Tuesday, November 11, 2014
The endgame of the US ‘Islamic State’ strategy
By Nicola Nasser*
Dismantling what the former US President George W. Bush
once described as the Syria – Iran component of the “axis of evil,” or
interrupting in Iraq the geographical contiguity of what King Abdullah II of
Jordan once described as the “Shiite crescent,” was and remains the strategic
goal of the US – Israeli allies in the Middle East unless they succeed first in
“changing the regime” in either Damascus or Tehran.
The US ,
Israel and their regional
allies have been on the record that the final target of their “regime change”
campaign in the Middle East was to dismantle the Syria
– Iran
With the obvious failure of Plan A to dismantle the
self- proclaimed anti-Israel and anti - US Syrian – Iranian “Resistance Axis”
by a forcible “regime change” in Damascus, a US – led regional alliance has
turned recently to its Plan B to interrupt in Iraq the geographical contiguity
of that axis.
This is the endgame of President Barak Obama’s strategy, which
he declared on last September 10 as ostensibly against the Islamic State (IS).
This would at least halt for the
foreseeable future all the signed and projected trilateral or bilateral
Iranian, Iraqi and Syrian pipeline networks to carry oil and gas from Iran and Iraq
to the Syrian coast at the Mediterranean .
Israeli Col. (res.) Shaul Shay, a research associate at the
Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies and a former Deputy Head of the Israel
National Security Council anticipated in writing on last January 21 what he
called the “Salafi Crescent” that is dangerously emerging to challenge the “Shia Crescent.”
“The growing involvement of Sunni Salafi jihadis in Iraq (since 2003), among the rebels in Syria (since 2011), and in Lebanon has created a ‘Salafi Crescent Iraq ] to Beirut
“A positive outcome” of this Salafi Crescent
Conspiracy theories aside, the
eventual outcome is a sectarian Sunni military and political wedge
driven into the Iraqi geographical connection of the Iran-Syria alliance in a
triangle bordering Turkey in the north, Iran in the east, Jordan in the west
and Saudi Arabia in the south and extending from north eastern Syria to the Iraqi
province of Diyala which borders Iran.
Iraqi Kurdistan is already effectively an
independent state and cut off from the central government in Baghdad, but
separating Iran and Syria as well and supported by the same US – led anti – IS
coalition.
Amid the misinformation and disinformation, the fact is
that the IS threat is being used as a smokescreen to confuse and blur this
reality.
The IS was conceived and
delivered in an American womb. The US
– drafted and enforced current constitution produced the sectarian government
that is still trying to rule in Iraq
The IS was the illegitimate
fetus born and nurtured inside the uterus of the US - engineered political process based on a
constitution legalizing a federal system based in turn on sectarian and ethnic
sharing of power and wealth.
This horrible illegitimate
creature is the “legacy” of the US war on Iraq, which was “conceived” in the “sin” of
the US invasion of the country in 2003, in the words of the president
of the Arab American Institute, James J. Zogbi, writing in the Jordan Times on last June 16.
US Senator John McCain, quoted by The
Atlantic on last June 23, thanked “God,” the “Saudis and Prince Bandar” and
“our Qatari friends” for creating the “monster.”
The pro-Iran government of
former Prime Minister Noori
al-Maliki was squeezed by the IS military advances to “request” the US help,
which Washington preconditioned on the removal of al-Maliki to which Iran
succumbed. The IS gave Obama’s IS strategy its first success.
However, al-Maliki’s replacement by Haider al-Abadi in
August has changed nothing so far in the sectarian component of the Iraqi
government and army. The US support of Iraq under his premiership boils down
only to supporting continued sectarianism in the country, which is the
incubator of the survival of its IS antithesis.
Moreover, the destruction of the Iraqi state
infrastructure, especially the dismantling of Iraq ’s
national army and security agencies and the Iraqi Baath party that held them
intact, following the US
invasion, has created a power vacuum which neither the US
Similarly, some four years of a US – led “regime change”
effort, which was initially spearheaded by the Muslim Brotherhood and which is
still financed, armed and logistically facilitated by the US regional allies in
Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia as well as by allied western intelligence services,
has created another power vacuum in Syria, especially on border areas and in
particular in the northern and eastern areas bordering Turkey and Iraq.
“We have been
fighting alongside al Qaeda, fighting alongside ISIS .
ISIS is now emboldened and in two
countries. But here's the anomaly. We're with ISIS in Syria Iraq are allied
with ISIS in Syria
The former 16 - year member
of the US Congress and two - time US presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich,
writing in the http://www.huffingtonpost.com on last September 24,
summed it up: The IS “was born of Western
intervention in Iraq and covert action in Syria.”
The US
The IS could have considered playing the role of a US
“Frankenstein,” but in fact it is serving as the US “Trojan horse” into Syria
and Iraq. Fighting the IS was the US
tactic, not the US
On record, Iranian
deputy foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said that “the best way of
fighting ISIS and terrorism in the region is to help and strengthen the Iraqi
and Syrian governments, which have been engaged in a serious struggle” against
the IS. But this would not serve the endgame of Obama’s strategy, which targets both
governments instead.
Beneficiaries of the IS “Trojan horse” leave no doubts
about the credibility of the Syrian, Iranian and Russian doubts about the real
endgame of the US – led declared war on the IS.
The United States was able finally to bring about its long
awaited and promoted “front of moderates” against Iran and Syria into an active
and “air-striking” alliance, ostensibly against the IS.
In Iraq, the IS served the US strategy in wrestling back
the so called “political process” from the Iranian influence by proxy of the
former premier al – Maliki. Depriving al – Maliki of a third term had proved
that there is no unified Iran
– backed “Shia house” in Iraq US
Installing a US Iraqi satellite was the strategic goal of
the US – led invasion and
occupation of Iraq
This counterproductive outcome of the US invasion, which
saw Iran wielding the reigns of power in Baghdad and edging Iraq closer to
Syria and Iran during the eight years of al-Maliki’s premiership, turned the
red lights on in the White House and the capitals of its regional allies.
Al-Maliki, whom Bush had designated as “our guy” in Baghdad
He edged Iraq Iran Syria ,
he opposed a regime change in Damascus , rejected
direct military “foreign intervention” and indirect proxy intervention and
insisted that a “political solution” is the only way forward in Iraq
Worse still was his opening Iraq up to rival Chinese and
Russian hydrocarbon investments, turning Iraq a part of an Iran-Iraq-Syria oil and gas pipeline network and buying
weapons from the Russian Federation.
Al- Maliki
had to go. He was backed by Iran
to assume his second term as prime minister in spite of the US US
The IS was
the US Baghdad on last June 23 warned that Iraq
It was a US
brinkmanship diplomacy to force al-Maliki to choose between two bad options:
Either to accept a de facto secession of western and northern Iraq on the lines of Iraqi Kurdistan or accept
the US
The
turning point came with the fall of Iraq ’s
second largest city of Mosul Iraq , including most
of the crossing points into Syria
and Jordan in the west, were
clinched out of the control of Baghdad , i.e.
some two thirds of the area of Iraq
Al- Maliki
and Iran were made to
understand that no US
support was forthcoming to reign in the IS until he quits and a less pro-Iran
and a more “inclusive” government is formed in Iraq
The creation of the IS as the sectarian Sunni alternative
against Iran ’s ruling allies
in Baghdad and Damascus
was and is still the US
“America is using ISIS in three ways: to
attack its enemies in the Middle East,
to serve as a pretext for U.S. military intervention abroad, and at home to foment a manufactured domestic
threat, used to justify the unprecedented
expansion of invasive domestic surveillance,” Garikai Chengu, a research
scholar at Harvard University, wrote in http://www.counterpunch.org/ on last September 19.
As a doctrine, since the collapse of the Ottoman caliphate
early in the twentieth century, western powers did their best to keep Arabs
separated from their strategic depth in their immediate Islamic proximity. The Syria – Iran
* Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit,
West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories (nassernicola@ymail.com).
