As a force for good in the nation and as Iraq’s closest friend, the United States has proposed a Strategic Dialogue with the Government of Iraq to be held in middle of June.
With the global COVID-19 pandemic raging and plummeting oil revenues, threatening an Iraqi economic collapse, it’s important that our two governments work together to stop any reversal of the gains we’ve made in our efforts to defeat ISIS and stabilize the country.
The Strategic Dialogue will be led by my Under Secretary for Political Affairs David Hale. And all strategic issues between our two countries will be on the agenda, including the future presence of the United States forces in that country, and how best to support an independent and sovereign Iraq.
This sounds like an effort to figure out how to fight Phase IX of the Iraq War in the face of Iranian pressure on Iraq (and against American forces supporting Iraq).
The more Iraq works with America, the more the effort can be non-military, I think, because Iranian assets inside Iraq will be less able to attack American and Coalition forces as Iraqi security elements arrest them. I'd much rather have Phase IX be one focused on rule of law. Outlaw the Iranian-controlled militias, arrest the pro-Iran Iraqis, expel the Iranian agents, reduce corruption that Iran exploits and that rightly inspires popular anger at the government's ineffectiveness in general.
And this is a nice push in that direction*:
The U.S. State Department’s Rewards For Justice program has offered a $10 million bounty for information on Muhammad Kawtharani, one of Hezbollah’s senior operations commanders inside Iraq. Hezbollah operates in Iraq closely alongside Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to prop up and support Shia militias hostile to the U.S. and the West.
This will also make the fight against ISIL remnants more effective. You do remember the span between America leaving Iraq in victory at the end of 2011 and Iraq War 2.0 in 2014, right?
Iraq has incentive to want this type of non-military war to avoid Iraq being a battlefield for American and Iranian forces.
If Iraqi forces can take the lead inside Iraq, America will be better poised to deter or fight Iran outside of Iraq with its military forces in the CENTCOM region.
I'm hoping we and the Iraqis have the power to define this phase of the war.
*As an aside, the author describes the American consolidation of troops at two bases as being part of a "winding down" operations in Iraq. Is that true? Or is it to simplify Patriot defense against a new Iranian ballistic missile barrage?
