Kenneth M. Pollack's Blog

Beyond great forces: How individuals still shape history

By Daniel L. Byman, Kenneth M Pollack

            

America’s torch song for Tehran

By Kenneth M Pollack

An Arab foreign minister once asked me: “Why are you Americans so infatuated with Iran? She is like your insane ex-girlfriend whom you endlessly pine for even though she only wants to hurt you and your life is so much better without her. Meanwhile, we Arabs are like your long-suffering wife, who only wants a better relationship with you, only to have you abandon us whenever that Persian hussy bats an eye at you.”

Sometimes others see us more clearly than we see ourselves.

For a great many Americans, the legacy of the Iranian revolution is the enduring enmity of the Islamic Republic toward the United States. Iranians are increasingly at pains to rationalize their regular, if ritualized, chants of “Death to America,” but for Americans, the words still bite. It is hard for Americans to reflect on the 40 years since the revolution and understand why Tehran’s antagonism has persisted for so long. So many Americans see it as irrational, wasteful, foolish, even childish. It is. But what we must realize, hard as it may be, is that it is not accidental. It is not the product of misunderstandings or missed opportunities. It is purposeful. It is deliberate.

While American leaders have run hot and cold on Iran, most of the presidents who have served during that 40-year span have sought genuine reconciliation with Iran. That they have failed time and again has little to do with their own mistakes and everything to do with the fact that Iran’s leadership has never wanted the same.

The Long, Unrequited Courtship

Right from the start, the United States sought good relations with the Islamic Republic. After the shah’s flight from Iran, the Carter administration tried to open a diplomatic channel to Tehran. For Carter, the fall of the Shah was no great loss. He had railed against the shah’s human rights abuses and was willing to embrace a new Iranian regime that seemed to be far more popular with the Iranian people.

Iran’s response was swift and clear. No. Tehran did not want a relationship with Washington. The United States was Iran’s eternal enemy, and the Islamic Revolution wanted only death to America. The seizure of the American embassy and the holding of 52 U.S. diplomats as hostages for 444 days became the defining statement of Tehran’s policy toward Washington.

It is worth noting that the American overture followed a clandestine effort to encourage a counterrevolution by the Shah’s generals. However, there are three critical facts bearing on this issue. First, the American effort lasted little more than a week because Washington quickly recognized that such a gambit was impossible. Second, neither President Carter nor Secretary of State Cyrus Vance were ever enthusiastic about the idea, saw it as a last-resort contingency plan if all else failed, and were relieved when it was mooted. They had always preferred to offer the new revolutionary Iranian regime the olive branch rather than the stick. Last, the Iranians were unaware of this effort until many years later, and so it cannot serve as an excuse for Tehran’s snub.

For all his bluster, Ronald Reagan tried too. It began with his sincere desire to free American hostages being held by Iranian allies and proxies in Lebanon in the mid-1980s. (These were seized after Iran finally freed the original hostages from the embassy). It was this desire that spawned the Iran-Contra imbroglio, in which the United States sold missiles to Iran—for its war with Iraq—and then channeled the money from those sales to the Contras, guerrillas fighting the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. Sordid as the affair was, Reagan’s hope was that the weapons sales would prompt Tehran to release the hostages, convince them not to take any more, and make possible a reduction of tensions between the two countries. Indeed, some of Reagan’s key subordinates hoped that it could be the start of a wider rapprochement and Reagan may have as well.

There were Iranians eager to reciprocate. The evidence suggests that they too hoped that the arms sales might lead to a wider warming of relations. But their hopes withered under the hostility to America from the more powerful hardline figures in the regime. The secret relationship was exposed, and its Iranian proponents were forced to disavow their intentions.

George H. W. Bush was always more prudent, never rushing in where wise men feared to tread. Yet he too famously blew a kiss Tehran’s way in his inaugural address, pointedly suggesting to Iran that “goodwill begets goodwill.” From Iran there was no answer. But actions speak louder than words and throughout the 1990s, Iran’s actions spoke volumes about its true feelings toward America. Iran instigated repeated terrorist attacks against American allies from Israel to Bahrain, killed its own dissidents abroad, harassed American military forces in the Persian Gulf, and even attacked a U.S. military housing complex Saudi Arabia, killing 19 Americans and wounding over 400 others.

Yet through it all, even furious at Iran’s seemingly gratuitous calumnies, America nursed its yearning for a better relationship.

Yet through it all, even furious at Iran’s seemingly gratuitous calumnies, America nursed its yearning for a better relationship.

In 1997, Iranians chose Mohammed Khatami as their new president. Khatami won in a landslide and in typically cryptic Persian fashion, he let it be known that he believed Iran should normalize relations with the United States. President Bill Clinton leapt at the chance. Against the advice of more cautious advisors, Clinton made a determined effort to demonstrate that the United States wanted the same.

Iran’s bureaucracy remained fettered by the hardline, anti-American leadership. So Khatami had to pursue his outreach to Washington indirectly, employing academics, journalists, and other unofficial emissaries. Clinton’s team eagerly met with Khatami’s messengers and explicitly asked what steps the United States might take to signal its interest in rapprochement and to enable Khatami to make it possible from the Iranian side. During Clinton’s final two years in office, the United States made eleven separate, unilateral gestures to Iran, from allowing visits by Iranian wrestlers and clergy, to removing Iran from the U.S. list of major narcotics smuggling states, all the way to apologizing for America’s role in the Mossadeq coup and exempting Iranian pistachios and carpets from American sanctions.

It all came to naught. Iran’s hardliners struck back at Khatami and crushed him. Khatami’s proposed reforms threatened their domestic policies and position as much as their cherished enmity with the United States. In 1999 and 2000 they forced him to crush student riots in support of his own reforms, much like Stalin had forced Molotov to denounce his own beloved wife. Khatami was allowed to serve out his term—he was even re-elected in 2001—but he was toothless, reduced to an impotent symbol of what might have been, left to taunt Iranians and Americans who had dreamt of a different relationship with the Tehran regime.

The failure of the Clinton-Khatami bid for rapprochement was not lost on George W. Bush’s foreign policy team. They never had any love for Iran and whether this confirmed their belief that improved relations were a pipe dream, or merely justified the course of action they always meant to take is impossible to know. But it was no accident that they included Iran as part of an “Axis of Evil” with Iraq and North Korea in Bush’s infamous 2002 State of the Union address.

Of course, having declared Iran evil, they were immediately forced to ignore it. Their invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq proved something of an unexpected boon to Iran and something of an epic catastrophe for America. The invasions removed Iran’s two worst antagonists: the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. Of course, the chaos that the United States left in their place to Iran’s east and west created new problems for Tehran, but also new opportunities—opportunities that the Iranian regime would exploit to magnify its sway and further harm the United States.

Iran would repay the Bush administration many times over for the “Axis of Evil” speech. In Iraq in particular, Tehran supported a vast range of murderous anti-American groups. Iranian personnel and their Hezbollah allies not only encouraged and equipped these groups to kill Americans, but at times planned and participated in the attacks themselves. Hundreds of Americans died as a result. The Bush administration did nothing in response, albeit largely because they were miserably bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and wisely (for a change) recognized that picking still another fight with Iran was unlikely to improve their fortunes.

Iran would repay the Bush administration many times over for the “Axis of Evil” speech.

Their Last, Best Hope

Barack Obama came to the presidency with an eye toward making peace with Iran. From the very first, his administration broadcast on all frequencies, public and private, that it wanted to consummate the elusive rapprochement. In 2009, in the wake of Iran’s stolen presidential elections, the Obama administration tried as hard as it could for as long as it could to say nothing, believing that any statement of American support for the millions of Iranians demanding the end of the Islamic regime might kill their bid for reconciliation. When the howls of American domestic and international outrage at Washington’s silence became too much, the administration’s criticisms were still bland and perfunctory to the point of being counterproductive. Nevertheless, Tehran seized on them to blame the would-be second Iranian revolution on American machinations.

Yet Obama would not be put off. In his second term, he redoubled his efforts, this time aided by an equally ardent Secretary of State, John Kerry. Then the Iranians seemed to signal some reciprocation by electing Hassan Rouhani as their new president. Rouhani explicitly ran on a platform of saving Iran’s economy by cutting a deal on Iran’s nuclear program with the United States and the international community. Thus began the negotiations that would ultimately culminate in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), colloquially known as the Iranian nuclear deal.

Both Obama and Kerry hoped that the nuclear deal would pave the way toward a wider reconciliation between the two countries. Indeed, it’s hard to understand their willingness to agree to the terms of the JCPOA—which only maintained the tightest constraints on the Iranian nuclear program for 10 to 15 years—except in light of their expectation that the agreement would lead to a comprehensive settlement of the Iranian-American conflict that would eventually render the agreement unnecessary. Rouhani wanted that rapprochement too. And so did his foreign minister, Mohammed Javad Zarif, who forged a close relationship with Kerry and also hoped to use the JCPOA as a wedge to open the door to normalized ties.

They were all disappointed. In the words of Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, while Obama and Kerry—and Rouhani and Zarif—all hoped the JCPOA would prove to be transformative, Khamenei and Iran’s hardliners were determined that it remain merely transactional. A simple deal, curbs on the Iranian nuclear program in return for a lifting of American and international sanctions. No more. Long before Trump came to office and killed the deal, Khamenei had made clear that it would never be anything more than it was. He would never allow it to be the end to Iranian-American conflict.

The United States has never had a president more desirous of turning Iran from foe to friend, and we may never have another one. Obama openly disdained America’s Middle East allies and even took Iran’s side against them in regional disputes, going so far as to declare that the Saudis needed to learn to “share” the Middle East with Iran. He agreed to the JCPOA in the face of tremendous political criticism. Both he and many of his key advisors hoped that a nuclear deal with Iran could be the gateway toward a wider rapprochement, and Secretary Kerry tried every door before, during, and after the nuclear negotiations to try to make that happen.

The Iranians never had an American president more willing to accommodate their needs and fears, and once again they spurned him. Yet Ayatollah Khamenei and the rest of Iran’s leadership were not interested in the better relationship that Obama and Kerry craved. If Iran could not accept what Obama and Kerry proffered, it is hard to conclude anything other than that those who matter in Tehran, those who actually make Iran’s foreign policy, are determined to treat the United States as their enemy, regardless of what we do or why.

Coping with Hate

The history of Iranian-American relations in the 40 years since the 1979 revolution is replete with mistakes, missed opportunities, and misunderstandings. Both sides have done terrible things to each other. Both can claim justification for their every savage act against the other. For every U.S. policy meant to hurt Iran, Americans can cite a prior Iranian action meant to hurt the United States. And for every Iranian action deliberately intended to hurt America, Iranians can cite a prior U.S. policy meant to hurt Iran.

Yet the one vital difference is this: Of the seven American presidents to serve since the Iranian revolution, at least four and arguably five wanted an end to the hostilities with Iran and made real efforts to bring that about. In most cases, they paid a considerable political price to do so. And while there certainly have been many Iranians, many Iranian officials, and at least three Iranian presidents who seemed to want the same, the Iranian regime as a whole and its two supreme leaders—Iran’s equivalent to the American president—have never shown the least interest. Instead, they have systematically shut down every effort toward meaningful peace between the two countries.

Both Khomeini and Khamenei cherished their anti-Americanism. For both, it was never a tool toward a wider goal but a core element of their rule and their philosophies. It certainly has served certain specific aims, but even when American administrations have offered what could have been compelling incentives to embrace warmer ties and reduced tensions, they never would.

Perhaps someday, America’s cherished desire for better ties with Iran will be reciprocated by the leaders of Iran. But the history of the past 40 years seems to suggest that that will never be more than a tantalizing dream until new leaders take the helm in Tehran. Until then, the only intelligent course for the United States is to steer clear of the Iranians as best we can and treat them like enemies when we must, not because we want them to be, but because their leaders insist on it, no matter what we may do.

             

Dispatch from Iraq: The anti-ISIS fight, economic troubles, and political maelstrom

The war against Da’esh

The battle for Mosul continues to drag on, but the Iraqi army continues to win, slowly reducing the pocket held by Daesh (the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State). Advances have been incremental because of a combination of factors: Baghdad’s desire to limit casualties to its own troops, especially the elite Counterterrorism Service (CTS) who have suffered 25 percent casualties overall since the start of the Iraqi counteroffensive; a concomitant desire to spare the civilian population trapped in Mosul by the wrongheaded decision to keep them there; and the badly bifurcated and politicized chain of command that strains coordination among the Iraqi Army, police, CTS and Hashd ash-Shaabi. Nevertheless, both Iraqi and American military leaders averred that the city would be fully under Iraqi control in about a month.

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After Mosul is liberated, Iraqi forces will probably continue to push westward from the city to clear the Turkmen city of Tal Afar, a hotbed of Daesh support. They will then drive to the Syrian border to shut off the main route of infiltration from Raqqa to Mosul. With northern Iraq secured, Baghdad plans to shift its forces back to the southwest, to finish clearing the Euphrates valley, where Iraqi troops have reached Haditha, but still have a considerable stretch of Daesh-controlled towns out to al-Qa’im and the Syrian border. Once that major corridor has been recovered, the plan is for Iraqi forces to finish off the last Daesh stronghold in Iraq, at Hawija in north-central Iraq, just southwest of Kirkuk. Hawija is a difficult city, both geographically and because of its strong support for Daesh (and for al-Qa’ida before that).

Those with real understanding of Iraqi and Coalition military plans all believe that the war is likely to continue through the end of 2017, although in the form of smaller military operations and with less fanfare than the Mosul campaign. Moreover, those Daesh personnel who have been able to flee Mosul have largely melted back into the Jazira desert of northwest Iraq, where Daesh first began to infiltrate Iraq in early 2013. There is a widespread belief that many Daesh fighters—the majority of whom are Iraqis and Syrians—hope to continue a guerrilla war even after their conventional armies have been destroyed and their major territorial holdings liberated. Of course, their ability to do so will depend overwhelmingly on the level of tacit support they receive from Iraq’s Sunni community, which in turn is likely to be determined by the course of political and economic developments in Iraq.

It is for that reason that it remains disconcerting that neither Iraq nor the U.S.-led Coalition appear to have developed concrete plans for the political reintegration or economic redevelopment of Mosul and Ninevah province. Iraqi officials simply could not answer questions regarding what they intended to do in Mosul after liberation, only that past and present political arrangements were inadequate and “something different” would have to be created. Likewise, on the economic front, the Iraqis seemed hopeful that the United Nations Development Program and the Coalition would provide much (if not all) of the know-how and labor for resettling displaced persons, restarting basic services, and repairing damage. The Iraqis appear to regard the liberation of Ramadi and Fallujah as blueprints for action in Mosul, but most non-Iraqi government sources see both of those operations as having left much to be desired, and note that Mosul is a far bigger challenge than either Ramadi or Fallujah.

Iraq is an inefficient society and after nearly 30 years of war, sanctions, and devastation, Iraqis have learned to tolerate a high degree of deprivation. Consequently, the inevitable problems that are likely to flow from this lack of planning and preparation at Mosul may have only a limited impact on the state of Iraqi politics, at least for some time. On the other hand, Iraq remains a fragile state that is still suffering from nearly a dozen years of on-and-off civil war. As I (and others) have been warning for nearly three years, the absence of well-structured and resourced plans for the political, economic, and social reconstruction of Mosul could lead to unrest, and potentially even help push Iraq back into civil strife. The fact that so many Iraqis are tired of fighting, that the Iraqi Sunni community appears to have decided that siding with Daesh in 2014 was a mistake (as was embracing al-Qa’ida in 2005), and the naturally high Iraqi threshold for deprivation many create a grace period of months or perhaps even a year or two for the government to get its act together. However, it is impossible to know for sure.

A Respite for the Iraqi Economy?

To watch it in action, the Iraqi economy would seem to be slowly gaining speed. Life in the city of Baghdad has improved noticeably since I was last there in March 2016. The city felt vibrant. There are fewer checkpoints and those we saw appeared to be manned by members of the Iraqi security services, not the Hashd ash-Shaabi militias as in the past. Billboards thanking Iran for saving Iraq from Daesh had been removed. The stores appeared to be doing reasonably good business throughout central Baghdad. Goods are flowing in. There are people in the streets and lots of cars on the road. While traffic is bad, it is not crippling. What’s more, Iraqis treat it as an inevitable annoyance and rarely let their anger get out of hand. All of this reflects a sense among Iraqis that things are economically alright. No one grumbled about the availability of anything, not even electricity yet. Of course, spring is the best season in Iraq because the days are long and the weather is mild so that people don’t need either their lights or their air conditioners for most of the day.

Moreover, the Iraqi oil sector is moving along at a good clip. Production reached 4.6 million barrels per day (mbd) last month, although exports were kept to just 4 mbd to remain within the current OPEC quota. By most accounts, the Iraqis plan to keep expanding production to 5 mbd by the end of the year, although they insist they will continue to respect the current OPEC deal, which seems likely to be extended through the end of 2017. The Iraqis claim that they will simply store the extra oil they pump beyond domestic consumption needs, which amounts to about 0.5 mbd. However, that may prove difficult since much of Iraq’s new oil storage capcity is not yet connected to its pipeline network.

Similarly, Iraq’s financial sector is stable for the moment, but remains problematic and could worsen in the future. The recent financial infusions from the World Bank, IMF, Coalition, and U.S. loan guarantees have collectively taken the pressure off the Iraqi budget. This has been hugely important. Most civil servants (who represent an excessive percentage of the work force) are getting paid, albeit at lower levels than before 2014. The government is also able to pay key costs for many of its contracts, which has similarly restored salaries for many in the private sector who live off government contracts.

But the loans will prop up Iraq’s finances for only a few years. Iraq can’t keep borrowing at this rate, and the U.S., IMF, and World Bank won’t let it. They are monitoring Iraqi debt carefully to ensure that Iraq doesn’t push itself into crisis by overborrowing. Moreover, as a result of corrupt currency exchange policies, Iraq is suffering from a crisis of liquidity. There simply isn’t enough money in circulation and the Iraqi central bank is part of the problem, not the solution. As a result, many Iraqis simply do not have money to purchase anything beyond basic needs, and there is virtually no domestic investment because it is far more profitable for the banks to trade currency than to loan money to entrepreneurs. In addition, because of the widespread corruption in the bureaucracy, successful entrepreneurs are systematically fleeced by civil servants unless they have a powerful political figure who can protect them—although in that case, the protector typically robs them to an only slightly lesser degree. As an additional symptom of this problem, we did hear quite a bit of grumbling about high prices, the lack of service, and corruption. It hard to know which is more frustrating: that goods and services are not available, or that they are but they are unaffordable.

In short, Iraq’s economic situation is tolerable at present, but it will be hard to sustain beyond the next 2-3 years. Iraq is going to have to make some more dramatic moves to address the structural problems in its economy or else (absent a major increase in oil prices) it may find itself right back in a financial mess.

To their credit, some within the Iraqi government are thinking in smart and creative ways about how to make such moves. Prime Minister Abadi has made this a priority, and the economic reform planning team in his office is looking at further subsidy cuts, pro-growth policies, and anti-corruption measures including the introduction of extensive “e-government” practices that would also improve efficiency. The Ministry of Planning is pushing forward a scheme to build several major roads, including a new super highway from Baghdad to Amman, Jordan that would include tributary roads to connect the many towns of Anbar province, and financing for business development to turn the entire network into a major economic pathway, something like an Iraqi “Route 66.” Other Iraqi technocrats are pushing for a major overhaul and upgrade of the banking system, to shut down the corrupt currency exchange practices, create an electronic banking system, and push cash back into the economy to revive both consumption and investment. However, all of these plans remain in their infancy and all will be major lifts for Iraq’s weak bureaucracy and paralyzed political system. Given Baghdad’s record over the past 14 years, no one should bet heavily that any of them will come to fruition without major assistance from the international community.

Meanwhile, southern Iraq is reportedly facing growing problems. As I have noted in the past, the absence of Iraqi security forces has left the south largely in the hands of local, extra-governmental armed groups. Tribal militias, organized crime rings, and branches of the Hashd ash-Shaabi militias, especially Iranian-backed groups such as Asaib ahl al-Haq, Badr, Abu Khataib Hizballah, and Muqtada as-Sadr’s Sarayat as-Salaam, have all taken over large chunks of southern Iraq. They have established protection rackets there that are further siphoning money out of the hands of consumers and business owners, scaring off investment, and causing damage from low-level fighting. The ports of Basra and Umm-Qasr are said to be badly corrupted by these militias. One senior Iraqi security official told us flat out that, “the south is no longer under the government’s control.”

So far, the pervasive militia control has not affected oil production in the south because the international oil companies continue to pay off all of the militias, but they are said to be worried that if the situation continues to deteriorate, their personnel and infrastructure may be targeted by the militias either for greater blackmail or as a result of turf battles among them. There is a widespread hope that after Mosul is liberated, Baghdad will begin shifting some Iraqi army and police formations south to restore order before things get any further out of hand.

The Political Maelstrom

As always in Iraq, it all comes down to the politics. Despite the military progress and the new buoyancy in the Iraqi economy, the political system remains largely deadlocked. At the moment, that is mostly because all of Iraq’s leaders are fixated on the upcoming elections. Iraq will hold national elections in the spring of 2018, probably in April. Although provincial elections are scheduled for late this year, they are likely to be postponed until either February or April of 2018, and in the latter case would simply be tacked onto the national elections, in part to save money.

Prime Minister Abadi remains the candidate to beat. Abadi is enjoying a significant degree of popularity because of Iraq’s military successes and its (relative) economic improvement. In addition, Abadi is largely seen as nationalistic and non-sectarian. However, his re-election is far from guaranteed. Many of his rivals, and even some of his supporters, complain about his inability to get the political process to do anything or to curb the rampant corruption. (Although both they and I would note that those are Herculean—if not Sisyphean—tasks). Perhaps of greater importance, because his current popularity is partly based on the success of the military campaign and the current economic buoyancy, it could prove ephemeral. We simply do not know if a year from now, Iraqis will still be looking to reward the prime minister who led the war on Daesh or if the economy has once again cratered. In those circumstances, Abadi may have to start delivering on at least some of his plans to fight corruption and reform the Iraqi economy and political system to pull out an electoral win.

Because of the sense that the frontrunner is vulnerable, intra-Shi’a rivalries continue to intensify. Maliki himself is maneuvering energetically behind the scenes. He has given up on removing Abadi in a vote of no-confidence because of the unequivocal support of the United States for Abadi, and is instead focused on unseating him in the election. Many believe that Maliki truly has decided that he cannot be prime minister again and will simply try to play kingmaker, a notion bolstered by the fact that he has been able to remain powerful (and alive!) even out of office over the past three years, something he had doubted. Hadi al-Ameri, the de facto leader of the Hashd ash-Shaabi and a key ally of Iran, also looms large as a potential candidate. Either before or after the election, some combination of Abadi, Maliki, and Ameri, the three strongest Shi’a candidates, may opt to band together and agree to make one of them prime minister to avoid fracturing the Shi’a electorate. Right now, much of the game appears to be whether all or some combination of two of them will be able to forge such an alliance.

Meanwhile, other political parties are jockeying on the sidelines, looking to ally with one or another of the main Shi’a parties, or to band together themselves if the three major blocs remain divided and so create an opportunity for other groupings. For instance, Ammar al-Hakim and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) are trying to position themselves as a moderate compromise among one or more of these factions, and perhaps a refuge for Shi’as sick of all the infighting among them. Ammar is the nominal head of the Iraqi National Alliance, the umbrella party of all of Iraq’s Shi’a groups, and he has used this to try to advance an agenda for national reconciliation that both Sunnis and Shi’a voters disaffected by the major blocs and eager to put the civil war behind them might flock to. In contrast, former prime minister Ayad Allawi is threatening to sit out the elections altogether because of various ongoing debates about the fairness of the impending election. In particular, Allawi (among others) is concerned that key Shi’a politicians have packed Iraq’s Independent High Election Commission and this will result in a tainted election. Of course, Abadi’s moderation, non-sectarian approach, and military victories have stolen much of Allawi’s natural constituency from him. Thus, Allawi may calculate that it is better to sit out the election on grounds of principle and look for an opportunity to return later on if Abadi fails to deliver in a second term.

Yet the elections are a long way off, especially in Iraqi political terms. A potential crisis therefore revolves around what, if anything, can get done this year before the elections. With all of Iraq’s major political figures focused on the election and all of them determined to prevent their rivals from winning a major victory during that time, there is a terrible potential for inactivity over the next 12 months. The danger, of course, is that Iraq’s problems are unlikely to remain static during this time. Down the road, Iraqis may rue having simply frittered away this critical period when Daesh was on the ropes, people were tired of fighting, and the economy was propped up by external assistance.

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Along these lines, the issue of the Hashd ash-Shaabi militias continues to hang like a sword of Damocles over everything. It was striking how often the issue of the Hashd ash-Shaabi came up in all of our conversations, but typically with vague assertions that “something” had to be done to sort out the problem, mostly indicating an unwillingness on the part of the speaker to voice his preferred solution because of the political sensitivity of the issue. Under the new Militia Law, the Hashd have been brought formally under government control. What’s more, they have largely obeyed Prime Minister Abadi’s commands since then. As Hadi al-Ameri himself noted to us, Hashd units have been sitting at the Tal Afar airport for months, waiting for the order to move into the city and clear out Daesh, but they have not done so because Abadi has not yet given the order. However, the new law cuts both ways, legalizing the existence of the Hashd in ways that its leaders hope to exploit to turn it into a co-equal arm of the Iraqi Security Forces, like the Revolutionary Guard in Iran. Most other members of the government want to see the Hashd disbanded and its personnel incorporated into the Army and Police, or else put to work on infrastructure repair projects. And inevitably, there are those calculating whether to oppose or support the Hashd depending on how it would help their political fortunes. And as always, Iran looms in the background, likely hoping to preserve the Hashd as a Hizballah-like force that not only will help execute their will inside Iraq, but project power beyond it.

As I suggested above, it is almost certainly going to require considerable prodding and support from external actors, particularly Washington, to help Baghdad overcome all of the political incentives for inaction during the period before the elections. The United States remains the only external power with the potential willingness and ability to push and help Iraq to take the steps that it otherwise won’t. While Iran remains a very influential actor in Iraq—arguably still the most influential albeit far less than at its peak in late 2014—it has shown no inclination to help Iraq move in constructive directions. What’s more, U.S. influence has grown very significantly as a result of America’s invaluable military and economic assistance over the past two years. Thus, the potential is there for Washington to lend such support. The only question is whether the Trump administration is willing to do so, a question that remains unanswered at this point in time.

             

On Iraqi Prime Minister al-Abadi’s visit

Kenneth Pollack, senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy, evaluates the significance of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s visit with President Trump, and explains what it may indicate for the fight against ISIS and President Trump’s policy on Iraq in the future.

Related Content:

Racing to the finish line, ignoring the cliff: The challenges after Mosul

Iraq Situation Report, Part I: The military campaign against ISIS

Between Iraq and a hard place: How the battle in Mosul will affect ISIS control in the region

Subscribe to Brookings podcasts here or on iTunes, send feedback email to bcp@brookings.edu, and follow us and tweet us at @policypodcasts on Twitter.

5 on 45 is part of the Brookings Podcast Network.

             

20170302 VOA Pollack

             

20170131 NYT Pollack

             

Want to “take the oil”? Crunch the numbers first

I had assumed that Mr. Trump’s assertion on the campaign trail that the United States should have taken and kept Iraq’s oil was nothing but electioneering. The fact that he has repeated it as president suggests that he may actually believe it’s a good idea.
Author




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Kenneth M. Pollack

Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center for Middle East Policy

Just for the sake of argument, let’s set aside the fact that doing so would be illegal, immoral, and strategically disastrous. There’s actually a simpler reason to forget this idea: it would be a terrible financial move.

Until science fiction movies become reality, the United States has no ability to somehow “take” all of Iraq’s oil (143 billion barrels, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency) and move it to the United States in one fell swoop. We can’t suck it up and fly it back to New Jersey. So in reality, “taking” Iraqi oil means occupying Iraq, pumping its oil the way that the Iraqis have, selling it on the international market, and keeping the revenues for ourselves.

There’s actually a simpler reason to forget this idea: it would be a terrible financial move.

To repeat: pumping Iraq’s oil for ourselves means militarily occupying Iraq. Most of Iraq’s oil is located in southern and northern Iraq so we would not have to occupy the entire country (which would require a commitment of about 500,000 troops). Nevertheless, just occupying the oil-producing regions of Kurdistan and southern Iraq (effectively the provinces of Diyala, Wasit, Maysan, Muthanna, Basra, and probably Salah ad-Din) would require an occupation force of roughly 150,000 to 200,000 troops. In other words, it would require the occupation of Iraq at levels roughly equivalent to the occupation forces the U.S. employed from 2003 to 2008.

That’s convenient because we also have a rough sense of what that occupation cost us. In direct costs, the eight years of U.S. occupation from 2003 to 2011 cost the United States $815 billion, or roughly $100 billion per year. However, indirect costs (like interest on the debt we incurred to pay for the war and future outlays for wounded soldiers and survivors of those killed in action) will add quite a bit more. No one knows for sure, because it depends on lots of things that will happen in the future, but estimates by various economists indicate that the indirect costs will bring the total cost of those eight years of occupation to anywhere from $1.7 to $3 trillion dollars—or $212 to $375 billion dollars per year of the occupation.

So that’s what we are looking at in terms of cost: anywhere from $100 to $375 billion per year, but around $212 billion is probably the right number.

Now we have to turn to the benefits side of the equation. What would we get from that occupation? Well, Iraq has been pumping oil as fast as it can, with the aid of Western oil giants like Shell, Exxon, and BP. They have consistently exceeded expectations of how much they can grow production each year, and are now producing 4.8 million barrels per day—far more than they did under Saddam. So it seems unlikely that the United States could have done much better if we had seized the oilfields and pumped the oil ourselves—or if we were to do so in the near future.

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What has that oil netted Iraq? Well, according to the EIA, Iraq made $57.2 billion in revenue from its oil exports in 2015 and $89.2 billion from its oil exports in 2014. (Figures for 2016 are not yet available).

Now, Iraq does not export every barrel it pumps—its own people need to consume some. If the United States were utterly ruthless (and given the assumptions of this policy, it sounds like that is the plan) we could deprive the Iraqis of all domestic consumption and sell every last barrel. Even if we did that, however, since Iraq only consumes about 10 to 14 percent of the oil it produces, it doesn’t improve the numbers much. For instance, adding back domestic production to the 2014 and 2015 numbers only boosts oil revenue to about $65 billion for 2015 and about $102 billion for 2014.

Some might argue that the 2003 to 2011 occupation of Iraq was unnecessarily expensive; that costs could have been much lower if it had not been so horribly mismanaged from 2003 to 2006. I would certainly agree with that, but I still don’t believe that this argument should then be used to discount the likely cost of a new occupation of Iraq. The last time around, most Iraqis marveled at our incompetence and were horrified by the miseries we inflicted on them, but they were generally glad to be rid of Saddam and believed that we (probably) had their best intentions at heart. Under President Trump’s new plan, we would be going into Iraq to occupy much of the country to steal their oil—their patrimony. I think it highly likely that under such circumstances, Iraqi resistance to American occupation would make the 2003-2006 insurgency pale by comparison and so, if anything, costs could be even higher.

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So that is the bottom line. Trying to take Iraq’s oil by occupying the country and pumping the oil makes no financial sense whatsoever.

In an absolute best-case scenario, where the costs of occupation are minimal and the revenues produced from Iraqi oil exports are maximized, we might break even. In any other, more realistic scenario, the United States loses money. A lot of money. In fact, in the most likely scenarios, we get positively fleeced, potentially losing over $300 billion per year over the long term. And the longer we stay and the more of Iraq’s oil we forcibly export for ourselves, the more ruinously expensive it gets.

So can we drop this nonsense and talk about a more realistic Iraq policy? My suggestion emphasizes the need for Washington to make a major effort to help Iraq politically and stop focusing so myopically on ISIS alone. You can read it in full here, along with other big ideas that my Brookings colleagues have for America’s new phase.
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