Iraq is home to both US and Iranian-backed forces. It's getting tense.
For years, Iraq has managed an unlikely balancing act, allowing forces linked to both the United States and Iran, a U.S. enemy, to operate on its territory.
Now things are getting shaky.
When Washington, Tehran and Baghdad all wanted the same thing – the defeat of the Islamic State terrorist group – relations were reasonably sustainable, but in recent months, as the war in the Gaza Strip sent ripples through the region, American and Iranian-backed forces have clashed repeatedly in Iraq and Syria. A US attack on one of those militias killed 16 Iraqis last week, and Iraq says it has had enough.
“Our country and sovereign authority is not the right place for rival forces to send messages and demonstrate their strength.” Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani's office said this in a statement on Sunday.
For years, both Iran and the United States had their proponents within the Iraqi government, and the Iranian-backed armed groups and U.S. forces existed in an acceptable, if uneasy, balance.
That began to change in 2020 after the United States assassinated one of Iran's top security and intelligence commanders. General Qassim Suleimani, a widely respected figure at home, during a drone strike while visiting Iraq. The Iranians began pushing hard for the expulsion of the US military.
Iraqi leaders oppose this, partly because of divisions over which country Iraq should join. Even after 2022, when parties close to Iran were able to form a government, there was a notable disconnect between what Iraqi officials said about the United States in public and what they said privately.
Now Mr Sudani's government is sounding increasingly strict.
Sunday's statement denouncing the fighting on its own soil was particularly evident in criticism of the United States, describing last week's attack in western Iraq as “a blatant aggression” that has disrupted talks on had jeopardized the reduction of the number of American troops in Iraq. “Violence only begets violence,” the statement warned.
The comments reflected the predicament the Iraqi government finds itself in as it negotiates the withdrawal of US troops who have been in Iraq on and off since 2003.
Iraq is under pressure from Iran, which considers the United States a mortal enemy, to force the complete removal of American troops from its territory. But some military officials in Iraq and the United States believe the country would benefit from a limited U.S. military presence focused on training and tracking the remaining threat from Islamic State.
The Iraqi government has deep political and military ties with Iran, and on Sunday made only an elliptical reference to the Iran-backed armed groups in Iraq that have attacked US camps and bases more than 160 times since the start of the war between Hamas and Israel. October.
It was these attacks that prompted recent examples of US retaliation, including Friday's killing of 16 Iraqi soldiers, angering many in the Iraqi government. It followed A drone attack on January 28 by an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia that killed three American soldiers at a base in northwestern Jordan.
Analysts who closely follow Iraq suggested that recent events have brought the two countries to a turning point, potentially forcing a faster withdrawal of U.S. troops than the United States — and many in Iraq — had hoped.
“The problem for both the Iraqi and US governments,” says Renad Mansour, director of the Iraq Initiative at the London-based research group Chatham House, “is that neither wants an escalation or a continued presence of US troops.”
Before the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7 and Israel's retaliatory bombing and invasion of the Gaza Strip, both Iraq and the United States were “on the same page,” Mr. Mansour said, and hoped to negotiate a mutually beneficial deal. arrangement for withdrawal of troops.
But now there is new pressure. As much as the two countries want to go back to before October. During the discussions, “things are changing and trying to deal with this new emerging reality,” Mr. Mansour said.
Colin P. Clarke, head of research at the Washington-based Soufan Group, an intelligence and security consultancy, said he was concerned that rhetoric from both the Americans and Iraqis had spiraled in recent days. The danger, he said, is “that the war of words becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the US ratcheting up its rhetoric and the Iraqi government doing the same, and then it is the one that backs down first.”
Mr Clarke said he was concerned that the United States would withdraw its troops too quickly, a repeat of the failure of negotiations in 2011, which led to the US withdrawing all its troops from Iraq. Within two years, Islamic State had taken over parts of western Iraq and a year later much of northern Iraq, sparking a four-year war that cost tens of thousands of lives.
After last week's deadly U.S. attack, Nuri al-Maliki, a former prime minister of Iraq who heads an influential parliamentary party that supports the government, appeared at least publicly reluctant to give much leeway to the United States, saying that it had targeted Iraqis. in cold blood.”
Hadi al-Ameri, one of the leaders of the Framework Coalition, which supports Mr Sudani, went further. “We do not believe in negotiations,” he said, “and American troops must be removed from Iraq immediately.”
How the coming weeks unfold will depend on how Mr. Sudani deals with the dual pressures from Iran and the United States. The head of the Islamic Republic's Security Council was in Baghdad on Monday, and the head of the Quds Force, General Ismail Qaani, was there last week for meetings with Iraqi security officials.
“Sudan has been systematically undermined over the past four months,” said Rend al-Rahim, chairman of the Iraq Foundation, which promotes democracy and human rights in Iraq. The Iraqi leader, she said, has done “his utmost” to contain Iranian-backed militias that have targeted U.S. troops. “They didn't listen to him,” she said.
“He was very angry,” Ms al-Rahim said. “Then the US attack came on top of already growing anger that Iraq is now an open field for the US to settle scores with Iran.”
Mr. al-Sudani — like President Biden and Iran's leader, Ayatollah Khamenei — is dealing with domestic politics, several Iraqi analysts said. “He is afraid that he now appears weak,” said Ehsan al-Shimmari, a professor of political science at the University of Baghdad.
Moreover, Mr al-Shimmari said, the current situation has highlighted the limits of his power. Even when it comes to one of the most important foreign policy decisions facing Iraq – the future role of the US military there – it is not entirely up to him.
“He is waiting to hear what the Iranian position will be, and based on that he will weigh the considerations and make his decision,” Mr al-Shimmari said. “But this makes him feel cornered.”
Falih Hassan contributed reporting from Baghdad.