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Disciplining Iran is Necessary

Disciplining Iran is Necessary
Disciplining Iran is Necessary

2019-06-19 00:00:00 - Source: Iraq News

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (L) and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), 2018. Photo: leader.ir

Luqman Hma Salih | Exclusive to Ekurd.net

When the United States liberated Iraq, it would not to let Iran move freely in Iraq the way they wished. Instead the United States wanted Iraq to become a typical democratic nation and stronghold in the Middle East. However, the slow motions of the U.S. gave rise to a brazen Tehran regime robustly embedded in Syria, vastly expanding the miserable Syrian civil war. Those two strategy mistakes caused the retreating of the U.S. in the Middle East. Subsequently, the Trump administration wants to rectify, as soon as possible, those strategy mistakes that were made during the past ten years.

As for Iraq, the first strategy mistake of the United States was that they were allowed to establish the Popular Mobilization Force. Even though, those troops are loyal to the Iraqi government, they are patently pushed around by the Quds force, which is a special unit in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. The important thing to recognize is that the group is taking orders from Iran, which is mostly Shia Muslims, and that they are supervised by Shia leaders who have leaned toward Iran. Therefore, the Popular Mobilization Force are Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, Kata’ib Hezbollah, Liwa Zulfiqar, Saraya Ansar al-Aqeeda, Kata’ib al-Imam Ali, Badr Organization and Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada. In reality, the Popular Mobilization Force PMF was formed by the Iraqi government in 2014 after top Iraqi cleric Ali al-Sistani’s fatwa on “Sufficiency Jihad” against ISIS following the fall of Mosul.

First, we must ask whether the Popular Mobilization Force is a necessity, considering the United States has spent a trillion dollars to rebuild the Iraqi army, and continued training Iraq’s army for ten years after fall of Saddam Hussein. Next, consider that the Iraqi military could not fight with a force like ISIS; how, then, could they fight with a country that has an organized and strong army! That status should tell us that this approach of the United States did not work with the Iraqi troops.

On the contrary, former Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi used the Popular Mobilization Force and Iraqi army against the Kurdistan Region on October 16, 2017, without the United States having any habituation against that aggressive attitude of the Popular Mobilization Force. During this assault, the Popular Mobilization Force captured the disputed areas, and the residents of the region were destroyed by Shia militias, particularly in Tuz Khurmatu, where hundreds of the Kurds’ houses were burned by the Shia militias. It was like the Baath regime had come back from the dead.

As for Syria, after the Syrian civil uprising in 2011, the Obama administration’s response had been confusing and contradictory. The Obama administration lingeringly sent their troops to Syria while it was necessary for that to happen as an excuse to protect Kurds and they should have rapidly sent their forces. Rather than vying with Turkey and Russia, Washington needed to bludgeon them into Syrian opposition, specifically for Kurdish fighters to come down on the al-Assad regime. Rather than hoping magical thinking would resolve the conflict in Syria, the United States should not have let the Popular Mobilization Force stay in Aleppo, Syria as an excuse to fight with ISIS.

Forgetting the past, in order to try rehabilitating those mistakes, they must discipline Iran. For disciplining Iran, it is necessary for the United States to continue at imposing harsh economic sanctions on the Iranian regime even if it will undergo giving up support of the groups of terrorist militias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. Furthermore, for cutting down funds for those militias it was necessary for the United States to devastate the economy of Iran by preventing it from exporting its oil, which is the lifeblood of the Islamic republic’s economy.

As a prime example: before the siege on the sale of Iranian oil, the Iranian regime funded Hezbollah with eighty million dollars. But now, due to U.S. sanctions, Iran’s oil sales have plummeted to only a few hundred thousand barrels a day, reducing their funding to forty million dollars. Except those procedures above, the must remain engaged to ensure that Iraq can fend off the Iranian threat. If the United States does not try to wrest the Iraqi government from the bosom of Iran, I think the U.S. will not able to assemble an effective coalition to make Iran curb its geopolitical excesses.

In fact, while we are expressing these words above, the world continues in a new political system. In other words, after the Iron Curtain fell in 1991, no country could have a malign influence on four countries as Iran has had, causing a threat to the strategy of America and its allies. Even if we take into consideration a country like Russian which is a direct competitor to the United States, they only have military bases and facilities in Syria and Vietnam which have hampered the United States. Yet Iran, in addition to its interference in Iraqi affairs, has set up several groups of terrorist militias in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. All of these militia groups have become an impendence and menace to the U.S., Gulf states and Israel. Not only this, but Iran has also made threats towards those four countries. So, generally, Iran is not accepted in this area.

All of this leads to conclusion that having the Iranian regime in the area does not have an advantage for the Gulf states. At the same time, it does not have an advantage for Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. In spite of that, Iran endures attempting to develop its nuclear program, and will endeavor to extend the Shia Crescent counter to the Sunni Arabs of area. For these reasons, with regard to disciplining Iran, the United States will need an international alliance even returning Iran back to its real size and cut its involvement from those four countries.

Luqman Hma Salih, a Kurdish writer and student in the Minnesota State Community and Technical College-United States.

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of Ekurd.net or its editors.

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