Has The US Lost Iraq To Iran Over Arms Deal?
Documents indicating that Iraq was going to buy almost US$200 million worth of armaments from neighbouring Iran have had foreign policy analysts fizzing. Is it a reward for Iraq’s support in Syria? Is it about the spread of Iran’s backers, Russia’s influence? But first, exactly how real is this deal actually?
Around a fortnight ago news broke that Iraq had signed an agreement to buy arms from Iran. Reuters reported that Iraq had agreed to buy “arms and ammunition worth $195 million” in a move that would “break a UN embargo on weapons sales by Tehran”.
“The agreement was reached at the end of November, the documents showed, just weeks after Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki returned from lobbying the Obama administration in Washington for extra weapons to fight al Qaeda-linked militants,” Reuters reported.
However over the past few days, it has become increasingly unclear as to whether such a deal exists at all. The Iranians themselves have denied that the deal exists.
News of the multi-million dollar deal – allegedly a memorandum of understanding to purchase weapons at a later date – was confirmed by another senior politician, Hassan al-Snaid, who is also head of Baghdad’s Parliamentary committee on security and defence. However the Iraqi Ministry of Defence then denied those reports, saying that the Iranian military industry had submitted an offer but that no deal had been closed or contract signed.
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