Webinar: Kurdistan Between Iran’s Hammer and Iraq’s Anvil – July 20, 2022
What I would add is, what is the US role in this situation? The existential threat that the Kurdistan region poses to Iran, and all those various reasons why, which are gas, US presence, etc. What I’ve heard more often this last time out here in Kurdistan than before, is that other than Israel and US presence in the Gulf region and the Middle East, the next greatest threat to Iran is the actual existence of a semi-autonomous Kurdistan region and everything that it represents: an attractiveness for investment multicultural, multiethnic, multi-religious safe haven, the refugee place for Iraq’s displaced persons.
The question is that the United States’ policy and its role in Baghdad has to reflect the realities on the ground, and I would argue that right now, that is a significant gap. We can look at the situation on the ground in which the United States continues to have to provide funding and equipping for the Kurdish Peshmerga, including $20 million a month just for stipends; and a very modest equipping that actually occurs not through the US security assistance program, but through the counter-Daesh coalition, whereby we also see the Iraqi government and the Ministry of Defense withholding specific equipment that’s already been appropriated by the US Congress. We see a US government that provides security assistance to an Iraqi government that continues to officially fund the Hashd al-Sha’bi, the PMF, which includes US-designated terrorist groups. America continues to send US bank notes to the Iraqi government as a part of a deal that’s now 19 years old, despite that same dynamic in which the Iraqi government probably will not be able to certify that those don’t end up in the hands of some of our worst enemies in the region including the Hashd al-Sha’bi and its proxies along with other terrorist groups.
In summary, I think the US government and its policy has to reflect the realities on the ground, and right now, that’s very clear it’s not. I think the general assumption is that the US has been only to engage forcibly in Baghdad because doing so required to confront this significant Iranian pressure, and it’s now its weaponization of the third rail of the Iraqi government. And doing so would, in their minds, jeopardize the prospects for JCPOA. But I think as we get closer to the death certificate of those negotiations, I think there’s going to be a reckoning on how the US closes this gap.
I think the US and the UK have to continue to believe that the Kurdistan region is a strategic national security interest for ourselves and for the region. I think that’s overarching something that is reflected on the ground back to my previous comment that our actions have to reflect thes of the ground. We’ve demonstrated on the ground that that is the case, that the Kurdistan region is in fact, a strategic national interest, and we’ve just lost our way for many reasons. Just to put it briefly, I think we saw the recent meeting between Putin and Erdogan and the Iranian regime is a significant factor that highlights the tension and the challenges, and the consequences of a US not engaged with moralities on the ground.
So why do we care? We care because we helped create the Kurdistan region in 1991 with Operation Provide Comfort. Our actions have shown that all the way through, and it seems that at times there’s been episodes, particularly when we want to negotiate a nuclear deal, that we’ve sort of forgotten those overarching strategic national security interests.