Just ahead of the election, Pompeo is pressuring Iraq’s leader🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹 and raising tensions with Iran
Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Kadhemi during a visit to Basra
in
August. (Hussein FALEH/AFP via Getty Images)
David Ignatius
September 25, 2020 at 11:48 p.m. GMT+2
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo privately warned Iraq this week
that the United States would close its embassy in Baghdad if the Iraqi
government doesn’t move to stop attacks by Iranian-backed militias on
the American compound.
Pompeo’s demand creates a stark dilemma for Iraq’s new prime
minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, who until now had been a Trump
administration favorite. The Iraqi leader wants to curb Iran’s proxy forces,
but not at the cost of committing political suicide. If Pompeo follows through
and closes the embassy to protect Americans, Iran and its allies might claim a
major propaganda victory; but the closure could also be a prelude to heavy U.S.
airstrikes against the militias.
Iraq is the place where a U.S.-Iran confrontation could explode in
the next few weeks, creating an “October surprise” before the U.S. presidential
election. Iran has been cautious about directly provoking the Trump
administration in this campaign season, preferring to operate in the deniable
battlespace of Iraq. Pompeo has now made that covert campaign more difficult,
but in the process has increased the possibility of open conflict.
The Iraq standoff poses potential dangers in every direction: If
attacks by Iranian-backed militias kill Americans, the Trump administration
will likely counterattack. If Kadhimi strikes at the Shiite militias, as Pompeo
demands, Iran could punch back hard, and his fragile regime could implode.
Pompeo wants to stiffen Kadhami’s backbone, but presumably not to the breaking
point.
“We believe that Kadhimi wants to do the right thing, but he’ll
have to do more and faster. We won’t be sitting ducks,” a senior State
Department official said in an interview Friday. The official said there is an
“obvious risk to American life if these attacks continue.”
Violence by Iranian-backed militias has been escalating in recent
weeks, despite Kadhimi’s promises of a crackdown. So far this month alone,
there have been 25 attacks on convoys carrying supplies to U.S. or coalition
facilities, on the Green Zone where the U.S. Embassy is located, or on the
Baghdad airport, according to a compilation by Iraq analyst Joel
Wing. Last month, he counted 24 such attacks.
An encouraging call for greater protection of embassies came
Friday when the influential Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a radical nationalist
who sometimes resists Iranian pressure, proposed the creation of a committee
“to investigate the security violations that the diplomatic missions … are
being subjected to in a way that is detrimental to Iraq’s reputation in the
international arena.”
Kadhimi immediately endorsed Sadr’s proposal, tweeting: “We affirm
that the hand of law is above the hand of those who break it. … The outlawed
weapon has no place in Iraq.”
Pompeo’s pressure campaign began with a call Sunday to Iraqi
President Barham Salih, according to Iraqi24, a Baghdad news site. The
Iraqi news account said Pompeo had warned: “The decision to close the embassy
in Baghdad is in President Trump’s hands and is ready. … If our forces withdraw
and the embassy is closed in this way, we will liquidate all those who have
been proven to have been involved in these attacks,” according to a translation
of the Arabic news article. Pompeo specifically named two Tehran-backed groups,
Kataib Hezbollah and Asaib Ahl al-Haq.
Kadhimi, a former Iraqi intelligence chief, was welcomed by
Trump at the White House last month. U.S. officials view him as the most
promising Iraqi leader in years, in part because he’s not tied to any of Iraq’s
corrupt, sectarian political parties and has tried to keep his distance from
Tehran.
One Iraq analyst summed Kadhimi’s appeal to disgruntled Iraqis
this way: “The Iraqi people are turning against Iran’s influence in Iraqi
internal affairs, against the Iran-backed militias and the politicians who
enable them, and against the rampant corruption that Iran’s influence
promotes.”
The danger of Pompeo’s ultimatum is the same one that has plagued
the United States since it invaded Iraq in 2003. Iran is near and plays a long
game; America is far away and demands quick results. Iraq has shown us
repeatedly that American military power is overwhelming but can’t dictate political
outcomes. Direct threats that become public, like Pompeo’s, rarely work out as
intended.
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