For Iran, a US withdrawal is a blessing and a curse

Assuming leadership in Washington’s absence will be easier said than done.

Next month, a U.S. delegation will board a plane to Baghdad to discuss with Iraqi leaders the prospect of reducing Washington’s military footprint on Iraqi soil. It would have been an unthinkable idea at the beginning of the year, when U.S.-Iran tensions came to a head after the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Even then, the Iraqi parliament voted on a bill that would have sent the U.S. packing had it ever been executed.

But where the parliament failed, the coronavirus pandemic, a mounting recession and global uncertainty may succeed in getting Washington to withdraw from the region – something it had tacitly wanted to do anyway, at least on its own terms – more quickly. Ready and waiting to capitalise on its departure is Iran.

Despite Iran’s own problems in managing the coronavirus outbreak, its foreign policy seems to be having a moment in the sun.

Over the past three months, the IRGC and its Shiite proxies have taken advantage of the international distraction and Washington’s absence to launch successive attacks on American targets.

Indeed, it appears as though Iran is getting what it wants: a path to project power in the Levant.

But it won’t be that easy for the IRGC. U.S. force reduction will not necessarily translate to sanctions relief or give way to an unobstructed march to the Mediterranean. Plenty of constraints remain, even in the absence of the U.S. missile defense systems, air defense systems and jet fighters from Saudi Arabia, while mulling a reduction in the Multinational Force and Observers peacekeeping mission in the Sinai Peninsula.

Iran has acted quickly to increase its military hold in Iraq and Syria, beefing up its defensive presence and smuggling capabilities along the al-Qaim highway. Recent satellite imagery from ImageSat International shows an Iranian tunnel project under the Imam Ali military base in Abu Kamal, Syria, on the Syria-Iraq border. Tunnels between proIran proxy strongholds in western Iraq and IRGC locations in eastern Syria strengthen Iran’s strategy to expand its influence west, allowing IRGC forces and their proxies to store vehicles, shelter personnel, transport advanced weapon systems, and smuggle arms from the east to the Mediterranean.

Related, Iran has been engaging more in the IsraelPalestine conflict. With reduced American presence in Sinai – the traditional buffer between Israel and Arab countries – Iran has begun rallying Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both sympathetic to Iran, to confront Israel, all while increasing its own military exchanges with Israel through Hezbollah and cyberattacks on Israeli water installations.