http://www.opendemocracy.net/paul-rogers/america-and-iraq-iran-new-balanceThe thinking was straightforward: Iran was being encircled. To the east in Afghanistan, US forces had destroyed the Taliban, installed major fortresses at Bagram and Kandahar, and were increasing influence in central Asia; to the west in Iraq, they had eliminated the Ba’athist regime and planned to establish a network of large military bases; to the south, over the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, the US fifth fleet would exert control. These changes had transformed the strategic balance to Tehran’s disadvantage, and no Iranian regime would be foolish enough to challenge the US’s new regional supremacy.
By mid-2010, a mere seven years later, this neat portrait had dissolved. The US, having endured two gruelling and costly wars, was either seeking (in Afghanistan) or in process of (Iraq) withdrawal - in neither case with any certainty of lasting strategic benefit once it was completed. In the case of Iraq, moreover, the government of Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad was building good economic links with Iran; a disturbing process that led some voices in Washington to recommend a freeze of the military pull-out. Barack Obama’s administration was always unlikely to consider this, but cannot ignore an even more serious event.
On 2 May 2011, the head of Iraq’s armed forces, Lieutenant-General Babakar Zebari, held a meeting with Iran's ambassador in Baghdad, Hassan Danaifar. The ambassador is an interesting as well as influential figure: a native of Baghdad expelled by Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s who subsequently rose through the ranks of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC); he was appointed to his present post in 2010.
At the meeting, Zebari proposed to Danaifar that Iraq and Iran be form the core of a new regional-security organisation. This would go far beyond existing arrangements for economic cooperation, and reach to the heart of US and western European security interests (see Ellen Knickmeyer, “Iraq seeks security agreement”, International Defence Review, June 2011).
The proposed regional-security arrangement has the potential greatly to increase Iran's influence among its largest Arab neighbour, in a way that will deeply worry the United States and its coalition allies as well as Saudi Arabia and Israel. In practical terms the early steps are likely to be in air-power: Iraq’s substantial army now numbers 250,000 troops, but it so far has little more than a nominal air-force.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
