Good Iraqi-Iranian Relations Are Not a Reason to Worry

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by Paul R. Pillar

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has been visiting Iraq this week—a friendly, extended visit that has yielded several bilateral agreements on trade and transportation. Such an event causes heartburn, of course, within the Trump administration and for others who believe that the only useful thing to do to Iran is to try to isolate and cripple it.

History and geography have pushed Iraq and Iran to strive for close and cordial relations today.  It is the sensible thing for each state to do. And Americans need not suffer heartburn because of it.

Iraq and Iran share a 900-mile border and at times have shared difficulties along the border such as restive Kurdish minorities and an old boundary dispute along the Shatt al-Arab waterway. Such geographic cohabitation has long carried the potential both for trouble and for cooperation. The shah of Iran, for example, assisted an insurgency by Iraqi Kurds as a form of pressure on Baghdad but stopped doing so as part of an agreement in which Iraq made concessions regarding the location of the boundary along the Shatt al-Arab.

A formative experience for both countries was the devastating war, which Saddam Hussein started, between Iraq and Iran in 1980-1988. The war caused hundreds of thousands of casualties. For Iranian leaders, the indelible lesson was the need to have a regime in Baghdad friendly enough toward Iran never to do what Saddam did. Iraq, which also suffered mightily in the war, came away from the conflict with similar lessons about the need to have a stable relationship with its neighbor to the east.

The Trump administration’s effort to get everyone in the world to join in its campaign of ostracism and punishment of Iran is colliding with these geographic and historical realities. Iraqis of various political stripes see the U.S. coercion of Iraq to join the pressure campaign as a misguided attempt to export an obsession and as contrary to Iraq’s own interests, and the Iraqis resent it. The resentment was clear last month when President Trump said in an interview that he wanted to keep a U.S. military base in Iraq “partly because I want to be looking a little bit at Iran because Iran is a real problem.” Iraqi President Barham Salih spoke for his countrymen when he responded, “Don’t overburden Iraq with your own issues…We live here.” The senior and highly respected Shiite cleric in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, stated, “Iraq rejects being a station for harming any other country.”

In addition to the security reasons that both Iraq and Iran have for keeping their relationship stable and not making trouble for each other, there are economic reasons.  Iraq as well as Iran needs the bilateral trade.  Iraq especially depends on imports of Iranian natural gas and electricity to meet its energy needs.  Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi notes how Iraqis suffered from a U.S.-imposed economic blockade during Saddam Hussein’s rule and states, “Iraq will not be part of the sanctions regime against Iran and any other people.”

Iraq and Iran still have their differences and disagreements, but Iraqis are aware that the most consequential thing Iran has done in Iraq in recent years has been to assist the Iraqis in liberating the large part of western Iraq that had come under the rule of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS or IS). Iran has been the most important source of outside assistance in defeating IS—assistance that is unburdened by any talk about keeping military bases on Iraqi soil for the unrelated purpose of “looking” at rivals of Iran. Awareness of this assistance is probably one reason Rouhani has enjoyed a successful visit with all the trimmings, including a full slate of meetings with Iraqi officials, businessmen, and tribal leaders. In contrast, President Trump’s foray into Iraq last December was a quick, unannounced, middle-of-the-night drop-in to a U.S. military base without meeting any Iraqi leaders.

One of the principal consequences of the regime-changing war that an earlier U.S. administration launched in Iraq 16 years ago has been a marked increase in Iranian influence in Iraq. Now a different U.S. administration is apparently bent on changing another regime while exhibiting similar disregard for, or misunderstanding of, relevant regional realities and likely consequences. The makers of the 2003 war surely did not intend to increase Iranian influence in Iraq, and thus the heightened influence must be considered another failure of that war. But now that the influence exists, it is not worth losing any more American sleep over it, at least not without asking “influence for what?”—especially given that the most conspicuous objective Iran has pursued in Iraq is one the United States shares: the defeat of IS.

The United States still has an interest in post-Saddam Iraq being a stable, prosperous, and peaceful country. It thus is against U.S. interests to pressure Iraq into participating in economic warfare that is damaging to Iraq itself.

It also is against U.S. interests to pressure the Iraqis into violating their own constitution—a constitution written with U.S. encouragement and tutelage after the ouster of Saddam, partly with the aim of preventing the country from again becoming a participant in regional conflict and strife the way it was under the late Iraqi dictator. One of the “fundamental principles” enshrined in that constitution as Article 8 is:

Iraq shall observe the principles of good neighborliness, adhere to the principle of noninterference in the internal affairs of other states, seek to settle disputes by peaceful means, establish relations on the basis of mutual interests and reciprocity, and respect its international obligations. 

That’s still a good idea.

Paul Pillar

Paul R. Pillar is Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University and an Associate Fellow of the Geneva Center for Security Policy. He retired in 2005 from a 28-year career in the U.S. intelligence community. His senior positions included National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia, Deputy Chief of the DCI Counterterrorist Center, and Executive Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence. He is a Vietnam War veteran and a retired officer in the U.S. Army Reserve. Dr. Pillar's degrees are from Dartmouth College, Oxford University, and Princeton University. His books include Negotiating Peace (1983), Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy (2001), Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy (2011), and Why America Misunderstands the World (2016).

SHOW 4 COMMENTS

4 Comments

  1. Inhumane theocracy is against the young generation in both countries. Previous US administrations have tried to negotiate with theocrats to no avail. People need help to get rid of the theocrats. But any help is seen as pro-US and therefore frowned upon. That helps the theocrats and that is why they have survived all these years. The people are suffering only because any help is seen to benefit outside powers. That is not right.

  2. US against IS?! The defeat of IS was never a common interest between the two. Please remember that in the critical situation after Ramadi occupation when IS was near gates of Baghdad, the US in response to Iraqis requesting for air support, conditioned for any help to a change of political structure to respect the minorities! They only forced to enter after Iran had effectively helped Iraqis to change the balance against IS. The US was forced to enter to have a control on the situation and unsuccessfully tried to change the tide against the verbal claims. And remember that IS was created and developed in Iraq under extensive US presence and then US evacuated in the hope that IS would do the job and entered again only when was disappointed by IS results and reentered in order to be able for further interventions in the future!

  3. “And Americans need not suffer heartburn because of it.” Of course not: but a Revoltin’ Creep named Bolton suffers zioneoconimperialist outrage that even the most minuscule degree of blowback to USraeli “full-spectrum dominance” is presumptuous and not to be tolerated. Iran and Iraq: watch your backs ever more closely.

    Excellent analysis by Mr. Pillar with one regret: his citation, without context, of “…the devastating war, which Saddam Hussein started, between Iraq and Iran in 1980-1988.” My memory clearly tells me that Saddam Hussein started that war with at least nudges of suggestion and support by the US Reagan regime that was livid-hot to teach Iran a painful lesson anent the very recent (1979) US Tehran Embassy occupation. In fact, it can only be that the reverberations from that incident continue to this day to rattle the brains and raise the hackles and drive the policies of Bolton and his ilk. Am I not right, fellow readers?

  4. Thank Dr Pillar. There’s nothing wrong or threatening about two old neighbors come to their senses and get along and look after each other’s interest! It’d be harder for the thieves to enter either when neighbors watch the neighborhood! If that’s threatening so be it!

    Today is the anniversary of Saddam Hossain using chemical weapons, supplied to Saddam by Rumsfeld/Reagan and the German companies, against the Iranian forces and his own Kurdish citizens killing thousands and thousands of people and injured many thousands more in early 1980’s! The last of injured passed in recent years after suffering for many years! So where were those who scream about the human rights? It’s all a bunch of BS!
    Rumsfeld brother John Bolton is more dangerous than Rummy and he has to called out now by the good people like Dr Pillar!

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