Iraq Exposes Iran

Nothing reveals the beginning of the end of the regime in Iran more clearly than the situation in Iraq. In Iraq, the “Islamic Republic” has failed to impose a loyal figure in the position of Prime Minister. It was enough for President Donald Trump to place a veto on Nouri al-Maliki’s return to office for Maliki’s fate to become suspended.

It was from Iraq that Iran’s expansionist project found new momentum after the administration of George W. Bush overthrew Saddam Hussein’s Baathist, family-based regime. And it is from Iraq that this same project now appears to be nearing its end. More importantly, Iran’s inability to reinstall Maliki as Prime Minister exposes the deep crisis afflicting the Iraqi system established after 2003.

Gradually, it becomes evident that Iraq is facing a systemic crisis, a system that cannot endure. What is built on false foundations cannot last, particularly in a country marked by religious, sectarian, and ethnic diversity. The “Islamic Republic” in Iran sought to export its own failed model to Iraq. If the system based on the doctrine of wilayat al-faqih has failed within Iran itself, how could it succeed in neighboring Iraq?

The U.S. war on Iraq followed directly from the war in Afghanistan after the catastrophe of September 11, 2001. On that day, the terrorist organization “Al-Qaeda,” led by Osama bin Laden, carried out its twin assaults on Washington and New York. The Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which sheltered bin Laden and his network, had first to be removed. The Bush administration, dominated by the neoconservatives, toppled the Taliban. Yet it remains unclear why the U.S. president then chose to proceed against Saddam Hussein while American forces were still deeply engaged in Afghanistan.

The Americans went into Iraq without a clear plan and without a genuine regional ally other than the “Islamic Republic” of Iran, which played a central role in unifying the Iraqi opposition to topple and inherit the Baghdad regime. They arrived with naïve assumptions, such as the belief that Iraq’s Shiites were primarily Arabs whose religious authority lay in Najaf rather than Qom. There was no real American understanding of the weight of Iraqi Shiite militias that the Iranians brought into Baghdad on the tanks of the American occupier.

I witnessed firsthand the U.S.–Iranian coordination during the London conference of the Iraqi opposition in December 2002. Most opposition leaders, Shiites and Kurds alike, flew to London together from Tehran. Iranian instructions to Shiite leaders, represented by the late Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, were explicit: endorse the American proposal at the conference.

The conference’s final communiqué, for the first time, referred to the “Shiite majority” in Iraq and described the future state as “federal.” The inclusion of the term “federal,” open to multiple interpretations, aimed to reassure the Kurds, particularly Massoud Barzani, who was observing developments with caution. Barzani participated in the conference and declared that the train to remove Saddam Hussein had “already departed,” and there would be no place in the new Iraq for those who failed to board it. His speech was the most compelling, warning against “revenge” while recalling the crimes of Saddam’s regime against the Kurds and his own family.

Iran alone benefited from what has unfolded in Iraq since 2003. It was an earthquake that altered the regional balance of power, placing Iraq in the pocket of the “Islamic Republic.” Khomeini had failed over eight years, from 1980 to 1988, to swallow Iraq. The Americans fulfilled his dream in 2003, effectively waging a war that served Iranian interests.

President Donald Trump now seeks, through his warnings to Iraqi leaders, to correct a strategic error nearly a quarter of a century old. The error began with the decision to wage war in Iraq before concluding the Afghan campaign and with the belief that there was a distinction between Sunni terrorism and the terrorism represented by pro-Iranian Shiite organizations spread throughout the region, including Iraq.

Practice has shown the failure of the regime established in Iraq in 2003. Baghdad lacks the capacity to impose Nouri al-Maliki as Prime Minister, especially under the threat of U.S. sanctions in the event of defying Donald Trump’s wishes. Moreover, nothing suggests that a new president can be elected any time soon. As for “federalism,” it remains subject to divergent interpretations.

Iraq must now seek a new political system free from Iranian hegemony. Much will depend on the outcome of the confrontation between the “Islamic Republic” on one side and the United States and Israel on the other. Yet the central question concerns Iran itself, whose regional expansion began in Iraq—an Iraq that now symbolizes the waning of the “Islamic Republic’s” expansionist project.