Iran Dominates in Iraq After U.S. ‘Handed the Country Over’
Iran Dominates in Iraq After U.S. ‘Handed the Country Over’ by Tim Arango, New York Times
Walk into almost any market in Iraq and the shelves are filled with goods from Iran — milk, yogurt, chicken. Turn on the television and channel after channel broadcasts programs sympathetic to Iran.
A new building goes up? It is likely that the cement and bricks came from Iran. And when bored young Iraqi men take pills to get high, the illicit drugs are likely to have been smuggled across the porous Iranian border.
And that’s not even the half of it.
Across the country, Iranian-sponsored militias are hard at work establishing a corridor to move men and guns to proxy forces in Syria and Lebanon. And in the halls of power in Baghdad, even the most senior Iraqi cabinet officials have been blessed, or bounced out, by Iran’s leadership.
When the United States invaded Iraq 14 years ago to topple Saddam Hussein, it saw Iraq as a potential cornerstone of a democratic and Western-facing Middle East, and vast amounts of blood and treasure — about 4,500 American lives lost, more than $1 trillion spent — were poured into the cause.
From day 1, Iran saw something else: a chance to make a client state of Iraq, a former enemy against which it fought a war in the 1980s so brutal, with chemical weapons and trench warfare, that historians look to World War I for analogies. If it succeeded, Iraq would never again pose a threat, and it could serve as a jumping-off point to spread Iranian influence around the region.
In that contest, Iran won, and the United States lost…
Mosul Victory Marks Win for Pentagon Training Plan
Mosul Victory Marks Win for Pentagon Training Plan by Thomas Watkins - Agence France-Presse
The Iraqi military's hard-fought victory over the Islamic State group in Mosul marks a defining moment not just for them. It is also a key win for the US doctrine behind it.
Instead of putting large numbers of American boots on the ground, the US-led strategy in Iraq and Syria has been a non-stop air campaign combined with continual training and advising for proxy local forces.
Pentagon officials say the outcome is clear -- three years after collapsing as flag-waving jihadists swept across their country, Iraq's security forces have become a battle-hardened army that prevailed in a brutal urban fight.
"Training works," said one senior US military officer who was deployed to Iraq from 2015-'16. It "has enabled the Iraqis to take back their country."
It's a far cry from when then-Pentagon chief Ashton Carter said in May 2015 that the Iraqi military "showed no will to fight." …