WarSclerotic

The White House warned Iran against attacks by its proxies in Iraq on Tuesday. The statement is a major departure from previous US policy in Iraq. For example, the US was not confrontational with the numerous Iranian-backed Shia militias operating in the country. Now Washington says it will hold Tehran accountable for any attack that results in injury to US forces or even damage to US government facilities. The statement comes in response to threats to the US consulate in Basra.

In August the US State Department rolled out a new Iran Action Group that is designed to put pressure on Tehran and coordinate actions across the US government. This coincided with US President Donald Trump signing the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act that singled out Iran in numerous places.

Iran has been openly supporting a plethora of militias in Iraq since Tehran began to operate more openly among Shi’ites in Iraq following the US-led 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. Groups such as the Badr Organization and Kata’ib Hezbollah are run by Iraqis who served alongside the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the 1980s fighting against Saddam Hussein. During the war on Islamic State Iranian-backed militias expanded their power in Iraq, helping to defeat ISIS. This put them on the same side as the US-led Coalition. Called the Popular Mobilization Forces or Hashd al-Shaabi, their numbers grew to almost 100,000 men under arms. However their deepening influence in Baghdad concerned Washington. In 2016 parliament in Iraq allowed the Iranian-backed militias to become an official paramilitary force. Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned the militias to “go home.” However current Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told Tillerson last year that the Iranian-backed groups were the “hope” of Iraq and the region.

In the May 2018 elections in Iraq these militias ran their own party in the elections, called the Fateh Alliance. It came in second place. Since then the US has sought to bolster its allies and deny the Iranian-backed parties control of Baghdad. The recent protests in Basra have become part of these tensions between those in Iraq who want to be free of Iran’s overbearing influence and those who are close to Tehran. Protesters burned the Iranian consulate last week and targeted the headquarters of the Iranian-backed militias, including Badr and Kata’ib Hezbollah. Rockets were then fired at the US consulate.

The US statement holding Iran responsible for the attacks in Basra represents a major change in US policy. US officials reported in the spring of 2018 that “Iranian support for certain PMF militias posed the greatest threat to the safety of US personnel in Iraq,” according to a Department of Defense Inspector General Report in May. The White House now says that “Iran did not act to stop these attacks [on September 7] by its proxies in Iraq, which it has supported with funding, training and weapons.”

However the PMF have been incorporated into the Iraqi Security Forces, which means that their training and funding also comes from Baghdad. How to disentangle Baghdad from its alliance with Washington and its support of militias that threaten the US is now a major challenge for the Trump administration. US Vice-President Mike Pence also condemned the IRGC on Monday for a missile attack on Kurdish opposition groups in northern Iraq. He called the attack an “effort to threaten and destabilize [Iran’s] closest neighbor.” Taken alongside the White House condemnation of Iranian proxies, the US is constructing a new policy in Iraq to confront Iran’s role in the country.

United States President Donald Trump will later this month chair a high-level United Nations Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East, in a bid to tighten the diplomatic screws on Iran. The American leader is expected to use the session to focus the spotlight on Tehran’s regional expansionism through its proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen; its ballistic missile program; and its global arm sales—all of which, according to the Trump administration, violate existing UNSC resolutions.

“We want to make sure that [the Iranians] understand the world is watching [and] that is the biggest reason for this meeting,” US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley explained, leading analysts to posit that the primary American goal is to continue ratcheting up pressure on the mullahs.

In response, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accused the US president of hypocrisy, tweeting, “There’s only one UNSC resolution on Iran. @realDonaldTrump is violating it & bullying others to do same. Now he plans to abuse [the rotating] presidency of [the Security Council which Washington holds in September] to divert a session—item devoted to Palestine for 70 yrs—to blame Iran for horrors US & clients have unleashed across M.E. #chutzpah.”

Zarif was referring to the unanimous adoption in July 2015 of UNSC resolution 2231, which endorsed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal—and President Trump’s subsequent unilateral withdrawal from the pact in May.

Washington has to date failed to condemn Iran in the Security Council due to the veto power of the latter’s backers Russia and China. This past February, for example, Moscow torpedoed a US bid to denounce Tehran for shipping weaponry to Houthi rebels in Yemen.

“[President Trump] is looking to mobilize the support of the international community, especially the signatories of the Iran nuclear deal,” with regards to economic sanctions, Dr. Raz Zimmt, a Senior Research Fellow at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, asserted to The Media Line.

“[The Iranians] consider Trump’s appearance as a provocation and they expect him to use this opportunity to attack Iran,” he elaborated. “The main question is whether Trump wants to use this opportunity to arrange a meeting with [Iranian] President Hassan Rouhani, assuming he will be attending. We still don’t know because Zarif might be sent instead. My assessment is that Tehran will [anyways] never agree to that meeting.

“All we will see is continued anti-Iranian rhetoric so I don’t think [Trump’s speech] will change anything in particular,” Dr. Zimmt predicted.

“Each side is just going to use this opportunity to express their stance.” Dr. Eldad Pardo, an Iran expert at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, stressed to The Media Line that reining in Tehran is a “major foreign policy issue for the US” and that the UNSC meeting would be geared towards getting the Islamic Republic back to the negotiating table.

“Trump wants to change Iran’s behavior by exerting a lot of pressure on it,” he explained. “Most of all, the US would like to see Iran give up its nuclear ambitions” and destabilizing activities in the region.

“In order to pressure Iran, you need to rebuild the crippling sanctions and for this you need an international coalition,” Dr. Zimmt noted, arguing that other nations would likely abide by Washington’s demands in order to maintain crucial diplomatic and trade ties.

A second batch of US sanctions targeting Iran’s oil sector will take effect in November, with a report this week by Oxford Economics suggesting that the new penalties will “cripple the [Iranian] economy” which could to contract by as much as 4 percent next year.

President Trump on Wednesday contended that Iran is in “total turmoil” and that the Iranian regime is now “just worrying about [its] own survival.”

The Security Council session is slated to take place on September 26 during the annual opening of UN General Assembly in New York.

Charles Bybelezer contributed to this report.