Why are we surprised that Iran is
exporting arms to Iraq?
There
are two layers to this question, which is popping up on TV screens
this weekend. One is the
geopolitical layer; the other is the simple-tracing-of-facts
layer.
Starting with the latter, Reuters reported in February
that Iraq and Iran signed an arms deal in November of 2013, right after Nouri al-Maliki got home from a
visit to Washington (during which he petitioned Obama for more arms to fight off
the “ISIS” insurgency waging war across Syria and
western Iraq).
The
ISIS insurgency – “Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham” – is often rendered “ISIL”
in English, for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. In either case, the territorial
reference is to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. The insurgents are Sunni jihadists, and
their principal focus at the moment has been scoped by the Syrian civil war, in
which they are fighting the Assad regime.
Most of the ISIS guerrillas come from abroad; a major contingent of them
is from the Chechen Caucasus, where Islamist insurgents have waged a war against
Russian rule for nearly a quarter century now. (For more on all this, see the last link
above to my January 2014 post. The
map shows the corridor between Syria and Baghdad where the ISIS insurgency has
sought to plant roots.)
The
bottom line is that ISIS is fighting to gain control of territory over which
radical Iran wants control herself.
Iraq, under the current government, has no interest in wielding an
outsize influence over her neighbors to the west; the priority in Baghdad is
reestablishing control over Anbar Province. But the larger aspirations of ISIS clash
directly with those of the mullahs in Tehran.
Tehran is still arming Assad and still seeking to arm
Hezbollah and Hamas, as evidenced by the attempt in March to ship advanced artillery
rockets to
one or the other, or both. Besides
the shadowy nature of the shipping route, a key feature of that attempt at
arming the terrorists was that it combined arms stocks from both Iran and
Syria. That aspect of the
transaction is informative on multiple levels. At the most general level, it suggests
how Iran sees Syria and the overall fight in the region: as an Iranian military and geopolitical
campaign.
The
mullahs don’t see themselves as narrowly locked in combat with a single opponent
(ISIS). They have a much broader
strategic objective of maintaining decisive influence where they have had it,
and gaining it where they don’t.
They want to turn the same territory that ISIS is after into a quiescent
client-region. Much of it had
fallen to them already, at the onset of the Arab Spring in January 2011: all of Syria, and the southern portion
of Lebanon.
The
Iranian leaders know they can’t just make abrupt moves against central Lebanon
or Israel; their interim goal is to hold sway over vulnerable territories that
border Beirut and Israel. And
that’s a hydra-headed problem.
Under today’s conditions, the Saudis would spearhead an Arab coalition to
fight Iran for Lebanon – and for the West Bank, for that matter. Cairo won’t stand by and let Iranian
influence build up – or, more accurately, let it change course or take new
initiatives – in Gaza. Israel, of
course, will defend her territory.
So
Iran’s approach to Jerusalem – where the radical clerics quite literally expect to
fight under the Mahdi’s banner (see here for
more from Ayatollah Khamenei on the 12th
Imam) – has
to be incremental and cumulative.
Defeating the ISIS insurgency is a step along the way to consolidating an
unresisting client corridor across the heart of the Middle
East.
The
ISIS guerrillas constitute an emerging operational problem for Iran, one that
has arisen because of the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war. It’s part of the regional jockeying
predicted in this series from 2009
(see here for an update in 2011). The jockeying will intensify, and the
alignment of Iraq is actually quite an important factor in the mix, one that can
either slow Iran down significantly, or greatly accelerate the establishment of
conditions friendly for her long-term goals.
Iran’s motivation to involve herself in the fight
against ISIS is strong. So is her
motivation to make a de facto ally of Iraq. Although the U.S. has provided Baghdad
with some arms to combat ISIS, it would take a much greater level of commitment
and involvement on our part to overcome the geopolitical forces that drive
Baghdad and Tehran together in this instance.
The coming together is cause for
alarm in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and for speculation at the very least in
Turkey, Russia, and the Gulf nations. ... [See rest at
link]
CDR, USN (Ret.)
Hemet, CA
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