Iran just sent an elite military unit to fight in Iraq
Updated by Zack Beauchamp on June 12, 2014, 2:30 p.m. ET
Iranian revolutionary guardsmen commemorate the Iran-Iraq war. Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images
The Wall Street Journal is reporting [ http://online.wsj.com/articles/iran-deploys-forces-to-fight-al-qaeda-inspired-militants-in-iraq-iranian-security-sources-1402592470 ]that Iran sent two battalions of Iranian Revolutionary Guards to help the Iraqi government in its battle against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is hugely important, if not totally surprising given Iran's intervention in Syria. Iran has the power to crush ISIS in open combat. But Iranian intervention could also make the conflict inside Iraq much worse.
These aren't just any old Iranian troops. They're Quds Force, the Guards' elite special operations group. The Quds Force is one of the most effective military forces in the Middle East, a far cry from the undisciplined and disorganized Iraqi forces that fled from a much smaller ISIS force in Mosul. [ http://www.vox.com/2014/6/12/5803416/isis-one-sentence-iraqi-army ] One former CIA officer called Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani[ The Shadow Commander ] [ http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/09/30/130930fa_fact_filkins ] "the single most powerful operative in the Middle East today." Suleimani, the Journal reports, is currently helping the Iraqi government "manage the crisis" in Baghdad.
But these sorts of victories could prove ephemeral quickly, as Shia Iran's intervention could infuriate the Sunni Muslims whose allegiance ISIS needs to win in the long run. The internal Iraqi conflict is firmly sectarian: ISIS is a Sunni Islamist group, and the Iraqi government is Shia-run (a majority of Iraqis are Shia). Iran is also a Shia state.
Iranian intervention in the conflict could convince Sunni Iraqis who don't currently support ISIS to shift their allegiances. The perception that the Iraqi government is far too close to Iran is already a significant grievance [ https://understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/Wicken-Sunni-In-Iraq.pdf ] among Sunnis. That's part pure sectarianism and part nationalism. Many Iraqis don't like the idea of a foreign power manipulating their government, particularly Iran (memories of the Iran-Iraq war haven't faded).
Iranian participation in actual combat risks legitimizing ISIS' propaganda line: this isn't a conflict between the central Iraqi government and Islamist rebels, but rather a war between Sunnis and Shias.
That risk becomes much higher if joint Iraqi and Iranian units kill Sunni civilians during the fight against ISIS — which the Iraqi military has done in the past. Indeed, the Iraqi government's brutal repression [ http://www.policymic.com/articles/43171/maliki-is-iraq-pm-s-repression-of-sunnis-driving-iraq-s-violence ] of Sunnis is one of the core reasons ISIS managed to recruit enough troops to challenge the Iraqi government in the first place. And a strong Sunni support base is the key to ISIS building up a powerful enough force to maintain an effective rebellion, as Brookings Doha's Charles Lister explains. Please go to the website, as there are a bunch of TWEETS by Mr. Lister. AND more stuff last paragraph - ranian intervention in the Syrian conflict has helped Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad hold on to power when it looked like all was lost for him. We'll see if it ends up similarly helping the Iraqi government — or undermining it.
“We have enormous interests there,” President Obama said of Iraq on Friday, citing Americans’ “investments and sacrifices.” Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — In a high-profile speech .. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/29/us/politics/obama-foreign-policy-west-point-speech.html .. to Army cadets last month, President Obama tried to move beyond America’s tumultuous adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan with a new doctrine all but forswearing the use of military power except in the most dire of circumstances.
Barely two weeks later, Mr. Obama has already found himself in those circumstances and seems on the verge of ordering the American military to intervene once more in Iraq. While ruling out ground troops to save the beleaguered Baghdad government from insurgents, Mr. Obama is considering a range of options, including airstrikes by drones and piloted aircraft. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage
President Obama spoke outside the White House on Friday. Obama Says He Will Decide on Military Support for Iraq in ‘Days Ahead’JUNE 13, 2014 Shiite volunteers at a tribal meeting in northern Baghdad on Friday. Many Shiites are forming militias to fight Sunni forces. Iraqi Shiite Cleric Issues Call to ArmsJUNE 13, 2014 U.N. Warns of Rights Abuses and Hundreds Dead in Iraq FightingJUNE 13, 2014 The Iraqi Army Was Crumbling Long Before Its Collapse, U.S. Officials SayJUNE 12, 2014
The possible return to Iraq, even in limited form, underscores just how much that forlorn land has shaped Mr. Obama’s presidency. It defined his first campaign for the White House, when his opposition to the war powered his candidacy. It defined his foreign policy as he resolved to pull out of Iraq and keep out of places like Syria. And it defined the legacy he hoped to leave as he imagined history books remembering him for ending America’s overseas wars.
Yet as much as he wanted Iraq in the rearview mirror, the swift march toward Baghdad by Islamist extremists calling themselves the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, has forced him to reconsider his approach. As much as he wanted to leave the fate of Iraq to the Iraqis themselves, he concluded that the United States still has a stake in avoiding the collapse of a state it occupied for more than eight years at the cost of nearly 4,500 American lives.
“We have an interest in making sure that a group like I.S.I.L., which is a vicious organization and has been able to take advantage of the chaos in Syria, that they don’t get a broader foothold,” Mr. Obama said on Friday, using an alternative name for the group, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. “There are dangers of fierce sectarian fighting if, for example, the terrorist organizations try to overrun sacred Shia sites, which could trigger Shia-Sunni conflicts that could be very hard to stamp out.”
Stepping back, he cited the United States’ own tortured history in Iraq and the desire not to let American efforts there go to waste. “We have enormous interests there,” he added, “and obviously our troops and the American people and the American taxpayers made huge investments and sacrifices in order to give the Iraqis the opportunity to chart a better course, a better destiny.”
Still, he insisted that Iraq’s leaders have to make the sorts of compromises that will bring stability to their country, and stressed that he would not let their problems consume the United States all over again. “We’re not going to allow ourselves to be dragged back into a situation in which, while we’re there, we’re keeping a lid on things,” but Iraq’s own political leaders are failing to address the underlying fissures dividing the society.
Mr. Obama has long been criticized by Republicans for pulling troops out of Iraq at the end of 2011 without leaving behind a small residual force. That was a timetable originally agreed to by President George W. Bush, and Iraqi leaders at the time would not agree to immunity provisions insisted on by the Pentagon, but critics argued that Mr. Obama should have tried harder to extend the American presence. Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story
Moreover, they said the president has not done enough to pressure Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to reconcile with the Sunni minority, and they said Mr. Obama’s failure to do more to help moderate rebels in next-door Syria has emboldened more radical Islamist forces who have spilled over into Iraq.
Not only has the latest eruption in Iraq revived those criticisms, but it has also exposed the president’s plan for withdrawing from Afghanistan to further questions. Mr. Obama announced last month that he would end the combat mission there by the end of this year, leaving behind 9,800 troops, all of whom would leave by 2016.
Republicans on Friday urged Mr. Obama to act decisively in Iraq, questioning why he wants to take several days to decide. “We shouldn’t have boots on the ground, but we need to be hitting these columns of terrorists marching on Baghdad with drones now,” said Representative Ed Royce of California, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Representative Howard (Buck) McKeon of California, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the president needed a broader strategy for containing the threat in the region. “There are no quick-fix solutions to this crisis, and I will not support a one-shot strike that looks good for the cameras but has no enduring effect,” he said. He added that the president should consider firing his national security team.
From the other side of the spectrum, Democrats expressed nervousness about becoming entangled in Iraq just two and a half years after leaving. Even former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who voted for the 2003 invasion as a senator but is now positioning herself for another run for president, said she opposed the use of American force to help save the Iraqi government without assurances from Mr. Maliki.
“Not at this time, no,” she said to the BBC in an interview recorded on Thursday. Mrs. Clinton, who if she ran and won would inherit the Iraq situation, said the White House should continue to reject Mr. Maliki’s request for airstrikes until he has demonstrated inclusiveness. “That is not a role for the United States,” she said of military force.
Liberal activists were more vehement. “For the last 12 years, Iraq has been Bush and Cheney’s war,” said Becky Bond, the political director for an activist group called Credo. “But if the president decides to double down on George W. Bush’s disastrous decision to invade Iraq by launching a new round of bombing strikes, Iraq will become Barack Obama’s war.”
That would be the last thing Mr. Obama would want. For him, Iraq has been the template of everything foreign policy should not be. He opposed the invasion as a state senator in Illinois, and many of his decisions as president have been measured against the lessons he took from Iraq. To him, the war proved that military intervention more often than not made things worse, not better.
When he agreed to send more troops to Afghanistan, he insisted on a timetable for pulling them out. When he decided to intervene in Libya, he used only air power and made sure that NATO allies took the lead. When the Syrian civil war broke out, he resisted calls to step in even with air power or, for a long time, arms for the rebels. The longer he has been in office, the more skeptical he seems to have grown about the utility of force as a means of changing the world for the better.
Even as he acknowledged on Friday the possibility of using force again in Iraq, he put the onus on Mr. Maliki and other Iraqi leaders to set aside sectarian differences and stabilize their country. “The United States will do our part,” he said, “but understand that ultimately it’s up to the Iraqis, as a sovereign nation, to solve their problems.”
Still, those who have spent time around Mr. Obama heard deep frustration in his voice as he spoke about the prospect of re-engaging in Iraq. “I can only imagine what’s going through the president’s head,” said Julianne Smith, a former national security aide to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
“He was just getting to the point where he felt he could free himself from this agenda and not define his foreign policy solely on the last guy’s,” she said. “He’s been keen not to use Bush as a reference point and get away from that and be more forward-looking and have a strategy. And he was just turning a corner when this hit.”
A version of this news analysis appears in print on June 14, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: For Obama, No Way Out.
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