WASHINGTON – While the United States may be displaying reluctance to participate, beyond air support, in the battle to take back Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit due to Iran’s increasing role with the Iraqi military, Middle East experts say American strategy relies on the Shiite mullah regime.
Iran increasingly is fielding troops alongside some 30,000 Iraqi military forces and Shiite militias, including the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, to take back Tikrit, which is on the road between Baghdad and Mosul.
Pentagon sources told WND the U.S. military is watching Iranian forces but is staying away from any direct involvement by coordinating its activities with Iraqi command and control centers.
The main goal of the Shiite Iraqi government of Haider al-Abadi, however, is to recapture Mosul from ISIS fighters who captured it last June and since then have subjected the northern Iraqi city of 1.5 million people to strict Islamic law, or Shariah.
“I think Iran and the U.S. will coordinate their efforts to defeat ISIS,” a Middle East analyst told WND.
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He noted Joint Chief of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey praised Iran’s positive role and Secretary of State John Kerry hopes to meet Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.
I think Obama’s administration will not let Iran claim total victory over ISIS without having a share.”
Dempsey testified at a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in which he said involvement of Iranian-backed Shiites in Tikrit was a “positive thing.”
“This is the most overt conduct of Iranian support in the form of artillery and other things,” Dempsey told the committee. “Frankly, it will only be a problem if it results in sectarianism.”
Suleimani has taken personal charge of more than 2,000 Iranian troops and Shiite militias inside Iraq, although his reputation precedes him. He is generally disliked by the U.S. military since he had overseen a deadly campaign against U.S. forces in Iraq.
Sectarian powderkeg
Sources say, however, that while the U.S. is quietly welcoming Iranian involvement on the ground, there also is concern that the Shiite Iranian participation in the effort to retake Mosul could cause Sunni tribes to renege on backing the Iraqi government and side with ISIS.
In addition, there is the growing prospect that Iran's involvement could further ignite sectarian conflict in Iraq.
Nevertheless, the Obama administration would like Iran to carry most of the weight “and win the battles on the ground,” Vali R. Nasr, former special adviser to Obama and now dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University told the New York Times.
“You can’t have your cake and eat it too,” he said. “The U.S. strategy in Iraq has been successful so far largely because of Iran.”
The strategy of letting Iran take the lead in uniting Shiite militias with the Kurds and Iraqi forces also may work in Washington's favor, since ISIS is eager to confront U.S. ground forces in Iraq, one source told WND.
ISIS grew out of Al-Qaida in Iraq, or AQI, when U.S. forces were conducting combat operations there after 2003.
This prospect is reinforced by recent ISIS statements making clear that it wants the U.S. to deploy combat troops in Iraq for a direct confrontation.
Prior to killing a Kurdish captive in January, the ISIS executioner announced ISIS would kill Obama in the White House and turn the U.S. into a “Muslim province.”
“ISIS has insisted on framing the current conflict as a struggle between Islam and the West, invoking the word ‘crusaders’ to refer to Westerners,” said Middle East expert Ali Mamouri.
Mamouri pointed out that the narrator in a video ISIS posted Feb. 15 showing the mass beheadings of kidnapped Egyptian Copts linked their executions to the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of U.S. Navy SEALs and vowed to mix the blood of the Egyptian Copts with the sea “in which they disposed of bin Laden’s body.”
“ISIS appears to be planning, or hoping, to challenge the United States in a ground fight in the vast areas of Iraq and Syria.” Mamouri said. “ISIS believes that no matter how strong and numerous U.S. regular forces are, they will not be able to win against its trained irregular fighters who have been confronting Iraqi forces in northwestern Iraq.'
Mamouris said ISIS wants "a repeat of the battle of Fallujah in 2004, when the United States failed to overwhelm the militia fighters in the city and lost a number of Marines before retreating."
"With the quantitative and qualitative progress it has made, ISIS envisions causing even greater losses among U.S. troops.”
ISIS wants U.S. forces to engage, Mamouri said, in an effort to add legitimacy to its existence.
“Direct participation by U.S. forces in a war against IS would be used to provide legitimacy to ISIS propaganda portraying the fighting as evidence of the ongoing Western crusade against Islam,” he said.
“This could help the group mobilize more supporters in majority Muslim countries and among Muslim communities in the West,” he said. “It could also help expand the combat zone by activating ISIS cells to carry out attacks in the West and eventually lead Western states to withdraw from the region, enabling ISIS to impose its will.”
While ISIS welcomes U.S. troops into Iraq for a direct confrontation, Mamouri said Shiite militias allied with the government oppose the presence of U.S. ground forces in the country.
Any prospect of the U.S. unilaterally sending U.S. forces back into Iraq would be problematic, Mamouri said. Instead, he believes eventual resolution of the crisis requires an agreement among regional powers and the U.S.-led international coalition.
“The United States sending ground troops to Iraq unilaterally will likely only contribute to deepening and expanding the chaos.”