General Martin Dempsey, the top U.S. military officer who visited Baghdad this week, told a Senate hearing on Wednesday that there was no doubt the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) would be pushed out of Tikrit, but that “the question is what comes after.”
Voicing concern about treatment of Sunni Muslims by the overwhelmingly Iran-backed Shi’ite attacking force, Dempsey said: “The question is what comes after, in terms of their willingness to let Sunni families move back into their neighborhoods, whether they work to restore the basic services that are going to be necessary, or whether it results in atrocities and retribution.
He said once the extremists are vanquished, Tehran-backed militias could undermine efforts to unify the country.
“There’s no doubt that the combination of the Popular Mobilization forces and the Iraqi security forces, they’re going to run ISIL out of Tikrit,” Dempsey told a Senate hearing, using an acronym for the militant group.
“The question is what comes after, in terms of their willingness to let Sunni families move back into their neighborhoods, whether they work to restore the basic services that are going to be necessary, or whether it results in atrocities and retribution.”
Meanwhile, former CIA chief Michael Hayden said Tuesday he was “uncomfortable” with Iran’s growing influence in Iraq, made especially evident by an offensive in Tikrit.
“I am made uncomfortable by the growing Iranian influence in Iraq. I am made uncomfortable by the fact that it looked like a Shia advance against a Sunni town,” said Hayden, who headed the Central Intelligence Agency between 2006 and 2009.
“And the proof would be what happens if and when they retake Tikrit … How the militias act toward the local population,” he added, during a roundtable on international intelligence sharing at the New America Foundation.
Hayden said the United States should not be sharing intelligence with the Iranians on Iraq, despite their shared desire to wipe out the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
“The Islamic Republic’s ultimate objective is different,” he explained.
“We are looking for an inclusive government with minority rights and the participation of all the major religious and ethnic groups.
“It’s clear to me that the Iranian policy is based upon Shia dominance of the new Iraqi state, and that effort in itself feeds the Sunni opposition, which ISIL [ISIS] then lives off of to resurrect their movement,” Hayden added, using an alternative acronym for ISIS.
Iran Occupies Iraq
The Wall Street Journal wrote on Wednesday: “While Washington focuses on Iran-U.S. nuclear talks, the Islamic Republic is making a major but little-noticed strategic advance. Iran’s forces are quietly occupying more of Iraq in a way that could soon make its neighbor a de facto Shiite satellite of Tehran.”
“The irony is that critics long complained that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 created a strategic opening for Iran. But the 2007 surge defeated the Shiite militias and helped Sunni tribal sheikhs oust al Qaeda from Anbar. U.S. forces provided a rough balancing while they stayed in Iraq through 2011. But once they departed on President Obama’s orders, the Iraq government tilted again to Iran and against the Sunni minority.”
“Iran’s military surge is now possible because of the vacuum created by the failure of the U.S. to deploy ground troops or rally a coalition of forces from surrounding Sunni states to fight Islamic State. With ISIS on the march last year, desperate Iraqis and even the Kurds turned to Iran and Gen. Soleimani for help. The U.S. air strikes have been crucial to pinning down Islamic State forces, but Iran is benefitting on the ground.”
“The strategic implications of this Iranian advance are enormous. Iran already had political sway over most of Shiite southern Iraq. Its militias may now have the ability to control much of Sunni-dominated Anbar, especially if they use the chaos to kill moderate Sunnis. Iran is essentially building an arc of dominance from Tehran through Baghdad and Damascus to Beirut on the Mediterranean.”
The Wall Street Journal article concludes: “The best way to defeat Islamic State would be for the U.S. to assemble a coalition of Iraqis, Kurds and neighboring Sunni countries led by U.S. special forces that minimized the role of Iran. Such a Sunni force would first roll back ISIS from Iraq and then take on ISIS and the Assad government in Syria. The latter goal in particular would meet Turkey’s test for participating, but the Obama Administration has refused lest it upset Iran.”