The Iranian ballistic missile attack on Erbil, the capital of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, revealed two main facts. The first is the extent of Iraq’s political and security impasse and the second is Iran’s inability to manage the Iraqi political game, especially considering the dangerous tensions that have arisen between various Shia forces. The Iraqis, including the Shia, are still resisting Iranian influence and refusing to see their country become a mere satellite in the orbit of the “Islamic Republic.”
The Iranian missiles that targeted Erbil are a sign of weakness rather than strength, especially since the alibi invoked by the “Revolutionary Guards” to justify launching their projectiles in the direction of so-called Israeli “bases” belonging to the Mossad cannot be taken seriously. There was an Israeli attack on Iranian targets near Damascus a few days ago.
The attack killed two Iranian members of the “Revolutionary Guards,” apparently senior officers in the “Guards,” according to some sources. Well, why did Iran respond to the attack in Kurdistan and not in Israel, which it had vowed thousands of times before to wipe off the face of the earth?
The Iranian goal may have been also to send a message to Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, the head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, with whom it has accounts to settle. It has succeeded in preventing Hoshyar Zebari from acceding to the presidency of Iraq. But, at least until now, it could not bring a pro-Iranian Kurd to the Iraqi presidency.
Every day it becomes clear that the “Islamic Republic” is incapable of managing the Iraqi crisis, despite the primary role it has played in creating that very crisis and the chaos that grips Iraq. What cannot be ignored is that Iranian missiles in Erbil, have helped bring back Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi to the fore.
Before the firing of the missiles in the direction of Erbil, Kadhimi seemed to have reached the end of the road. Six months had passed since the elections supervised by his government. The ballot led to gains by the Sadrists (Moqtada al-Sadr’s movement), but there has since been no new Iraqi government. Kadhimi himself seemed desperate. On March 11, he suggested in a tweet that he was bidding farewell to his fellow citizens and that he was telling them that he had done all he could for Iraq. And then Kadhimi regained his vitality. He responded to the Iranian missile attack by visiting Erbil to signal that he still was alive, politically.
In short, Kadhimi represented again an Iraqi option. This does not mean however his future is one hundred percent guaranteed, considering the resumption of contacts between Moqtada al-Sadr and Nuri al-Maliki, whom Sadr used to completely reject as an alternative. Iran’s firing of ballistic missiles, from a distance of about 300 kilometres, shows clearly that the “Islamic Republic” has nothing to offer Iraq. For the Revolutionary Guards, Iraq is just an “arena” through which messages are sent in all directions, especially in the direction of Washington and some Arab capitals.
It is no longer a secret that the “Guards” failed to impose their conditions on the US administration during the Vienna talks. The Russian invasion of Ukraine spoiled the chance of a US-Iranian deal, at least in the foreseeable future. It seems clear that Russia now has its own priorities and is no longer interested in facilitating the nuclear deal between Washington and Tehran.
Above all, it was remarkable that Iran announced the suspension of the security talks it was conducting with Saudi Arabia in Iraq under the supervision of Kadhimi himself, who considered these Saudi-Iranian talks a personal victory.
What the “Islamic Republic” is discovering is that no one in the world, including Arabs who are to be taken seriously, is ready to hold any talks or negotiations with Tehran except about its behaviour in the region and its ballistic missiles and drones. There is no separation between the Iranian nuclear programme, on the one hand and the aggressive expansionism practiced by the “Islamic Republic” outside its borders, in Yemen and other places as well, on the other hand.
There is a real Iranian crisis, today, but there is an Iraqi crisis as well. Perhaps Iran’s actions in Iraq have demonstrated the interdependence between the Iranian and Iraqi crises as the world enters a completely new phase after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
It seems that the “Guards” feel compelled to emphasise more than ever that the political and security game in Iraq is managed from Tehran and not from anywhere else, while they ignore the existence of the Iraqi people, the majority of whom believe that Iraq and Iran are two separate entities. Iraq is not Iran and Iran is not Iraq.
Source » thearabweekly