Iraq News Now

Choreographed sword fights, such as those traditionally performed in Gulf Arab countries, may look like clashes between deadly enemies but in fact require close coordination between the participants. Many Arabs believe the conflict between the United States and Iran in Iraq is similar. Conspiracy theorists detect a secret pact between them; more realistic observers see a standoff that benefits both sides, who therefore have a mutual interest in perpetuating it.

The United States ensures the allegiance of its protectorates in the region, and can continue to sell them billions of dollars’ worth of arms: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were the world’s second- and fourth-largest importers of arms between 2013 and 2017, and the largest and third-largest importers of US-made weaponry in 2018; Saudi Arabia had the world’s third-highest military expenditure in 2018, after the United States and China, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. In Iran, the backbone of the regime’s ideological hard-liners is the military-economic complex of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or Pasdaran (Guards); perpetuating the conflict allows them to maintain their dominance.

Arab suspicions are not entirely unfounded, considering the history of relations between the United States, especially under Republican administrations, and the Islamic Republic since it was created in 1979. Iran greeted Ronald Reagan’s presidential inauguration in January 1981 by releasing the US embassy hostages. Journalist Seymour Hersh much later revealed that in 1980 Reagan campaign officials had negotiated arms deliveries to Iran with the collusion of Israel; the deliveries were made soon after the inauguration. Then came the deliveries of 1985–86, revealed during the Iran/Contra scandal: The Reagan administration sold arms to Iran through Israel, and illegally used the profits to fund right-wing guerrillas in Nicaragua.

For the United States and Israel, it made sense to spin out the war between Iran and Iraq, started by Iraq in 1980. Until the United States crushed Iraq in the Gulf War of 1991, Israel saw Iraq as its principal enemy, and the Israeli air force took advantage of Iraq’s mobilization to destroy in 1981 the nuclear reactor that France was building for Saddam Hussein. When Iraq began to struggle in 1982, Washington was glad that France supported Saddam’s regime and lent him Super Étendard attack aircraft from its own naval inventory. As Iraq regained the upper hand, the arms deliveries of 1985–86 helped to restore the balance; the conflict ended in a draw between worn-out adversaries in 1988.

Dual containment policy

The George H.W. Bush administration cautiously did not overthrow Saddam’s regime in 1991, for fear that Iran would fill the political vacuum. The United States pursued its strategy of strangling both countries in the 1990s (the “dual containment” policy) through embargoes and sanctions, but this balancing act ended under George W. Bush. His invasion in 2003 allowed the return from exile of members of Iraq’s two biggest Shia political parties with allegiance to Iran—the Islamic Dawa (propagation of religion) Party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI).