Iraq, Iran’s Grand Prize

One does not have to look far to see that several wars are being waged, with Iran’s blessing, across the Arab world and beyond. In Yemen, the Houthis are trying to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait by seeking to retake the Yemeni port of Mokha, from which they were driven in 2014 by local Yemeni forces backed by the United Arab Emirates. Will Iran manage to control both the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the gateway to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, through the Houthis in Yemen?

Iran has made no secret of its decision to pursue an offensive policy on several fronts. But for the Revolutionary Guards, the priority today remains maintaining Iran’s grip on Iraq. A genuine struggle is underway there, centered on the weapons held by sectarian militias affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards. These militias were brought together under the banner of the “Popular Mobilization Forces,” which receive funding from the Iraqi state budget and seek to exercise over the state the same dominant role played by the Revolutionary Guards in Iran.

The Revolutionary Guards’ attachment to the Popular Mobilization Forces and their arsenal explains the importance Iran places on Iraq, which has now been put at the service of multiple Iranian interests benefiting the regime in Tehran. Among those uses is financing part of Iran’s budget.

A few days ago, the governor of Iran’s central bank traveled to Baghdad to demand payment of $12 billion for Iranian gas used in Iraq to generate electricity. The Iranians have forgotten that closing the Strait of Hormuz prevents Iraq from exporting a large share of its oil and therefore costs Iraq billions of dollars. Iran is demanding billions from Iraq while at the same time seeking, for reasons of its own, to prevent it from exporting most of its oil. Those reasons stem from the fact that the Strait of Hormuz has become Iran’s most powerful weapon in its confrontation with the United States, with Iraq now among the victims of that confrontation.

Regardless of what the “Islamic Republic” derives from Iraq’s resources, particularly its oil, Iraq remains the grand prize handed to Iran by the United States. That happened under the administration of George W. Bush, which insisted in 2003 on overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime and handing Iraq to the “Islamic Republic” on a silver platter.

The US administration is now seeking to wrest Iraq away from Iran. Yet it appears to ignore a fundamental reality: since 2003, Iraq has effectively been ruled by sectarian militias linked to the Revolutionary Guards, the very militias that fought the Iraqi army during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1988. These are Iraqi militias that returned from Tehran, riding American tanks into Baghdad. They took control of the key institutions of the Iraqi state and prevented any genuine reform capable of turning Iraq into a normal state, one able to balance its relations with Iran and its Arab neighbors. This is an Iraqi reality that Donald Trump’s administration neglects because of its failure to understand the depth of Iranian penetration into Iraq…

The George W. Bush administration rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist, family-run regime. It was necessary to get rid of that regime, both brutal and foolish, but only if one knew who would replace it. The Trump administration is now trying to address the consequences of a disaster that befell Iraq, which is now being asked to become a dagger in the side of Arab security. Attacks against Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are launched from Iraq. Iraq is also used as a launchpad for attacks on specific targets in the Kurdistan Region.

It is no coincidence that Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, speaker of Iran’s parliament, made a point of beginning his latest visit to Iraq with a stop at the memorial to Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, who was killed in a US strike alongside Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, shortly after they left Baghdad airport in early 2020.

Qalibaf, one of the most prominent figures in the Iranian regime, came to Baghdad to confirm Tehran’s opposition to the disarmament of Iraqi militias, in direct opposition to the efforts of Ali al-Zaidi’s government, which finds itself in an unenviable position. Qalibaf did not say so explicitly. But his visit to the Qassem Soleimani memorial, where he delivered a speech glorifying the “resistance,” carries a clear message. Above all, it means that the “Islamic Republic” still regards Iraq as an “arena” within its orbit, and indeed as an essential asset in its confrontation with the Trump administration, a confrontation that is sometimes quiet and at other times overt, punctuated from time to time by public or secret negotiations.

Iraq can now be regarded as an integral part of the wars unfolding across the region, from Yemen to the Strait of Hormuz, from the Arab Gulf states subjected to Iranian attacks to South Lebanon. Who will have the final say in Iraq? How far can Iran continue to exert pressure? To what extent can Ali al-Zaidi’s government withstand the armed militias? Will the visit to Saudi Arabia by Faiq Zidan, president of Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council, help secure Arab support for Ali al-Zaidi’s government?

It should be noted that Faiq Zidan has recently emerged as a major player in Iraq’s domestic politics, including in the choice of prime minister.

These are the questions that will define the next phase, with Iraq itself at the heart of them. It is in Iraq that Iran is defending its regime and seeking to assert that there will be no turning back, no return to the situation that existed before 2003. That year, the George W. Bush administration decided to make the “Islamic Republic” the custodian of Iraq under the pretext of Iraq’s “Shiite majority.” Can Donald Trump’s administration correct a historic mistake that upended the balance of power across the Middle East, the Near East and the Gulf?