Opinion | To help Kadhimi, US should cool conflict with Iran in Iraq

Two weeks ago, on May 6, Iraq’s parliament confirmed Mustafa al-Kadhimi as the country’s sixth prime minister under an ethnosectarian quota system established following the US overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship.

Relatively young at 53 and with a background in both civil society and intelligence, Kadhimi has some important advantages over his predecessors, but also faces daunting challenges. His mission is to try to re-instill confidence in government among a frustrated and fractured population, while mitigating the consequences of low oil prices and a pandemic. He must also navigate between two major external powers that, unfortunately for Iraq, have increasingly been at odds with each other – Iran and the United States. 

It is useful to remind readers of the hubris of the George W. Bush administration when it invaded Iraq in 2003. Bush and his advisers – especially Vice President Dick Cheney and neoconservatives in the Department of Defense – blithely ignored the likelihood that Iran – which had harbored and organized Iraqi Shiite militias during Saddam’s reign – would profit from the overthrow of its long-time rival; some even thought Iraq would become a booster of Arab-Israeli peace. Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser in Bush’s first term and later Secretary of State, told this author in 2006 – after the US intervention had long gone south – that she still believed Iraq could play “a similar role as a democratic Germany or a democratic Japan” after World War II. 

Democracy, however, has not spread in the region and remains fragile in Iraq. It is too late to eliminate the influence of its powerful eastern neighbor, with which it shares a difficult history and a 1400-kilometer border, but it may still be possible to give Iraqis a better chance for a more prosperous and independent future. This requires at a minimum, that the US forswear the future use of Iraqi soil as a battleground against Iran. That means no more attacks on Iran-backed Iraqi militias and no more assassinations of Iranian officials like the US drone strike that killed Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani – and the deputy head of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis – outside Baghdad airport on January 3, 2020. However satisfying it may be to see individuals with so much US and Middle Eastern blood on their hands eliminated, revenge is not a strategy.

Those attacks led to a nonbinding vote by the Iraqi parliament for US forces in Iraq to withdraw. Some reportedly have left, and others have been consolidated on bases in Erbil and near Baghdad. COVID-19 and concerns about force protection have paused the training and anti-ISIS mission these US troops are supposed to be engaged in. The Trump administration has agreed to talks with Kadhimi about a new Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) to replace its 2008 predecessor setting out the rules for a continued US military, diplomatic and economic presence. The US has also granted Iraq a three-month waiver to enable the country to continue to import Iranian natural gas to fuel the Iraqi electricity sector through another hot summer.

An overall relaxation of US tensions with Iran would reverberate in Iraq to the benefit of the Kadhimi government, giving him more time and space to deal with Iran-backed Iraqi militias and endemic economic corruption. It is probably too much to expect that the Trump administration – which touched off the cycle of violence in Iraq and regionally by quitting the Iran nuclear deal and imposing draconian sanctions – will do a 180 and ease its “maximum pressure” campaign against the Islamic Republic. But it should keep Iraq out of the campaign and emphasize US soft power there instead. Iraqis are eager to see US investment in their oil and gas sector, in education and health. Young Iraqis in particular seem to want a less sectarian future; they have a strong sense of nationalism and resent Iran’s heavy-handed political intervention, cultivation of militias, and dumping of consumer products into the Iraqi market. The Soleimani assassination was particularly poorly timed, as it followed months of Iraqi protests against Iran and instead made the US the target of national resentment.

It is hard to be optimistic about Kadhimi’s chances of consolidating central government control over the militias, present since 2003 and prolific following the rise of ISIS in 2014. One of the largest, Kataib Hezbollah, opposed his nomination as prime minister, accusing him of complicity in the deaths of Soleimani and Muhandis. Since its inception in 1979, the Islamic Republic has cultivated Arab Shiites who face discrimination in a predominantly Sunni Arab world. Iran’s modus operandi is to support a variety of factions and militias to ensure that whoever emerges on top is beholden to Tehran. While the loss of Soleimani – the architect of this strategy for the past 20 years – is a major blow, the method will survive. It is a low-cost investment that has brought Iran major dividends, even as it has aroused resentment among many Iranians as well as Sunni Arabs and Kurds. 

Preoccupied with their own troubles, most Americans would probably say that the time has come to pack up and leave the Middle East to its own devices. However, the US owes Iraqis continued support, having overturned their government at the cost of thousands of American and Iraqi lives.

Seventeen years after the US invasion, the US and Iraq need to decide what they want and can reasonably expect from each other. Kadhimi is a good choice to steer this dialogue from the Iraqi side and the Trump administration should help, not hinder his difficult task.

Barbara Slavin directs the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council in Washington. She tweets @BarbaraSlavin1.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.