Iran’s New Little Brother – Iraq

After my August 13^th blog, Iraq, a Hard Place, I am stunned as how many people still actually think we actually won that conflict, created a “government of all the Iraqi people,” and that Iraq is a strong American ally. Wrong on all three. After the 1916 secret Sykes Picot treaty between England and France delineated how parts of the post-Ottoman empire would be allocated between those two European countries (“spheres of influence”), the future of nations was formed. Land was carved up and boundaries drawn arbitrarily and contained factions, tribes and religions with little or no connectivity to each other. The land called Iraq was no different, and the chunk allocated to this political structure (accorded to the British) contained an arbitrary mix of Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the southwest and Shiites everywhere else. That the Kurds wanted to unite into a separate nation or that Sunnis and Shiites hated each other seemed irrelevant to land-grabbing European powers.

As I have written many times before, Saddam Hussein (representing the Sunni faction) ruled Iraq, however brutally, and kept this majority Shiite nation from affiliating with its almost all Shiite neighbor, Iran. In fact, Hussein fought a stalemated war between 1980 and 1988 against Iran, despite the fact that the majority of his countrymen were emotionally and religiously connected to the enemy state. During the first Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush made sure that Hussein and his Sunnis majority did not fall into the hands of the pro-Iranian majority.

That, of course changed when Hussein was deposed (wholly through U.S. intervention) and the majority Shiites allowed to rule under the notion of representative democracy. The catch of course is that the majority Shiites hated and mistrusted the minority Sunnis (and vice versa). Shiites were particularly resentful because of Hussein’s rule, and tilted the entire nation into a very unfriendly world for Sunnis. The Kurds effectively circled their wagons and have ignored the Shiite-led government in Baghdad. The Sunnis became the prime targets, and they have responded with explosive attacks in Shiite areas, particularly in Baghdad.

As I said before, the immediate aftermath following the departure of American combat forces witnessed the immediate invitation by the Shiite-led government to an Iraqi-in-exile in Iran, radical and militant Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia, to return to Iraq (and join with the Iraqi military) and the issuance of an arrest warrant for the highest ranking Sunni (a top vice-president of the country). In the months that have followed, there have been an escalating series of events that illustrate how clearly we gave the “sphere of influence” over this newly configured Iraq to Iran… how we totally and complete lost the slightest notion that what we accomplished was a victory for our regional interests.

Recently, the evidence is spilling over into how Iraq is helping Iran side-step the U.S. and European trading and banking sanctions against Iran, our effort to halt the latter’s nuclear enrichment program that seems to have weapons-grade fissional material as the only logical goal. Iraq is acting squarely in support of Iran and squarely against American interests. In July, the Obama administration cut one Iraqi bank out of the international banking community for violating the sanctions. “The little-known bank singled out by the United States, the Elaf Islamic Bank, is only part of a network of financial institutions and oil-smuggling operations that, according to current and former American and Iraqi government officials and experts on the Iraqi banking sector, has provided Iran with a crucial flow of dollars at a time when sanctions are squeezing its economy…

“Iraqi banking experts said [in mid-August] that the bank was still allowed to participate in the Iraq Central Bank’s daily auction at which commercial banks can sell Iraqi dinars and buy United States dollars. These auctions are a crucial pathway for Iranian access to the international financial system. Western officials say that Iran seeks to bolster its reserves of dollars to stabilize its exchange rates and pay for imports… Iraqi and American officials with knowledge of Iraqi banking practices say Iranian customers are able to move large amounts of cash through the auction, and from there into banks in regional financial centers like Dubai, United Arab Emirates, or Amman, Jordan, and then into the international banking system.” New York Times, August 18^th. Read: tip of a very, very big iceberg.

It gets a whole lot worse: “Some current and former American and Iraqi officials, along with banking and oil experts, say that Iraqi government officials are turning a blind eye to the large financial flows, smuggling and other trade with Iran. In some cases, they say, government officials, including some close to [Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki], are directly profiting from the activities… ‘Maliki’s government is right in the middle of this,’ said one former senior American intelligence official who now does business in Iraq…

“Several American and Iraqi banking and government officials also say that Iranian organizations have gained effective control over at least four Iraqi commercial banks through Iraqi intermediaries. That gives Iran direct access to the international financial system, supposedly denied to Tehran by the economic sanctions. Even as the United States has moved to tighten the vise against Iran this summer, the Maliki government has openly sought to enhance its already deep economic and political ties with Iran. Trade between Iraq and Iran… has been growing rapidly ever since the American-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, and it is now estimated to be as high as $11 billion a year. Among other openly acknowledged forms of trade, Iraq has contracts to buy large amounts of electrical power from Iran.” NY Times.

We wasted trillions of dollars, lost thousands of American lives and alienated a large segment of the world to create one of the strongest possibly allies for one of this nation’s greatest enemies? And there are people in Congress who, after Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan – failures without precedent in American military history – want to increase our military budget (and we are supposed to be winding down our war in Afghanistan?) so that we can be prepared to enter another such conflict and generate another set of unintended consequences that have been anything but in our best interests? Do we really love spending money that much? Do we really love deficits without the slightest logic so incredibly that we need to spend over 40% of the entire world’s military budget so we can have another go at the next Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan? What about history is so painful that those in Congress simply hate to read about it or learn from it?

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is high time that the policies choices we make, particularly the biggest commitments, serve our interests and not some ignorant slogan without the remotest ties to historical and political fact.