Analysis: Iran is no partner in the fight against the Islamic State
Analysis: Iran is no partner in the fight against the Islamic State, Long War Journal, Ali Alfoneh and Michael Pregemt, March 11, 2015
Qassem Soleimani (center) with his bodyguards near the frontlines of Tikrit.
Iran benefits from the threat of an Islamic State, and if the US continues its courtship of Tehran, it may find the Islamic State replaced by an Islamic Republic.
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Testifying on Capitol Hill on March 3, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Martin Dempsey characterized the joint attempts of the Iraqi military, Iraqi Shia militias, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) at taking back control of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, from the Islamic State, as “a positive thing.” “Frankly,” General Dempsey said, “it will only be a problem if it results in sectarianism.”
General Dempsey’s caveat is an interesting one, since there is every reason to believe that Shia control of Tikrit will result in further sectarianism. While the US administration says in its most recent National Security Strategy that it desires to “degrade and ultimately defeat ISIL [Islamic State]” in an attempt to “support Iraq … free itself from sectarian conflict and the scourge of extremists,” Tehran is actively perpetuating the sectarian crisis in Iraq.
The threat of the Islamic State, coupled with American “strategic patience,” not only makes the Iraqi Shia more dependent on Tehran and legitimizes Iran’s military presence in Iraq, it also provides the regime in Tehran with another bargaining chip in nuclear negotiations with the P5+1 Group.
In the past, the Iraqi Shia have demonstrated little interest in reducing themselves to puppets of Tehran. During the war with Iraq from 1980-1988, Iraqi nationalism trumped sectarian identity: the Shia constituted the rank and file of the Iraqi military, and Shia leaders in Iraq kept their distance from the regime in Tehran. After the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, Iraq became a sanctuary to Iranian clerics critical of the regime in Tehran, including Hossein Khomeini, grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic.
But Iraq did not remain a refuge for long. The civil war in Iraq, followed by the rise of Islamic State, forced moderate Iraqi Shia, who otherwise would have pursued a line independent of Iran, to become dependencies of Tehran. After being rebuffed by the US following the Islamic State’s takeover of Mosul in 2014, General Qassem Atta, head of the Iraqi National Intelligence Service, asked Tehran for help and received assistance within 48 hours. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi continues to press Washington for more support in his fight against the Islamic State and uses US hesitancy to justify reliance on Iran, which according to Vice President Iyad Allawi,only increases Iran’s influence in Iraq and could lead to dismantlement of the Iraqi state.
The Obama administration may desire to help secure the survival of the Iraqi state, but the small contingent of US advisers in Iraq is relying on a heavily Iranian-influenced Iraqi sectarian intelligence and security apparatus. The Iraqi security forces are predominantly Shia, and in addition, Shia militias and “advisers” from the IRGC Quds Force are now fighting as legitimate Iraqi forces.
This creates an environment in which targeting operations developed by Iranian forces and the militias have primacy over those developed by the US, leading to the possibility that Washington could be portrayed by Islamic State as complicit in the indiscriminate targeting of Sunnis. Such operations will be perceived the same way by the very Sunnis we need to fight Islamic State, thus undermining the US strategy to “support Iraq … free itself from sectarian conflict and the scourge of extremists.”
Any US reliance on Iranian support in the fight against the Islamic State is also likely to strengthen Tehran’s bargaining position in the nuclear negotiations.
Although both US and Iranian negotiators maintain that nothing but the nuclear issue is being discussed, this of course is fiction. On Sept. 22, Fars News, quoting an anonymous American source, reported that Secretary of State John Kerry and Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, discussed the nuclear issue as well as the fight against the Islamic State. And Admiral Ali Shamkhani, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Secretary, has also connected both issues. Clearly, Tehran’s cooperation with Washington in the fight against the Islamic State comes at a price, which Washington must pay at the negotiating table in Geneva.
Iran has Washington where it wants it. Iran wants a favorable deal, and the Obama administration is signaling that such a deal is forthcoming. US “strategic patience” is allowing Iran to increase its influence and presence in Iraq and Syria. Assad is waiting out the Americans and the international community, and Shia militias are now viewed as legitimate forces in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. But most importantly, US “strategic patience” signals to Iran an unwillingness to jeopardize the talks by linking them to Iran’s role in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.
Iran benefits from the threat of an Islamic State, and if the US continues its courtship of Tehran, it may find the Islamic State replaced by an Islamic Republic.
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WarSclerotic 
March 12, 2015 at 1:34 PM
Netanyahu and his Likud are running out of time to survive the March 17 ballot
DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis March 12, 2015, 10:25 AM (GMT+02:00)
He must run a hard race to win this election.
Five days before Israel’s snap election, people who have seen Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu close up say he looks weary and, behind his controlled façade, shocked to discover that his Likud party faces the real possibility of being thrown out of office on March 17. At a meeting of the party faithful, Wednesday, March 11, he warned – not once but again and again – that if they don’t get a move on fast, Israel could be stuck with “Bougie and Tzipi” [Yitzhak Herzog and Tzipi Livni co-leaders of the opposition Zionist Camp] as prime ministers.
The former Labor party keeps on overtaking Likud in opinion polls – not by much but consistently. When the figures hit 24-25 Knesset seats to his party’s 21, Netanyahu finally bestirred himself to go stumping across the country.
He hasn’t yet lost the race for another term in the prime minister’s office, but he will need to pull some rabbits out of his hat and aces from his sleeve if he wants to be chosen by the president as the most credible candidate for forming the next government. Herzog may get there first.
This campaign has held a couple more surprises and others may be in store in the short time remaining.
Future, led by Yair Lapid (former finance minister), has shot up from a single digit to 12-13 in the same opinion polls. He is thinking seriously of setting up a centrist bloc straight after the election results are in, along with the former Likud Communications Minister Moshe Kahlon who struck out with his own Kulanu party (11) for its first campaign, and former Likud partner, Avidor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beteinu.
This threesome believes that together, as the largest political grouping, they can persuade the president to designate Lapid to try and form a government coalition.
Against this pretty far-fetched background, Lieberman (currently foreign minister) has been going around saying he expects to be defense minister in the next administration. Kahlon has high hopes of the treasury.
This alliance of small parties with big ideas is giving both Netanyahu and Herzog nightmares in the sense that collectively they may be in a position to determine which of the two is designated prime minister.
Depending on the outcome of an election, which it must be said is still up for grabs, the two may still opt to combine to set up a unity government with the premiership rotating between them.
Netanyahu owes his current dire straits to seven causes:
1. For too long he has belabored the Iranian nuclear issue, which may be a hot topic in Washington, but no longer holds the interest of the action-oriented Israeli voter. His rivals point out that he has been talking about it for six years but done very little, and what he has done can’t be revealed. No future Israeli leader can be expected to do more. And so, absurdly, a nuclear-armed Iran has become a non-issue in the very country most threatened.
2. If Netanyahu counted on his spectacular performance before the US Congress to win him the election, he miscalculated. TV screens and front pages at home pushed aside scenes of cheering American lawmakers to make way for unsavory peeks into alleged petty misdemeanors – often trumped up – committed in the household of Netanyahu and his wife Sara. The poison built up insidiously in the public consciousness.
3. The media might have been forced to give more space to Likud leaders had Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon made intelligent presentations of their security policy. They might have gained popular ground by pointing to their policies which, by restraint and prudence, were holding back the real menaces besetting the country at every hand: Palestinian radical Hamas, which has been prevented from setting up West Bank rocket positions against Tel Aviv; Hizballah in Lebanon and the creeping Iranian military presence on the Golan.
By avoiding this course, Likud relinquished its strongest card, the security ticket, the only one on which Netanyahu has experience and credibility as prime minister, when compared with any of his rivals, especially the less than macho Herzog.
4. Likud’s leaders also slipped up badly by neglecting to present a remedial program for festering social ills, such as the yawning gap between the haves and the have-nots, the young couples hard put to support families, or first-time voters for whom affordable housing and prices are distant dreams. Contacts with a suffocating bureaucracy make more enemies.
The soundest economy in the West and the country’s first functioning cross-country road and rail system don’t cut it.
4. Likud left it far too late to start electioneering in earnest. Only this week, did Netanyahu start rushing to the rescue in a tardy bid to bring a dull and sluggish campaign to life. The Israeli street responded in kind. In contrast, wherever a prospective voter turned, he and she found Yair Lapid, Naftali Bennett (pro-settlement Habayit Hayehudi leader) and Kahlon (whose numbers have risen to 11) selling their platforms on every doorstep.
5. Netanyahu is also finding that challenging a sitting American president is no vote-catcher in Israel – even if national security at stake. Although Washington’s Middle East policies may be fairly criticized, any political hopeful seen to jeopardize US friendship may expect to pay the price at the ballot box.
March 12, 2015 at 5:06 PM
“The supreme leader also said a “Zionist clown” had delivered a speech in Washington, an apparent reference to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress earlier this month.”
Zionist clown. WOW. Whatever happened to Israel? Surrounded by 10’s of thousands rockets and screaming barbarians, while the world’s stacked against it! Oslo happened to Israel. There was a time when Israel was feared and respected, now, it’s being strong armed into submission.
Once Israels enemies and the world saw Israel was willing to give a little, ie. land for peace, (while the Arabs gave nothing at all) it was a full count press against Israel down the slippery slope Israel itself initiated. Next stop Auschwitz boards then the sea!!!!
The world only respects the strong horse. It is written.