC talking head and a lecturer at Stanford. He could be the poster boy for what many see as a neocon deep state. He’s definitely not alone in thinking this way.
So back to the question of what was the imminent threat. Reuters offers an elaborate story of a secret meeting of PMU commanders with Soleimani on a rooftop terrace on the Tigris with a grand view of the US Embassy on the far side of the river.
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“In mid-October, Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani met with his Iraqi Shi’ite militia allies at a villa on the banks of the Tigris River, looking across at the U.S. embassy complex in Baghdad, and instructed them to step up attacks on U.S. targets in the country”
“Two militia commanders and two security sources briefed on the gathering told Reuters that Soleimani instructed his top ally in Iraq, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and other powerful militia leaders to step up attacks on US targets using sophisticated new weapons provided by Iran.”
“Soleimani’s plans to attack US forces aimed to provoke a military response that would redirect Iraqis' anger towards Iran to the US, according to the sources briefed on the gathering, Iraqi Shi’ite politicians and government officials close to Iraq PM Adel Abdul Mahdi.”
“At the Baghdad villa, Soleimani told the assembled commanders to form a new militia group of low-profile paramilitaries - unknown to the United States - who could carry out rocket attacks on Americans housed at Iraqi military bases.” (Reuters)
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And what were those sophisticated new weapons provided by Iran? They were 1960s Chinese designed 107mm multiple rocket launcher technology. These simple but effective rocket launchers were mass produced by the Soviet Union, Iran, Turkey and Sudan in addition to China. They’ve been used in every conflict since then. The one captured outside of the K1 military base seems to be locally fabricated, but used Iranian manufactured rockets.
Since when does the PMU have to form another low profile militia unit? The PMU is already composed of so many militia units it’s difficult to keep track of them. There’s also nothing low profile about the Kata’ib Hizbollah, the rumored perpetrators of the K1 rocket attack. They’re as high profile as they come.
Perhaps there’s something to this Reuters story, but to me it sounds like another shithouse rumor. It would make a great scene in a James Bond movie, but it still sounds like a rumor.
There’s another story put out by The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Although it also sounds like a scene form a James Bond movie, I think it sounds more convincing than the Reuters story.
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Delegation of Arab tribes met with “Soleimani” at the invitation of “Tehran” to carry out attacks against U.S. Forces east Euphrates
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights learned that a delegation of the Arab tribes met on the 26th of December 2019, with the goal of directing and uniting forces against U.S. Forces, and according to the Syrian Observatory’s sources, that meeting took place with the commander of the al-Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Qassim Soleimani, who was assassinated this morning in a U.S. raid on his convoy in Iraq. the sources reported that: “the invitation came at the official invitation of Tehran, where Iran invited Faisal al-al-Aazil, one of the elders of al-Ma’amra clan, in addition to the representative of al-Bo Asi clan the commander of NDF headquarters in Qamishli Khatib al-Tieb, and the Sheikh of al-Sharayin, Nawaf al-Bashar, the Sheikh of Harb clan, Mahmoud Mansour al-Akoub, ” adding that: “the meeting discussed carrying out attacks against the American forces and the Syria Democratic Forces.”
Earlier, the head of the Syrian National Security Bureau, Ali Mamlouk, met with the security committee and about 20 Arab tribal elders and Sheikhs in al-Hasakah, at Qamishli Airport Hall on the 5th of December 2019, where he demanded the Arab tribes to withdraw their sons from the ranks of the Syria Democratic Forces. (SOHR)
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I certainly don’t automatically give credence to anything Rami sends out of his house in Coventry. I give this story more credibility only because that is exactly what I would do if Syria east of the the Euphrates was my UWOA (unconventional warfare operational area). This is exactly how I would go about ridding the area of the “Great Satan” invaders and making Syria whole again. The story also includes a lot of named individuals. This can be checked. This morning Colonel Lang told me some tribes in that region have a Shia history. Perhaps he can elaborate on that. I’ve read in several places that Qassim Soleimani knew the tribes in Syria and Iraq like the back of his hand. This SOHR story makes sense. If Soleimani was working with the tribes of eastern Syria like he worked with the tribes and militias of Iraq to create the al-Ḥashd ash-Shaʿbi, it no doubt scared the bejeezus out of the Pentagon and endangered their designs for Iraq and Syria.
So, Qassim Soleimani, the Iranian soldier, the competent and patient Iranian soldier, was a threat to the Pentagon’s designs… a serious threat. But he was a long term threat, not an imminent threat. And he was just one soldier.The threat is systemic and remains. The question of why, in the minds of Trump and his generals, Soleimani had to die this week is something I will leave for my next post.
A side note on Milley: Whenever I see a photo of him, I am reminded of my old Brigade Commander in the 25th Infantry Division, Colonel Nathan Vail. They both have the countenance of a snapping turtle. One of the rehab transfers in my rifle platoon once referred to him as “that J. Edgar Hoover looking mutha fuka.” I had to bite my tongue to keep from breaking out in laughter. It would have been unseemly for a second lieutenant to openly enjoy such disrespect by a PV2… and a troublemaking PV2 at that. God bless PV2 Webster, where ever you are.
TTG
The assassination by the United States of Qassem Suleimani, a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps general and commander of the Quds Force, an Iranian paramilitary force specializing in covert operations on foreign soil, has sent shock waves through the Middle East and around the globe.
The Trump administration has justified its action, citing unspecified intelligence that indicated Suleimani was in the process of finalizing plans for attacks on U.S. personnel and interests in the region, claiming that Suleimani’s death “saved American lives.” This narrative has been challenged by Lebanese officials familiar with Suleimani’s itinerary, noting that the Iranian general had been in Beirut on diplomatic business, and had travelled to Baghdad via a commercial air flight, where he had been diplomatically cleared to enter. These officials claim Suleimani was killed while riding in a convoy on his way from Baghdad International Airport into the city of Baghdad.
In any event, Suleimani’s death resonates in a region already on edge because of existing tensions between the U.S. and Iran. The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, has announced three days of mourning for Suleimani, an indication of his status as national hero. Khamenei also vowed revenge on those who perpetrated the attack. Concern over imminent Iranian retaliation has prompted the State Department to order all American citizens to leave Iraq, and for U.S. forces in the region to be placed on the highest level of alert. Hundreds of American soldiers have been flown into the region as reinforcements, with thousands more standing by if needed.
For many analysts and observers, Iran and the U.S. are on the cusp of a major confrontation. While such an outcome is possible, the reality is that the Iranian policy of asymmetrical response to American aggression that had been put in place by Qassem Suleimani when he was alive is still in place today. While emotions run high in the streets of Iranian cities, with angry crowds demanding action, the Iranian leadership, of which Suleimani was a trusted insider, recognizes that any precipitous action on its part only plays into the hands of the United States. In seeking revenge for the assassination of Qassem Suleimani, Iran will most likely play the long game, putting into action the old maxim that revenge is a dish best served cold.
In many ways, the United States has already written the script regarding major aspects of an Iranian response. The diplomatic missions Suleimani may have been undertaking at the time of his death centered on gaining regional support for pressuring the United States to withdraw from both Syria and Iraq. Of the two, Iraq was, and is, the highest priority, if for no other reason that there can be no sustained U.S. military presence in Syria without the existence of a major U.S. military presence in Iraq. Suleimani had been working with sympathetic members of the Iraqi Parliament to gain support for legislation that would end Iraq’s support for U.S. military forces operating on Iraqi soil. Such legislation was viewed by the United States as a direct threat to its interests in both Iraq and the region.
The U.S. had been engaged in a diplomatic tug of war with Iran to sway Iraqi politicians regarding such a vote. However, this effort was dealt a major blow when Washington conducted a bombing attack Sunday which targeted Khaitab Hezbollah along the border with Syria, killing scores of Iraqis. The justification for these attacks was retaliation for a series of rocket attacks on an American military base that had killed one civilian contractor and wounded several American soldiers. The U.S. blamed Iranian-backed Khaitab Hezbollah (no relation to the Lebanese Hezbollah group), for the attacks.
There are several problems with this narrative, first and foremost being that the bases bombed were reportedly more than 500 kilometers removed from the military base where the civilian contractor had been killed. The Iraqi units housed at the bombed facilities, including Khaitab Hezbollah, were engaged, reportedly, in active combat operations against ISIS remnants operating in both Iraq and Syria. This calls into question whether they would be involved in an attack against an American target. In fact, given the recent resurgence of ISIS, it is entirely possible that ISIS was responsible for the attack on the U.S. base, creating a scenario where the U.S. served as the de facto air force for ISIS by striking Iraqi forces engaged in anti-ISIS combat operations.
ISIS has emerged as a major feature in the Iranian thinking regarding how best to strike back at the US for Suleimani’s death. The Iranian government has gone out of its way to announce that, in the wake of Suleimani’s assassination, that Washington would be held fully responsible for any resurgence of ISIS in the region. Given the reality that Iran has been at the forefront of the war against ISIS, and that Iranian-backed Iraqi militias such as Khaitab Hezbollah have played a critical role in defeating ISIS on the ground, there is no doubt that Iran has the ability to take its foot off of the neck of a prostrate ISIS and facilitate their resurgence in areas under U.S. control.
Such an outcome would serve two purposes. First, U.S. forces would more than likely suffer casualties in the renewed fighting, especially since their primary proxy force, the Syrian Kurds, have been diminished in the aftermath of Turkey’s incursion late last year in northern Syria. More importantly, however, is the political cost that will be paid by President Trump, forced to explain away a resurgent ISIS during an election year after going on record that ISIS had been completely defeated.
But the real blow to American prestige would be for the Iraqi government to sever relations with the American military. The U.S. bombing of the Iraqi bases severely stressed U.S.-Iraqi relations, with the Iraqi government protesting the attacks as a violation of their sovereignty. One of the ways the Iraqi government gave voice to its displeasure was by facilitating access by protestors affiliated with Khaitab Hezbollah to gain access to the highly secure Green Zone in downtown Baghdad where the U.S. Embassy is situated, where they set fire to some buildings and destroyed property before eventually dispersing. While commentators and politicians have described the actions targeting the US Embassy as an “attack,” it was a carefully choreographed bit of theater designed to ease passions that had built up as a result of the U.S. attack.
Getting the Iraqi Parliament to formally reject the U.S. military presence on Iraqi soil has long been a strategic objective of Iran. As such, Iran would be best served by avoiding direct conflict with the US, and letting events take their expected course.
If Iraq votes to expel American forces, the Trump administration will be tied up trying to cope with how to manage that new reality. Add to that the problems that will come in confronting a resurgent ISIS, and it becomes clear that by simply doing nothing, Iran will have already gained the strategic upper hand in a post-Suleimani world. The Trump administration will find it hard to sustain the deployment of thousands of troops in the Middle East if there is no Iranian provocation to respond to. Over time, the American presence will lessen. Security will lapse. And, when the time is right, Iran will strike, most probably by proxy, but in a manner designed to inflict as much pain as possible.
Trump started this fight by recklessly ordering the assassination of a senior Iranian government official. The Trump administration now seeks to shape events in the region to best support a direct confrontation with Iran. Such an outcome is not in Iran’s best interests. Instead, they will erode Trump’s political base by embarrassing him in Iraq and with ISIS. Iran will respond, that much can be assured. But the time and place will be of their choosing, when the U.S. expects it least.
Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of several books, most recently, Deal of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West’s Road to War (2018).
Huge crowds of Iraqi mourners join Gen. Soleimani’s Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis funeral procession
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis chanting “Death to America” have joined the funeral procession for Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi anti-terror forces chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in Baghdad.
The terrorist attack on the two commanders seem to have united Iraqis from all sects and walks of life as former political rivals have set aside their differences to unite against the occupying Americans. As an example, the Sunni grand Mufti of Iraq has called on his forces to join with the Shia Iraqi brothers in violently removing the US forces from Iraq.
The presence of figures such as Sayyed Ahmad al-Safi and Hadi Al-Ameri, who are otherwise rivals, in the funeral procession is a message to Washington that the assassinations have unified the Iraqis more than ever against the US.
The same can be said when Moqtada Al-Sadr who us known to have been opposed to Iranian presence in Iraq, traveled to the home of Soleimani’s family in Kerman to offer his condolences.
Meanwhile, in Iran, the red flag was raised over the minaret of the Jamkaran Mosque in the holy city of Qom. It is the first time in history that the red flag has been raised over the minaret of Jamkaran. According to Shia tradition the red flag symbolizes blood spilled unjustly and is also a call for revenge.
Another thing worthy of notice is the visit of Qatar’s foreign minister to Iran in an attempt to mediate between Washington and Tehran. Unconfirmed reports on Twitter claim that the US asked Qatar to mediate with Iran over the retaliation to Washington’s terrorist attack. Deputy PM/ FM Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani met with his counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif and offered a “nuclear deal” and lifting sanctions in exchange of no response.
It is also worth noticing that Qatar changed the color of its flag from red and white to black and white during the visit. A sign of solidarity with Iran perhaps?
Condemnations and vows for revenge continue to pour in from many parts of the region:
Lebanon: A high-ranking official with the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement has strongly condemned the assassination of Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani. Speaking at a memorial ceremony held in Lebanon’s southern town of Doueir, Mohammad Raad slammed the “US’ cowardly crime” of targeting the top Iranian general, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis stressing that the act will not go unpunished.
“Whoever belongs to the axis of resistance commits himself to participating in the response, because the two martyrs represent every drop of blood that runs through our veins and every breath through which we live. Days are passing by and there is talk of a new war,” Raad, who is also the head of the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc in the Lebanese parliament, pointed out.
Meanwhile, another Lebanese legislator described General Soleimani as a partner in every victory that the anti-Israeli resistance front, Lebanese nation and the peoples of Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan have achieved.Speaking during a memorial ceremony held in the southern city of Yater, Hassan Fadlallah said the late Iranian commander’s role was noticeable in humiliation of US and Israeli occupation projects, and in the defeat of Takfiri terror groups like Daesh.
“America, the Israeli enemy and all their allies in the axis of evil are under the illusion that they could weaken this struggle if they killed a commander or a hero of this resistance axis. They do not know the truth of this culture to which we belong. A culture, under which, a combatant may get killed on the ground but emerges victorious in the end,” Fadlallah, who is also a member of the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc, highlighted.
He added, “Enemies can target a leader here and a hero there; but at the same time they must know that they cannot weaken or make the axis of resistance retreat. All past experiences have actually proven that the blood of such commanders will further the strength and firmness of the axis of resistance.”
Gaza: Islamic Jihad leader Ahmed al-Modallal said the top Iranian general directly supported the Palestinian resistance front, and he was in charge of providing logistical supplies to Palestinian resistance groups.
“The assassination of General Soleimani increases our determination and adherence to resistance in the face of forces of arrogance. (The Palestinian) resistance movement will stand committed to the blood of their martyrs,” Modallal added.
He then slammed attempts by certain Arab states to normalize diplomatic relations with the Israeli regime, stating that the United States aims to rob Arab and Muslim nations of their wealth and capabilities.
“It is shameful that several Arab countries have opened up their arms to embrace the axis of evil and have deployed troops to kill our people,” Modallal pointed out.
Separately, top Hamas official Ismail Radwan underlined that General Soleimani’s assassination will unite anti-US peoples to stand against the occupation of Arab and Muslim territories.
Yemen: The politburo of Ansarullah in a statement on Friday described the operation as a war crime by the White House against the entire Muslim Ummah, the anti-Israel axis of resistance and the Palestinian cause.
“Washington assumed it could get rid of General Soleimani by means of his targeted killing, but one can rest assured that his blood will chase Americans more than ever,” it said.
On Friday, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi offered his sincere condolences over the martyrdom of the two distinguished Iranian and Iraqi military figures in US airstrikes, saying, “The freedom-loving Yemeni nation must know that the enemy targets anyone without exception in its pursuit to control all.”
“The enemy is fairly annoyed, and has resorted to targeted killing because the axis of resistance poses an obstruction for its plots and thwarts them,” Houthi pointed out.
In other places, massive protests have been held in Kashmir, in Afghanistan, in the occupied Gaza strip in solidarity with the martyred General. It seems that Soleimani is viewed as a champion for many of the oppressed people of the world.
On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was assassinated by Serbian conspirators seeking the secession of Slavs from his realm. Austria-Hungry responded by issuing an ultimatum to Serbia and, shortly thereafter, declaring war on the Slavic kingdom. An 1892 French alliance forged with Czarist Russia mandated mobilization in the event of military action by any members of the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. Consequently, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand set off a chain reaction that, in very short order, plunged Europe into the inhuman hell of the First World War. The assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike ordered by President Donald Trump on January 2, 2020, is likely to be viewed by historians, in hindsight, as a comparable catalyst – albeit one with even more catastrophic consequences.
Even an American assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would not have triggered the kind of retaliation that everyone ought to expect from Iran and its proxies in the coming days.
General Soleimani (age sixty-two) was leader of Iran’s Qods Force, the elite expeditionary wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). “Haj Qassem” was from a poor peasant family in the Kerman province of Iran. He spent his youth as a construction worker paying off his father’s debts. A decorated veteran of the Iran-Iraq War who – in his rare interviews – wistfully spoke of wanting to be martyred so that he could rejoin his friends and fallen comrades, Soleimani refused to wear body armor or even a bullet proof vest when commanding the Qods Force in its numerous battles against ISIL and other Sunni Islamist fighters in Iraq and Syria. Although renowned for his humility, in December of 2017, Soleimani refused to even open a letter from the chief of the CIA that was hand delivered to him. It was around then that Time magazine named Soleimani among the top 100 most influential figures in the world, describing him as the “James Bond” and “Erwin Rommel” of “Middle Eastern Shi’ites.”1 Foreign Policy named him as among the most influential “Global Thinkers” and “the most powerful general in the Middle East today.2
In the wake of his assassination, General Soleimani has been characterized as the second most powerful man in the Islamic Republic of Iran. However, the truth is that even an American assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would not have triggered the kind of retaliation that everyone ought to expect from Iran and its proxies in the coming days. Unlike the Supreme Leader, General Soleimani was widely viewed as a national hero by Iranians across the political spectrum. Even those patriots most vehemently opposed to the Islamic ideology of Iran’s current regime harbored in their hearts a sneaking admiration for “Sardar Soleimani.” His martyrdom is likely to accomplish what could barely be conceived as the consequence of the death of any other Iranian leader: the solidarity of hitherto embattled and embittered religious and nationalist factions against foreign aggression.
The reaction outside of Iran is likely to be even more vehement. After the American toppling of Saddam Hussein and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 opened a vacuum of power in the Middle East that was quickly filled by the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), it was Soleimani who led the Arab Shi’ite resistance against ISIL in Iraq and Syria. He played a key role in the unification of Iraqi Shi’ite militias into the umbrella organization Hashd al-Shaabi or the “Popular Mobilization Forces.” The group’s leader, Abu-Mahdi Al-Muhandis, was riding in the same vehicle with Soleimani near Baghdad airport when the two of them were killed by Trump’s drone strike. It was Hashd al-Shaabi who had organized the protests against the continued American occupation of Iraq outside the US Embassy in Baghdad on December 31, 2019, which President Trump has used as a casus belli for assassinating Soleimani and Muhandis.
When President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton emboldened the nascent Caliphate by destabilizing Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, Soleimani’s reach also deepened from Baghdad to Damascus. He has worked closely with the Lebanese Hezbollah, who admire him as ardently as the Arab fighters that he commanded in Iraq and Syria. Indeed, the first significant response to Soleimani’s assassination has been a declaration from the Hezbollah militia that it intends to retaliate by attacking all American bases in the region. Israel has gone into full war-preparedness in response to this threat. It is an open secret that the Israelis had more than one opportunity to assassinate Soleimani while he was operating in Syria, but were warned against doing so by US military and intelligence officials who fathomed the catastrophic escalation that would ensue from this act of war. For the same reasons, Trump’s order is already being widely criticized by geopolitical analysts and condemned by some members of the US congress.
The latter should be hardly surprised that their exclusive constitutional power to declare war has been undermined. This is exactly the kind of thing that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s April 8, 2019 designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization was intended to facilitate. Under the 2001 Authorization of the Use of Military Force in the Global War on Terrorism passed by Congress after 9/11, the President of the United States is invested with the authority to strike “terrorists” anywhere at any time. Never mind that fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudis acting with the backing of elites within the regime of Saudi Arabia, America’s closest Muslim ally – and Iran’s greatest regional adversary. Never mind that, in the wake of 9/11, General Soleimani was among the Iranian officials who clandestinely volunteered to collaborate with the United States in military operations against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Never mind that Iran rescinded that good will offer only after America intended to colonize Iraq, a region that served as the capital district of Iran for over a thousand years during three successive Persian Empires. Baghdad or Bogh-Dâd is an ancient Persian name, meaning “Given by God” or “God’s Justice.” Even after the advent of Islam, most of “Iraq” was part of Shi’ite Iran until around 1750.
Trump’s order is already being widely criticized by geopolitical analysts and condemned by some members of the US congress.
An Iranian flag is likely to be flying over that originally Persian city again in the very near future. The fact that the protesters at the US Embassy in Baghdad were able to make their way through numerous checkpoints and into the heart of the supposedly secure “green zone” established by American colonizers attests to the depth and breadth of Iranian influence within Iraq’s government. Hashd al-Shaabi, the militia coalition who organized the protests, consists of Iraqi Shi’ites so devout that during the Iran-Iraq war they defected to Iran’s side and fought for the Islamic Republic against Saddam Hussein. The majority of the Shi’ite dominated Iraqi government that was democratically elected after the US overthrow of Saddam in 2003 consists of Iraqi politicians who spent the 1980s and 1990s living under political asylum in Iran and forging close working relationships with Iran’s theocratic elite. Much of this Iranian theocratic elite, in turn, was born or raised in Shi’ite holy cities such as Najaf and Karbala that are situated in the artificial nation-state of “Iraq.”
Just a week before the assassination of Soleimani and Muhandis, the December 27 issue of Newsweek ran a dramatic cover story titled “If Iran Falls, ISIS May Rise Again.”3 The article rightly identifies Iran as the leading force resisting the rise of the would-be Sunni fundamentalist Caliphate. What Newsweek does not dare to admit is that ISIS – or DAESH as I prefer to call it (out of respect for the ancient Egyptian goddess) – was effectively created, armed, and funded by the United States and its chief regional ally, Saudi Arabia. This Frankenstein’s monster of the American military-industrial complex not only carried out a genocide of ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria, DAESH also attempted to erase the Pre-Islamic Iranian artistic and architectural heritage by smashing, drilling, and dynamiting “pagan” monuments in Nineveh, Mosul, and Palmyra – cities that had been part of the Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sassanian Empires of Iran. Far from the grotesque caricature promulgated in American media, the Shi’ite militias effectively led by Soleimani and Muhandis in Iraq were not simply fanatical sectarian groups. Hashd al-Shaabi included Arab Christians and even Yezidi Kurds, and General Soleimani repeatedly rescued the Kurds of northern Iraq (who are ethnically Iranian) from genocidal DAESH oppression, regardless of whether they were Sunnis, Shi’ites, or even “Satanist” Yezidis.
The Newsweek article is on point when it concludes that an American-led attempt to effect regime change by toppling the Islamic Republic would not only cripple the main force of resistance to DAESH, allowing the Caliphate to rise again, but that it would also open the way for DAESH operations inside of an increasingly balkanized Iran. Sunni minorities in the Khuzestan (or as these Arabs call it “Al-Ahwaz”), Kurdistan, and Baluchistan regions on Iran’s Western and Southeastern borders would attempt secession from “Persia” and turn their territories into havens for Sunni terrorists.
This will prove, in both blood and treasure, to be the most costly war that Americans have ever waged in the short history of the United States.
The more militantly anti-Persian elements within these minorities have long been the favorites of Neocon advocates for regime change in Iran, such as former US National Security Advisor John Bolton. Despite Bolton’s dismissal, they played a significant role in fomenting the violent riots that rocked Iran in mid to late November of 2019. These insurgents hijacked protests by up to 200,000 Iranians against an increase in fuel prices (or a cut in state subsidies for gasoline), which measure was meant to save the Iranian economy in the face of Trump’s crippling sanctions. By the time the regime put out the fires, 731 banks and 140 government buildings had been destroyed by arsonists. Of the 1,500 protesters killed, many were fired on by suspiciously clad agent provocateurs or hidden snipers. The Islamist-Marxist People’s Mojahedin of Iran, for whom John Bolton was a lobbyist, admitted to its role in the riots, but armed Sunni insurgents undoubtedly also played a significant role. Government officials intercepted numerous caches of armaments being smuggled into the country in order to bring about a “Syrianization” of Iran. But Iran is not another Syria, let alone another Iraq.
“Iraq” and “Syria” are, like most of the countries in the Islamic World, totally artificial states engineered by European colonialists. Iran is a cohesive 3,000 year old nation that has dominated the Middle East and Central Asia during the course of four Persian Empires, with the first of them being founded around 500 BC by the Achaemenids and the latest of them rising in 1500 AD under the Safavids. The last of these empires, Safavid Iran, fused Iranian national identity with Shi’ite spirituality in a way that cemented Iran’s role within the region as the bastion of resistance against the Caliphate concept of Sunni Muslims – a role that Iran began to play in earnest when, in the twelfth century, the Order of Assassins fought the Caliphate while simultaneously defending their territories – including those in present-day “Iraq” and “Syria” against the Western Crusaders.
The Islamic Republic of Iran would be far more resilient in the face of an armed regime-change effort than Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Assad himself is nothing more than a client of Iran. The so-called Iranian “opposition” consists of a variety of factions afflicted with rabid infighting, lacking in legitimacy, organization, competence, and vision. Most of them are outright traitors. Those who are not advocates of the balkanization of Iran are on the payroll of the CIA, the MOSSAD, or the Saudis, all of whom want to carve a neutered rump state of “Persia” out of the mutilated corpse of any Iranian nation that is capable of resisting Neoliberalism, Zionism, and Wahabism.
The Iranian drone strikes that incapacitated half of Saudi oil production on September 14, 2019, for which Iran’s Shi’ite proxy in Yemen was willing to take responsibility, is just a hint of what Iran could unleash throughout the Islamic World if it were to face an existential threat. No man embodied and epitomized the transnational and extra-territorial reach of Iran throughout the Shi’ite regions of the Islamic World more than General Qassem Soleimani. By assassinating Haj Qassem, Trump has declared war, not only on Iran, but also on Shi’ite Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. As in the case of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, this act of war is likely to catalyze an international conflict that will eventually become global in its scope of destruction. It is that crucible or fiery forge that allows the euphemistically veiled “Global War on Terrorism” to reveal its true form as the Third World War. This will prove, in both blood and treasure, to be the most costly war that Americans have ever waged in the short history of the United States. It may even prove to be for the United States what the invasion of Afghanistan was for the Soviet Union – a harbinger of doom, terminal decline, and disintegration. I wager that on the other side of this war, the proud Persian people will still be standing in defiant defense of their 3,000 year old civilization.
References
1Kenneth M. Pollack, “Major General Qasem Soleimani,” Time.
2Stanley McChrystal, “Iran’s Deadly Puppet Master,” Foreign Policy. Winter 2019.
3Tom O’Connor, “If Iran Falls, ISIS May Rise Again,” Newsweek. December 10, 2019.
The ceasefire agreement brokered by Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday accomplishes very little outside of putting window dressing on a foregone conclusion. Simply put, the Turks will be able to achieve their objectives of clearing a safe zone of Kurdish forces south of the Turkish border, albeit under a U.S. sanctioned agreement. In return, the U.S. agrees not to impose economic sanctions on Turkey.
So basically it doesn’t change anything that’s already been set into motion by the Turkish invasion of northern Syria. But it does signal the end of the American experiment in Syrian regime change, with the United States supplanted by Russia as the shot caller in Middle Eastern affairs.
To understand how we got to this point, we need to navigate the four A’s that underpin America’s failed policy vis-à-vis Syria—Afghanistan, Astana, Adana, and Ankara.
The first, Afghanistan, represents the epitome of covert American meddling in regional affairs—Operation Cyclone, the successful CIA-run effort to arm and equip anti-communist rebels in Afghanistan to confront the Soviet Army from 1979 to 1989. The success of the Afghanistan experience helped shape an overly optimistic assessment by the administration of President Barack Obama that a similarly successful effort could be had in Syria by covertly training and equipping anti-Assad rebels.
The second, Astana, is the capital city of Kazakhstan, recently renamed Nur Sultan in March 2019. Since 2017, Astana has played host to a series of summits that have become known as “the Astana Process,” a Russian-directed diplomatic effort ostensibly designed to facilitate a peaceful ending to the Syrian crisis, but in reality part of a larger Russian-run effort to sideline American regime change efforts in Syria.
The Astana Process was sold as a complementary effort to the U.S.-backed, UN-brokered Geneva Talks, which were initially convened in 2012 to bring an end to the Syrian conflict. The adoption by the U.S. of an “Assad must go” posture doomed the Geneva Talks from the outset. The Astana Process was the logical outcome of this American failure.
The third “A”—Adana—is a major city located in southern Turkey, some 35 kilometers inland from the Mediterranean Sea. It’s home to the Incirlik Air Base, which hosts significant U.S. Air Force assets, including some 50 B-61 nuclear bombs. It also hosted a meeting between Turkish and Syrian officials in October 1998 for the purpose of crafting a diplomatic solution to the problem presented by forces belonging to the Kurdish People’s Party, or PKK, who were carrying out attacks inside Turkey from camps located within Syria.
The resulting agreement, known as the Adana Agreement, helped prevent a potential war between Turkey and Syria by formally recognizing the respective sovereignty and inviolability of their common border. In 2010, the two nations expanded the 1998 deal into a formal treaty governing cooperation and joint action, inclusive of intelligence sharing on designated terrorist organizations (i.e., the PKK). The Adana Agreement/Treaty was all but forgotten in the aftermath of the 2011 Syrian crisis, as Turkey embraced regime change regarding the Assad government, only to be resuscitated by Russian President Vladimir Putin during talks with Erdogan in Moscow in January 2019. The re-introduction of the moribund agreement into the Syrian-Turkish political dynamic successfully created a diplomatic bridge between the two countries, paving the way for a formal resolution of their considerable differences.
The final “A”—Ankara—is perhaps the most crucial when it comes to understanding the demise of the American position in Syria. Ankara is the Turkish capital, situated in the central Anatolian plateau. In September 2019, Ankara played host to a summit between Erdogan, Putin, and Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani. While the ostensible focus of the summit was to negotiate a ceasefire in the rebel-held Syrian province of Idlib, where Turkish-backed militants were under incessant attack by the combined forces of Russia and Syria, the real purpose was to facilitate an endgame to the Syrian crisis.
Russia’s rejection of the Turkish demands for a ceasefire were interpreted by the Western media as a sign of the summit’s failure. But the opposite was true—Russia backed Turkey’s demand for a security corridor along the Turkish-Syrian border, and accepted Ankara’s characterization of the American-backed Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) as “terrorists.” This agreement, combined with Turkey’s willingness to recognize the outcome of Syrian presidential elections projected to take place in 2021, paved the way for the political reconciliation between Turkey and Syria. It also hammered the last nail in the coffin of America’s regime change policy regarding Bashar al-Assad.
There is little mention of the four A’s in American politics and the mainstream media. Instead there’s only a skewed version of reality, which portrays the American military presence in Syria as part and parcel of a noble alliance between the U.S. and the Kurdish SDF to confront the ISIS scourge. This ignores the reality that the U.S. has been committed to regime change in Syria since 2011, and that the fight against ISIS was merely a sideshow to this larger policy objective.
“Assad must go.” Those three words have defined American policy on Syria since they were first alluded to by President Obama in an official White House statement released in August 2011. The initial U.S. strategy did not involve an Afghanistan-like arming of rebel forces, but rather a political solution under the auspices of policies and entities created under the administration of President George W. Bush. In 2006, the State Department created the Iran-Syrian Operations Group, or ISOG, which oversaw interdepartmental coordination of regime change options in both Iran and Syria.
Though ISOG was disbanded in 2008, its mission was continued by other American agencies. One of the byproducts of the work initiated by ISOG was the creation of Syrian political opposition groups that were later morphed by the Obama administration into an entity known as the Syrian National Council, or SNC. When Obama demanded that Assad must step aside in August 2011, he envisioned that the Syrian president would be replaced by the SNC. This was the objective of the Geneva Talks brokered by the United Nations and the Arab League in 2011-2012. One of the defining features of those talks was the insistence on the part of the U.S., UK, and SNC that the Assad government not be allowed to participate in any discussion about the political future of Syria. This condition was rejected by Russia, and the talks ultimately failed. Efforts to revive the Geneva Process likewise floundered on this point.
Faced with this diplomatic failure, Obama turned to the CIA to undertake an Afghanistan-like arming of Syrian rebels to accomplish on the ground what could not be around a table in Geneva.
The CIA took advantage of Turkish animosity toward Syria in the aftermath of suppression of anti-Syrian government demonstrations in 2011 to funnel massive quantities of military equipment, weapons, and ammunition from Libya to Turkey, where they were used to arm a number of anti-Assad rebels operating under the umbrella of the so-called “Free Syrian Army,” or FSA. In 2013, the CIA took direct control of the arm and equip program, sending teams to Turkey and Jordan to train the FSA. This effort, known as Operation Timber Sycamore, was later supplemented with a Department of Defense program to provide anti-tank weapons to the Syrian opposition.
American efforts to create a viable armed opposition ultimately failed, with many of the weapons and equipment eventually falling into the hands of radical jihadist groups aligned with al-Qaeda and, later, ISIS. The emergence of ISIS as a regional threat in 2014 led to the U.S. building ties with Syrian Kurds as an alternative vector for implementation of its Syrian policy objectives.
While the fight against ISIS was real, it was done in the context of the American occupation of fully one third of Syria’s territory, including oil fields and agricultural resources. As recently as January 2019, the U.S. was justifying the continued presence of forces in Syria as a means of containing the Iranian presence there; the relationship with the SDF and Syrian Kurds was little more than a front to facilitate this policy.
Turkish incursion into Syria is the direct manifestation of the four A’s that define the failure of American policy in Syria—Afghanistan, Astana, Adana and Ankara. It represents the victory of Russian diplomacy over American force of arms. This is a hard pill for most Americans to swallow, which is why many are busy crafting a revisionist history that both glorifies and justifies failed American policy by wrapping it in the flag of our erstwhile Kurdish allies.
But the American misadventure in Syria was never going to end well—bad policy never does. For the American troops caught up in the collapse of the decades-long effort of the United States to overthrow the Assad government, the retreat from Syria was every bit as ignominious as the retreats of all defeated military forces before them. But at least our forces left Syria alive, and not inside body bags—which was an all too real alternative had they remained in place to face the overwhelming forces of geopolitical reality in transition.
Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of several books, most recently, Deal of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West’s Road to War (2018).
The last four days have shown that the ongoing US-Iran war is acutely affecting the whole region. This is now evident in Iraq where more than 105 people have been killed and thousands wounded in the course of demonstrations that engulfed the capital Baghdad and southern Shia cities including Amara, Nasririyeh, Basrah, Najaf and Karbalaa. Similar demonstrations could erupt in Beirut and other Lebanese cities due to the similarity of economic conditions in the two countries. The critical economic situation in the Middle East offers fertile ground for uprisings that lead to general chaos.
Iraq has special status due to its position, since the 2003 US occupation of the country, as both an Iranian and as a US ally. Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi up to now has armed himself with article 8 of the constitution, seeking to keep Iraq as a balancing point between all allies and neighbouring countries, and to prevent Mesopotamia from becoming a battlefield for conflicts between the US and Iran or Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Notwithstanding the efforts of Baghdadi officials, the deterioration of the domestic economic situation in Iraq has pushed the country into a situation comparable to that of those Middle Eastern countries who were hit by the so-called “Arab Spring”.
Fuelled by real grievances including lack of job opportunities and severe corruption, domestic uprisings were manipulated by hostile foreign manipulation for purposes of regime change; these efforts have been ongoing in Syria since 2011. Baghdad believes that foreign and regional countries took advantage of the justified demands of the population to implement their own agenda, with disastrous consequences for the countries in question.
Sources within the office of the Iraqi Prime Minister said “the recent demonstrations were already planned a couple of months ago. Baghdad was working to try and ease the situation in the country, particularly since the demands of the population are legitimate. The Prime Minister has inherited the corrupt system that has developed since 2003; hundreds of billions of dollars have been diverted into the pockets of corrupt politicians. Moreover, the war on terror used not only all the country’s resources but forced Iraq to borrow billions of dollars for the reconstruction of the security forces and other basic needs.”
“The latest demonstrations were supposed to be peaceful and legitimate because people have the right to express their discontent, concerns and frustration. However, the course of events showed a different objective: 8 members of the security forces were killed (1241 wounded) along with 96 of civilians (5000 wounded) and many government and party buildings were set on fire and completely destroyed. This sort of behaviour has misdirected the real grievances of the population onto a disastrous course: creating chaos in the country. Who benefits from the disarray in Iraq?”
The unrest in Iraqi cities coincides with an assassination attempt against Iran’s Soleimani. Sources believe that the “assassination attempt against the commander of the Iranian IRGC-Quds Brigade Qassem Soleimani is not a pure coincidence but related to events in Iraq”.
“Soleimani was in Iraq during the selection of the key leaders of the country. He has a lot of influence, like the Americans who have their own people. If Soleimani is removed, those who may have been behind the recent unrest may think it will create enough confusion in Iraq and Iran, allowing room for a possible coup d’état carried out by military or encouraged by foreign forces, Saudi Arabia and the US in this case. Killing Soleimani, in the minds of foreign actors, could lead to chaos, leading to a reduction of Iranian influence in Iraq”, said the sources.
The recent decisions of Abdel Mahdi made him extremely unpopular with the US. He has declared Israel responsible for the destruction of the five warehouses of the Iraqi security forces, Hashd al-Shaabi, and the killing of one commander on the Iraqi-Syrian borders. He opened the crossing at al-Qaem between Iraq and Syria to the displeasure of the US embassy in Baghdad, whose officers expressed their discomfort to Iraqi officials. He expressed his willingness to buy the S-400 and other military hardware from Russia. Abdel Mahdi agreed with China to reconstruct essential infrastructure in exchange for oil, and gave a $284 million electricity deal to a German rather than an American company. The Iraqi Prime Minister refused to abide by US sanctions and is still buying electricity from Iran and allowing the exchange of commerce that is bringing large amounts of foreign currency and boosting the Iranian economy. And lastly, Abdel Mahdi rejected the “Deal of the Century” proposed by the US: he is trying to mediate between Iran and Saudi Arabia and therefore is showing his intention to keep away from the US objectives and policies in the Middle East.
US officials expressed their complete dissatisfaction with Abdel Mahdi’s policy to many Iraqi officials. The Americans consider that their failure to capture Iraq as an avant-garde country against Iran is a victory for Tehran. However, this is not what the Iraqi Prime Minister is aiming at. He is genuinely trying to keep away from the US-Iran war, but is confronted with increasing difficulties.
Abdel Mahdi took over governance in Iraq when the economy was at a catastrophic level. He is struggling in his first year of governance even though Iraq is considered to have the fourth largest of the world’s oil reserves. A quarter of Iraq’s over 40 million people live at poverty level.
The Marjaiya in Najaf intervened to calm down the situation, showing its capacity to control the mob. Its representative in Karbalaa Sayyed Ahmad al-Safi emphasises the importance of fighting corruption and creating an independent committee to put the country back on track. Al-Safi said it was necessary to start serious reforms and asked the Parliament, in particular “the biggest coalition”, to assume its responsibility.
The biggest group belongs to Sayyed Moqtada al-Sadr, with 53 MPs. Moqtada declared – contrary to what the Marjaiya hoped – the suspension of his group from the parliament rather than assuming his responsibilities. Moqtada is calling for early elections, an election where he is not expected to gather more than 12-15 MPs. Al-Sadr, who visits Saudi Arabia and Iran for no strategic objective, is trying to ride the horse of grievance so he can take advantage of the just requests of the demonstrators. Moqtada and the other Shia groups who rule the country today, in alliance with Kurds and Sunni minorities, are the ones to respond to the people’s requests, and not hide behind those in the street asking for the end of corruption, for more job opportunities, and improvement of their conditions of life.
Prime Minister Abdel Mahdi doesn’t have a magic wand; the people can’t wait for very long. Notwithstanding their justified demands, the people were “not alone in the streets. The majority of social media hashtags were Saudi: indicating that Abdel Mahdi’s visits to Saudi Arabia and his mediation between Riyadh and Tehran have not rendered him immune to regime change efforts supported by Saudi,” said the source. Indeed, Iraq’s neighbours gave strong indications to the Prime Minister that Iraq’s relation Iran is the healthiest and the most stable of relations with neighbouring countries. Tehran didn’t conspire against him even if it was the only country whose flag was burned by some demonstrators and reviled in the streets of Baghdad during the last days of unrest.
The critical economic situation is making the Middle East vulnerable to unrest. Most countries are suffering due to the US sanctions on Iran and the monstrous financial expenditure on US weapons. US President Donald Trump is trying hard to empty Arab leaders’ pockets and keep Iran as the main scarecrow to drain Gulf finances. The Saudi war on Yemen is also another destabilising factor in the Middle East, allowing plenty of room for tension and confrontation.
Iraq seems headed for instability as one aspect of the multidimensional US war on Iran; the US is demanding support and solidarity from Gulf and Arab countries to stand behind its plans. Iraq is not conforming to all US demands. The Iraqi parliament and political parties represent the majority of the population; regime change is therefore unlikely, but neighbouring countries and the US will continue to exploit domestic grievances. It is not clear whether Abdel Mahdi will manage to keep Iraq stable. What is clear is that US-Iran tensions are not sparing any country in the Middle East.
The current unrest in Iraq began a week ago after a prominent general was removed from his post:
Lieutenant General Abdul Wahab al-Saadi was the great Iraqi military hero of the war against Isis, leading the assault on Mosul which recaptured the de facto Isis capital after a nine-month siege in 2017.
But at the weekend he was suddenly removed as the commander of the Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) shock troops, the elite corps of the Iraqi armed forces, by Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi. He was instead given what the general considered to be a non-job at the Defence Ministry.
Saadi has refused to accept the move against him, and described his new posting as an "insult" and a "punishment". His effective demotion has provoked a wave of popular support for arguably Iraq’s most esteemed general, on the streets as well as on social media.
The CTS is a force that often cooperates with the U.S. military. Abdul Wahab al-Saadi is a U.S. trained officer. He was suspected to be the head of an imminent overthrow of the government.
For months there have been rumors of a U.S. instigated coup in Iraq:
Republic of Sumer @Sumer_Iraq - 14:30 UTC · Oct 4, 2019
Over two months ago, Qays Khaz’ali said:There’s plans to change Baghdad government in November, with protests erupting in October. Protests not spontaneous, but organised by factions in Iraq. Mark my words
Qays Khaz’ali is a leader of Shia groups who twelve years ago fought against the U.S. and British invaders.
Sharmine Narwani @snarwani - 00:34 UTC · Oct 5, 2019
Al Akhbar newspaper says the govt of #Iraq learned 3 months ago of a planned US-backed coup by military officers, to be followed by street action. Time to be skeptical about events in Iraq?
During the last five days there have been protest all over the south of Iraq where the majority of the people are Shia. The protest escalated within a few days into shootings with over a hundred killed. In several cities party and government offices were burned and various groups hustle to take a position in the "leaderless" movement.
There are legitimate reasons for protests. The majority of the people in Iraq is younger than 20 years. The people have little chance of finding a job. The state is weak and many of its actors are corrupt. Services the state is supposed to provide don't get delivered. Electricity and water supply is often sparse.
But those are not the reasons why the protests immediately escalated into violence:
Liz Sly @LizSly - 22:19 UTC · Oct 4, 2019
Many Iraqi protesters are complaining of unknown snipers targeting them from rooftops, and it's possible they are aiming at both the demonstrators & the security forces.Quote: Reporting Iraq @TFPOI · Oct 4
Protestors are confirming the use of snipers from buildings, targeting protesters approaching Tahrir Square.
A young man was killed by the use of snipers. Evidence in the form of a photo can be seen.
#iraq #baghdad #save_the_iraqi_people
During the 2014 U.S. coup in Ukraine the same method was used to inflame the country.
Al Sura @AlSuraEnglish - 15:36 UTC · Oct 5, 2019
#BREAKING - #Iraqi special forces launch search and destroy mission against unknown snipers that have killed at least 4 protesters across the capital of #Baghdad.
The snipers are not the only sign that the protests are not genuine:
Marc Owen Jones @marcowenjones - 5:59 UTC · Oct 4, 2019
[#Thread] 1/ This one is on #Iraq. A few people mentioned suspicious activity on Twitter and I had a look into a few hashtags. One in particular begins, "Show your support for the right of Iraq people to protest peacefully". I have little doubt there is an influence campaign...
[...]
4/ Firstly, as you can see from the below graph, the hashtags started trending quite suddenly at 3.30pm UTC on October 2nd. However one of the first accounts to post the hashtag was the one screenshotted here > @AlshiblyRamy - who has a lot of photos of Saudi and Iraq flags...
5/ The most salient measure of inorganic activity is accounts created in a short time frame. Of the 6500 or so accounts in the sample, 1,118 were created in just 3 days - October 1st, 2nd and 3rd. That's astounding - around 17% of the sample! #Iraq
The protests are part of the conflict between the U.S., its Saudi proxies, and Iran.
The immediate aim is to bring down the government under Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi who strove to stay neutral in the conflict between the U.S./Israel/Saudi Arabia and Iran:
The recent decisions of Abdel Mahdi made him extremely unpopular with the US. He has declared Israel responsible for the destruction of the five warehouses of the Iraqi security forces, Hashd al-Shaabi, and the killing of one commander on the Iraqi-Syrian borders. He opened the crossing at al-Qaem between Iraq and Syria to the displeasure of the US embassy in Baghdad, whose officers expressed their discomfort to Iraqi officials. He expressed his willingness to buy the S-400 and other military hardware from Russia. Abdel Mahdi agreed with China to reconstruct essential infrastructure in exchange for oil, and gave a $284 million electricity deal to a German rather than an American company. The Iraqi Prime Minister refused to abide by US sanctions and is still buying electricity from Iran and allowing the exchange of commerce that is bringing large amounts of foreign currency and boosting the Iranian economy. And lastly, Abdel Mahdi rejected the “Deal of the Century” proposed by the US: he is trying to mediate between Iran and Saudi Arabia and therefore is showing his intention to keep away from the US objectives and policies in the Middle East.
The violent protest in Iraq are part of a larger undeclared war against Iran.
A recent attempt to kill Major general Qassem Soleiman, the leader of Iran's Quds force, is part of it:
The suspects had plotted to kill Soleimani during the Ashoura religious commemorations on September 9 and 10, according to Taeb.
They sought to buy a property near a mosque built by Soleimani's father in the city of Kerman, dig a tunnel underneath the site and rig it with "350 to 500 kilogrammes of explosives", he said.
The team planned to "blow up the entire place" as soon as Soleimani entered the mosque for Shia mourning ceremony.
Taeb said the suspects "went to a neighbouring country" and "large sums of money were spent to train and prepare them" to carry out the attack.
New U.S. sanctions against Lebanese banks who allegedly support Hizbullah are likewise part of U.S./Israeli/Saudi effort to squeeze Iran and its proxies:
The Trump administration has intensified sanctions on the Lebanese militant group and institutions linked to it to unprecedented levels, targeting lawmakers for the first time as well as a local bank that Washington claims has ties to the group.
Two U.S. officials visited Beirut in September and warned the sanctions will increase to deprive Hezbollah of its sources of income. The push is further adding to Lebanon’s severe financial and economic crisis, with Lebanese officials warning the country’s economy and banking sector can’t take the pressure.
“We have taken more actions recently against Hezbollah than in the history of our counterterrorism program,” Sigal P. Mandelker, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the U.S. Treasury, said in the United Arab Emirates last month.
Mandelker, who was born and grew up in Israel and is furthering its interest, recently announced that she will leave the administration. This might be a sign that the pressure policy against Iran and other countries will change.
Esfandyar Batmanghelidj @yarbatman - 18:06 UTC · Oct 2, 2019
Forget John Bolton, this may be the most enabling change in personnel if Trump wants to restart diplomacy with Iran and end “maximum pressure.” Mandelker is considered an unreasonable and dogmatic official by compliance officers worldwide.
But for now the riots in Iraq are likely to escalate.
Hiwa Osman @Hiwaosman - 21:16 UTC · Oct 5, 2019
Just in: Gunmen in balaclavas attacked the offices of the following TV stations in Baghdad: Dijla, NRT, Arabiya, Arabiya Hadath, Fallouja, Alghad Alaraby, Al-Sharqiya and Skynew Arabia. They ransacked the offices, destroyed their equipment and broadcast facilities. #IraqProtests
One demand of the protesters is a resignation of the government, another is the change of the election law to eliminate large party blocks in the parliament. Either would further weaken the country.
While most of us have completely forgotten the events of the Middle East war that took place during the 1980s, the war is still front of mind in Iran, particularly during this time of conflict with the United States and the West in general.
Let's open with this map showing the point of conflict that started the 1980s war between Iraq and Iran:
The key and most disputed body of water in this map is the Shatt al Arab, a river/estuary that is formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and is a body of water that forms Iraq's only access to the Persian Gulf. In 1847, a treaty was signed between Iran and Iraq (then the Ottoman Empire) establishing the Shatt as a boundary between the two nations. Both nations agreed to respect each others' freedom of navigation in the waterway and Iran received control of two cities, Khorramshahr and Abadan. During the British Mandate of Iraq between 1920 and 1932, the boundary between the two nations was drawn along the deepest point of the Shatt (i.e. the thalweg). In 1937, a treaty recognized the low-water mark on the east side of the river which gave control of almost the entire water body to Iraq. This meant that Iranian ships, which comprised most of the shipping traffic on the river, had to pay tolls to Iraq when they used the Shatt. Under the Shah's rule, Iran had a far stronger military presence and argued that the 1937 boundary was unfair; as such, in April 1969, an Iranian tanker accompanied by Iranian warships sailed down the Shatt with no reaction from the weaker Iraqis. Tension and disagreements continued until a new agreement, the Algiers Accord, was signed in 1975 after a number of border skirmishes which determined that the thalweg of the Shatt was the boundary between Iran and Iraq as shown here:
...
Even though it was very clear that Iraq had unilaterally invaded Iranian sovereign territory, under Resolution 479 (1980), the United Nations chose to blame both nations for the "threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State". This sent a message to Iran that they were on their own against Saddam Hussein.
This relatively recent event has shown Iran's leadership that they must be prepared to defend themselves from outside attacks. Despite the proclamation by the United Nations, member states including the United States continued to back the aggressor, Saddam Hussein, in the lengthy battle against Iran, a war that cost hundreds of thousands of Iranian lives. Is it any wonder that Iran seeks to protect itself through the development of advanced weaponry? Iranians learned a very painful and costly lesson about who they could count on to defend their sovereignty during the 1980s.
More than 300,000 people are unable to return to their homes in Mosul two years after the end of a military operation to retake Iraq’s second largest city from Islamic State.
An estimated 138,000 houses were damaged or destroyed in Mosul during bitter fighting between Iraqi forces and Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh.
Islamic State (IS) launched an offensive on Mosul in June 2014. On 29 June that year, IS leader, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, announced the formation of a caliphate stretching from Aleppo in Syria to Diyala in Iraq. Mosul was an important IS stronghold.
Iraqi forces – supported by Kurds and the US – began an offensive to retake Mosul on 17 October 2016, finally taking the city on 10 July 2017.
The Ferret reported from inside Mosul in March 2017 as Iraqi forces fought street to street with Islamic State in the eastern part of the city.
In West Mosul alone, there are still more than 53,000 houses flattened and thousands more damaged. Many displaced families have run out of savings and are in debt, surviving on humanitarian aid.
The Mosque of al-Nuri seen through a damaged window - West MosulThe Mosque of al-Nuri seen through a damaged window - West MosulThe mosque of al-Nuri, where the IS group proclaimed the Islamic State in Iraq is still in ruins, as pretty much all the old city in Mosul. "It looks like a painting on the wall but its more like a scar that's not healing," says Hussein, who used to live there. In west Mosul alone, 53,000 houses are still destroyed, and as many families who can't return. Rubble and unexploded bombs are still lacing the city.The Mosque of al-Nuri seen through a damaged window - West MosulThe mosque of al-Nuri, where the IS group proclaimed the Islamic State in Iraq is still in ruins, as pretty much all the old city in Mosul. "It looks like a painting on the wall but its more like a scar that's not healing," says Hussein, who used to live there. In west Mosul alone, 53,000 houses are still destroyed, and as many families who can't return. Rubble and unexploded bombs are still lacing the city.
The mosque of al-Nuri, where the IS group proclaimed the Islamic State in Iraq is still in ruins, as pretty much all the old city in Mosul. "It looks like a painting on the wall but its more like a scar that's not healing," says Hussein, who used to live there. In west Mosul alone, 53,000 houses are still destroyed, and as many families who can't return. Rubble and unexploded bombs are still lacing the city.
...
I don’t know if most people in the United States ever knew what Fallujah meant. It’s hard to believe the U.S. military would still exist if they did. But certainly it has been largely forgotten – a problem that could be remedied if everyone picks up a copy of The Sacking of Fallujah: A People’s History, by Ross Caputi (a US veteran of one of the sieges of Fallujah), Richard Hill, and Donna Mulhearn.
Fallujah was the “city of mosques,” made up of some 300,000 to 435,000 people. It had a tradition of resisting foreign – including British – invasions. It suffered, as did all of Iraq, from the brutal sanctions imposed by the United States in the years leading up to the 2003 attack. During that attack, Fallujah saw crowded markets bombed. Upon the collapse of the Iraqi government in Baghdad, Fallujah established its own government, avoiding the looting and chaos seen elsewhere. In April, 2003, the US 82nd Airborne Division moved into Fallujah and met no resistance.
Immediately the occupation began to produce the sort of problems seen by every occupation everywhere ever. People complained of Humvees speeding on the streets, of being humiliated at checkpoints, of women being treated inappropriately, of soldier urinating in the streets, and of soldiers standing on rooftops with binoculars in violation of residents’ privacy. Within days, the people of Fallujah wanted to be liberated from their “liberators.” So, the people tried nonviolent demonstrations. And the US military fired on the protesters. But eventually, the occupiers agreed to be stationed outside the city, limit their patrols, and allow Fallujah a degree of self-governance beyond what the rest of Iraq was permitted. The result was a success: Fallujah was kept safer than the rest of Iraq by keeping the occupiers out of it.
That example, of course, needed to be crushed. The United States was claiming a moral obligation to liberate the hell out of Iraq to “maintain security” and “assist in transition to democracy.” Viceroy Paul Bremer decided to “clean out Fallujah.” In came the “coalition” troops, with their usual inability (mocked quite effectively in the Netflix Brad Pitt movie War Machine) to distinguish the people they were bestowing liberty and justice upon from the people they were killing. US officials described the people they wanted to kill as “cancer,” and went about killing them with raids and firefights that killed a great many of the non-cancer people. How many people the United States was actually giving cancer to was unknown at the time.
In March, 2004, four Blackwater mercenaries were killed in Fallujah, their bodies burned and hung from a bridge. The US media portrayed the four men as innocent civilians who somehow happened to find themselves in the middle of a war and the accidental targets of irrational, unmotivated violence. The people of Fallujah were “thugs” and “savages” and “barbarians.” Because US culture has never regretted Dresden or Hiroshima, there were open cries for following those precedents in Fallujah. A former advisor to Ronald Reagan, Jack Wheeler reached for an ancient Roman model in demanding that Fallujah be completely reduced to lifeless rubble: “Fallujah delenda est!”
The occupiers tried to impose a curfew and a ban on carrying weapons, saying they needed such measures in order to distinguish the people to kill from the people to give democracy to. But when people had to leave their homes for food or medicine, they were gunned down. Families were gunned down, one by one, as each person emerged to try to recover the injured or lifeless body of a loved one. The “family game” it was called. The only soccer stadium in town was turned into a massive cemetery.
...
The eavesdropping was aimed at gaining a second – and this time unequivocal – Security Council resolution in support of an invasion. “British involvement in this would be illegal without a second resolution,” Ellsberg said. “How are they going to get that? Obviously essentially by blackmail and intimidation, by knowing the private wants and embarrassments, possible embarrassments, of people on the Security Council, or their aides, and so forth. The idea was, in effect, to coerce their vote.”
Katharine Gun foiled that plan. While scarcely reported in the U.S. media (despite cutting-edge news releases produced by my colleagues at the Institute for Public Accuracy beginning in early March of 2003), the revelations published by the Observer caused huge media coverage across much of the globe – and sparked outrage in several countries with seats on the Security Council.
“In the rest of the world there was great interest in the fact that American intelligence agencies were interfering with their policies of their representatives in the Security Council,” Ellsberg noted. A result was that for some governments on the Security Council at the time, the leak “made it impossible for their representatives to support the U.S. wish to legitimize this clear case of aggression against Iraq. So, the U.S. had to give up its plan to get a supporting vote in the UN.”
The U.S. and British governments “went ahead anyway, but without the legitimating precedent of an aggressive war that would have had, I think, many consequences later.”
Ellsberg said: “What was most striking then and still to me about this disclosure was that the young woman who looked at this cable coming across her computer in GCHQ acted almost immediately on what she saw was the pursuit of an illegal war by illegal means…. I’ve often been asked, is there anything about the release of the Pentagon Papers on Vietnam that you regret. And my answer is yes, very much. I regret that I didn’t put out the top-secret documents available to me in the Pentagon in 1964, years before I actually gave them to the Senate and then to the newspapers. Years of war and years of bombing. It wasn’t that I was considering that all that time. I didn’t have a precedent to instruct me on that at that point. But in any case, I could have been much more effective in averting that war if I’d acted much sooner.”
Katharine Gun “was not dealing only with historical material,” Ellsberg emphasizes. She “was acting in a timely fashion very quickly on her right judgment that what she was being asked to participate in was wrong. I salute her. She’s my hero. I think she’s a model for other whistleblowers. And for a long time I’ve said to people in her position or my old position in the government: Don’t do what I did. Don’t wait till the bombs are falling or thousands more have died.”
By making her choice, Gun risked two years of imprisonment. In Ellsberg’s words, she seemed to be facing “a sure conviction – except that the government was not willing to have the legality of that war discussed in a courtroom, and in the end dropped the charges.”
Guards, tea makers, sheikhs dealing with daily bureaucracy, all remember regular foreign visitors and are very welcoming: all people surrounding the Marjaiya are trustworthy and very discreet. Extremely polite, they form a protective family around the Marja’ and understand better than any expert his body language (if he likes or dislikes his visitor or if the visit has created concern or relief). Sistani’s home is not limited to welcoming VIPs because many of these are unwelcome! It is made to receive commoners, followers seeking to see the Marja’, and those in need of financial support. Sistani is at the service of the population who believe in him and follow his recommendations. But Sistani has drawn up a road map for politicians of all kinds: serve the people who elected you and place their trust in you, otherwise don’t come and knock on my door: you don’t enjoy my support if you don’t serve the population.
Sistani wants politicians to offer social services to the population, to consolidate the foundations of the state of Iraq, to fight terrorism, , to fight corruption, and to send to jail all those who accept bribes, regardless of their rank and party (this includes Ministers).
The Marjaiya’ showed its strength in 2004 during the battle of Najaf between Moqtada al-Sadr’ Mehdi Army and the US-backed Iraqi forces, when Sistani returned from London to Iraq and intervened in person to reach an agreement between both sides, allowing Moqtada and his men to leave the city safely. The second stand was when Sistani played an important role in writing the Iraqi constitution. The third was when Sistani convinced the former Prime Minister and current Foreign Minister Ibrahim al Ja’fari to stand down and renounce his second term as a Prime Minister to save the Shia coalition groups (United Iraqi Alliance with the electoral number of 555) when the late Sayed Abdel Aziz al-Hakim (through sheikh Jalal’eddine al-Sagheer) threatened to leave the strongest Shia coalition blessed by Sistani. His fourth intervention was when he clearly rejected Nuri al-Maliki as a Prime Minister for a third term despite the IRGC-Quds brigade commander Qassem Soleimani’s desire to promote al-Maliki. The fifth was when Iraq was falling apart and the “Islamic State” (ISIS) was about to reach Baghdad and Karbala in 2014: this is when Sistani issued a clear fatwa calling for the creation of the Hashd al-Sha’bi, the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU). There are many other strategic and tactical stands Sistani took from behind the scenes, which cannot be developed here.
Iraqi Kurdish military intelligence reports have estimated that the nine-month-long U.S.-Iraqi siege and bombardment of Mosul to oust Islamic State forces killed 40,000 civilians. This is the most realistic estimate so far of the civilian death toll in Mosul. But even this is likely to be an underestimate of the true number of civilians killed. No serious, objective study has been conducted to count the dead in Mosul, and studies in other war zones have invariably found numbers of dead that exceeded previous estimates by as much as 20 to one, as a United Nations-backed Truth Commission did in Guatemala after the end of its civil war. In Iraq, epidemiological studies in 2004 and 2006 revealed a post-invasion death toll that was about 12 times higher than previous estimates.
The bombardment of Mosul included tens of thousands of bombs and missiles dropped by U.S. and “coalition” warplanes, thousands of 220-pound HiMARS rockets fired by U.S. Marines from their “Rocket City” base at Quayara, and tens or hundreds of thousands of 155-mm and 122-mm howitzer shells fired by U.S., French and Iraqi artillery. This nine-month bombardment left much of Mosul in ruins (as seen here), so the scale of slaughter among the civilian population should not be a surprise to anybody. But the revelation of the Kurdish intelligence reports by former Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari in an interview with Patrick Cockburn of the U.K.’s Independent newspaper makes it clear that allied intelligence agencies were well aware of the scale of civilian casualties throughout this brutal campaign.
The Kurdish intelligence reports raise serious questions about the U.S. military’s own statements regarding civilian deaths in its bombing of Iraq and Syria since 2014. As recently as April 30, 2017, the U.S. military publicly estimated the total number of civilian deaths caused by all of the 79,992 bombs and missiles it had dropped on Iraq and Syria since 2014 only as “at least 352.” On June 2, it only slightly revised its absurd estimate to “at least 484.”