Israel Matzav

In Iraq, Obama snatches defeat from the jaws of victory

I haven't paid much attention to Iraq in a long time. The Bush administration turned the Iraq war around with the surge, and left it to be cleaned up by the Obama administration. But President Obama decided that the most important thing he could do for Iraq was to abandon it. And so he did. Now, with US troops drawn down to levels where they can't really do anything effective, the government of Iraq is running to Iran for 'help.'

Iran's support for Nuri al-Maliki in order to ensure that he remains Prime Minister of Iraq for a second term is no secret. However the secret – which seems to have been uncovered today – is the price of this Iranian support for al-Maliki, after al-Maliki called on Iran to help reconstruct Iraq during his visit to Tehran yesterday. This in itself represents a genuine turnaround in the efforts to ensure the safety of Iraq, the sovereignty of its territory, and freedom from subordination to any external power, whether this is the West, the Arab countries, or, of course, Iran.

Al-Maliki's request is equivalent to giving Tehran the official green light to interfere in Iraq. This is not just political [interference] but also includes [interference] in Iraq's security, economy, media, culture, and elsewhere. This means that Iran, who has Hezbollah in Lebanon to control the country through force of arms, today has an entire nation at its disposal, and that is Iraq.

This is something that can be described as the second stage in the Iranian plans. The first stage was Tehran – following the collapse of the regime – utilizing funds to plant its men and arms throughout Iraq, in order to invest in post-Saddam Iraq. Today, following the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, Tehran is reaping what it sowed following the collapse of the Saddam regime.

A US source familiar with decision-making circles in Washington informed me that Nuri al-Maliki's request to the Iranians to help rebuild Iraq "is inconsistent with US foreign policy on the Iraqi file, and the limits of Iranian engagement with Iraq." Of course this is not the first blow that Nuri al-Maliki has inflicted on Washington, for this was his announcement of an alliance with Moqtada al-Sadr following Iranian pressure, and this is something that has caused concern amongst the Americans. Here my US source told me "I hope that al-Maliki's call to Iran to rebuild Iraq will be a wake-up call to some in Washington as to what is taking place in Iraq today, and they gain awareness as to the true nature of Nuri al-Maliki himself."

Read the whole thing.

So now, in addition to Hezbullah to our north, Syria to our northeast and Hamas to our south, we will have another Iranin puppet sitting to our east, with only the exceedingly weak Jordanians between us (Jordan can't be too thrilled about that either). We might even have been better off with Saddam. But at least Obama got to declare 'victory.'

What could go wrong?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:21 AM