Iran is overtly engaged in the battle to retake the Iraqi city of Tikrit from Daesh (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), creating new dilemmas for the West and its regional allies.
The 30,000 strong force currently encircling Saddam Hussain’s home town amid ‘Operation Liberate Tikrit’ is composed of Iraqi army troops and sectarian militias under the command of top Iranian General Qassem Sulaimani. Sulaimani usually heads the elite Al Quds brigades of Tehran’s Republican Guards Corp.
The ongoing battle pits Daesh —which seized Tikrit last June — against the Islamic Republic and its Iraqi allies in an all out sectarian warfare.
The population of Tikrit is overwhelmingly Sunni and may not welcome being liberated by Iran-backed militia; Sunnis in Iraq felt they were unfairly dealt with under the regime of Nouri Al Maliki and his successor, Haider Al Abadi, has yet to convince them that things will be better on his watch. Commanders in the Iraqi army say they have little chance of successfully recapturing Tikrit if its inhabitants side with the extremists.
The increasingly sectarian aspect of the situation has wider regional implications. On Thursday, during a joint press conference with US Secretary of State John Kerry, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal bluntly voiced Saudi concerns that, ‘Iran is taking over Iraq’. Ankara is equally alarmed by Tehran’s rapid political and military encroachment on Syrian and Iraqi affairs and a Saudi-Turkish rapprochement appears to be under way, perhaps in preparation for a powerful new Sunni alliance. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met King Salman Bin Abdul Aziz last Monday in Riyadh, signalling a thaw in relations which became tense over the ouster of Egypt’s former president Mohammad Mursi. While Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party is closely allied to the Muslim Brotherhood, the late Saudi king Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz welcomed Abdul Fattah Al Sissi’s new government in Cairo and followed its lead in outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood and labelling it a terrorist entity.
Saudi Arabia’s security is threatened by another Iranian proxy at its southern border; Yemen’s Al Houthi rebels have taken over the seat of government in Sana’a, whence elected President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi fled house arrest, resurfacing in Aden at the end of February. Although Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is, itself, a danger to Riyadh, it is a powerful ally in the battle to expel Al Houthis. Last Monday, Abdullah Al Khalidi, the Saudi consul to Aden who had been held by AQAP for three years, was released, which may indicate a truce between Riyadh and AQAP while the currently greater danger to them both is dealt with.
How far the principle of ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ might be extended remains to be seen. Might the region’s Sunni heavyweights suspend hostilities against Daesh for a period, allowing them to wage a war of attrition against Iran and its allies in Iraq and Syria? A similar scenario in Afghanistan saw Saudi Arabia and the West training and backing the mujahideen through the 1980s in order to expel the Soviet army. Syrian President Bashar Al Assad turned a blind eye to Daesh in Spring 2014 while it battled fellow extremist group, Al Nusra, which at that time posed a greater threat to him.
The US has announced plans to train new, ‘moderate’ rebel forces for Syria next month in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and is already training anti-Daesh forces in Iraq; but ‘Operation Liberate Tikrit’ puts the West in an awkward position. The Pentagon says it has not been ‘invited’ by the Iraqi government to provide air cover for the onslaught and if it did, it would be taking an explicitly anti-Sunni, pro-Iranian stance which is not where it wants to be. Iranian encroachment does not only anger Saudi Arabia — on Tuesday Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was whipping up anti-Iranian hysteria in Washington where he addressed Congress at the invitation of the Republicans.
Yet the battle for Tikrit is a prelude to a much greater fight for Mosul, which the Pentagon has already announced it is planning along with the Iraqi army and Kurdish forces. A CentComm official talking to Defence News last week spoke of ‘common ground’ with Iran over the fight against Daesh but such a position clearly risks Washington alienating not only its regional allies but the Sunni tribes too. Liberating Tikrit and Mosul will not be perceived as a victory if Iranian-backed militia hell-bent on sectarian revenge take over instead. Human Rights Watch has reported numerous atrocities against villagers committed by these militia since US troops withdrew in 2011.
While Daesh is surrounded in Tikrit and the integrity of its ‘capital’, Mosul, will undoubtedly be tested by a full blown onslaught by superior military forces, ‘Caliph’ Ebrahim’s entity is asserting itself and expanding elsewhere. Such is the modus operandi of extremist groups: to melt away from battles they cannot win, emerging elsewhere where they can prevail. Daesh recently took the town of Al Baghdadi just miles from the US air base where much of the training for the imminent assault on Mosul is taking place; it is also threatening Samarra. In the past months, Daesh took three major cities in Libya (Derna, Benghazi and Sirte) as well as two oil fields and has established a ‘wilayat’ (province) in the Sinai.
The battle for Kobani took four months and although Daesh brigades were driven out by the largely Kurdish forces, it was to some extent a hollow victory since the city was left in ruins. Will the same fate befall Tikrit and Mosul?
The political landscape of the Middle East has never been as unstable and every day produces a new surprise. One thing is certain, however, and that is the soaring temperatures in Iraq during the summer. With this in mind, planners will be looking to launch the assault on Mosul sooner rather than later and we expect it to begin in April or May. Iraq’s hot months will come early this year.
Abdel Bari Atwan is the editor-in-chief of digital newspaper Rai alYoum: http://www.raialyoum.com. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/@abdelbariatwan.
