Iraq Initiative

If Sunni politicians and powerful tribal chiefs back an upheaval in Arab Sunni areas, they would risk losing the political and economic gains realized by their alliance with Iran-backed political powers and could face repression and marginalization.

The next task for Allawi is to win the consent from two mutually exclusive spheres of influence inside Iraq: the protesters who forced the resignation of the current government at a high cost with nearly a thousand lives lost and more than twenty thousand wounded and the entrenched political actors who are still unwilling to give up all or part of their extraordinary privileges and take steps to curb corruption.

Partners for mutual or overlapping national security objectives, like the governments in Baghdad and Washington, need a sustained dialogue.

The parliament’s vote on January 5 was driven by emotional rhetoric of sovereignty and patriotism that left no space for dissent and implicitly accused anyone going against the current of betraying Iraq’s sovereignty. The vote displayed majoritarian rule at its worst with the underlying premise that the Shia religious groups can and will determine the interests of Iraq and determine its future, to the exclusion of other communities. The views of Kurds and Sunnis, and indeed of more secular Shia groups, were ignored, with the implication that their patriotism is suspect.

The Iraqi parliament vote to remove US troops confirms that if Iraqis are cornered and forced to choose between the United States and Iran, they will find it safer to choose Iran.

“If this vote tells us anything,” Abbas Kadhim says, “it confirms that if Iraqis are cornered and forced to choose between the United States and Iran, they will find it safer to choose Iran.”

As Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei age, the international community of Shia Muslims faces a looming void in religious and political leadership.

Partners for mutual or overlapping national security objectives, like the governments in Baghdad and Washington, need a sustained dialogue.

The Iraqi parliament vote to remove US troops confirms that if Iraqis are cornered and forced to choose between the United States and Iran, they will find it safer to choose Iran.