Iran fills a void in Iraq

On May 30, Iraqi special forces stormed the southern edge of Falluja under U.S. air cover, launching a new assault to recapture one of the last major Iraqi cities under the control of Islamic State militants.

Iraq’s elite forces who are leading the fight have been trained by U.S. advisers, but many others on the battlefield were trained or supplied by Iran. It’s the latest example of how Washington has looked the other way as Iran deepened its military involvement in Iraq over the past two years.

In recent weeks, thousands of Iraqi soldiers and Shi’ite militia members supported by Iran assembled on the outskirts of Falluja for the expected attack on the Sunni city. In the lead-up to the assault, General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, the special operations branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, met with leaders of the Iraqi coalition of Shi’ite militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces.

Leaders of the Shi’ite militias have pledged that they will not take part in the main offensive on the city, and will instead help secure nearby towns and lay siege to Islamic State fighters. If there is one regional player that gained the most from America’s gamble in Iraq, it is Iran. With its invasion in 2003, the United States ousted Tehran’s sworn enemy, Saddam Hussein, from power. Then Washington helped install a Shi’ite government for the first time in Iraq’s modern history. As U.S. troops became mired in fighting an insurgency and containing a civil war, Iran extended its influence over all of Iraq’s major Shi’ite factions.

Today, the Iranian regime is comfortable taking a lead role in shaping the military operations of its Iraqi allies. There is no one to restrain Tehran, and the rise of Islamic State, which views Shi’ites as apostates, threatens the interests of Iran and all Iraqi Shi’ite factions.

Tehran wants to ensure that Iraq never again poses an existential threat to Iranian interests, as Hussein did when he invaded Iran in 1980, instigating the eight-year IranIraq war that devastated both countries. Iran has excelled at playing the long game, especially in Iraq. Tehran’s willingness to spread money to various proxies and factions gave it great agility in maneuvering through Iraqi politics.

Like some of Iraq’s other neighbors, Iran used its largesse to help fuel and prolong the Iraqi insurgency and civil war. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps financed, armed and trained numerous Shi’ite militias that targeted U.S. troops and Iraq’s Sunni community. The Iranians provided explosives, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and other small arms.

After Islamic State militants swept through northern Iraq in June 2014, Tehran once again mobilized to protect the Shi’ite-led government from the Sunni militant threat. Soleimani traveled to Baghdad at the start of the crisis to coordinate the defense of the capital with Iraqi military officials. He also directed Iranian-trained Shi’ite militias -- including the Badr Brigade and the League of the Righteous, two notorious militias responsible for widespread atrocities against Sunnis -- in the fight against Islamic State. With a weakened and corrupt Iraqi military, the militias proved crucial in stopping the jihadists’ advance.

Since mid-2014, Tehran has provided tons of military equipment to the Iraqi security forces and has been secretly directing surveillance drones from an airbase in Baghdad. And Iran has paid a price for its deepening military involvement.

In December 2014, a Revolutionary Guards commander, Brigadier General Hamid Taqavi, was killed by a sniper in the Iraqi city of Samarra while he was training Iraqi troops and Shi’ite militia fighters. Taqavi was the highest-ranking Iranian official to be killed in Iraq since the Iran-Iraq war.

The United States and Iran now share common interests in defeating Islamic State and maintaining a stable regime in Baghdad that can transcend sectarian conflicts. While the Obama administration and Tehran are not coordinating directly in Iraq, they essentially have an undeclared alliance.

Without committing far more U. S. troops and resources, there is little that Washington can do to counter Iranian power in Iraq. And Tehran will not hesitate to use its many levers of influence over Saddam Hussein’s former domain. The photograph used with the article Separatist rant on Pandits would’ve upset Madhok ( May 29, 2016), was not Bal Raj Madhok’s but someone else’s, even though various internet sources have labelled the photo as Madhok’s. We regret using the photograph.