Recent reports that the Trump administration is in talks with Baghdad about keeping American troops in Iraq after the defeat of the Islamic State have triggered concern in Tehran. The Iranian media also have raised the alarm that the U.S. increasing military presence in Iraq and Syria is aimed at countering the influence of Iran and its regional allies in the Middle East. A lengthy analysis in Fars News Agency, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (I.R.G.C.), wrote that Washington was “imposing” its post-Islamic State presence in Iraq to secure U.S. and Israeli national security interests. “Iraq’s strategic location and its rich energy resources make it America’s lost paradise,” the article said, listing several reasons the U.S. military is returning to Iraq and is beefing up its forces in western Iraq and eastern Syria.
It argued that Washington wants to control the region’s rich oil and gas fields; to exploit tribal dynamics and lack of development in these regions to expand its influence; and to build closer ties with radical Sunni groups in the region to pressure the Syrian and Iraqi government. But the author emphasized that the chief aim of “America’s insistence on keeping a military presence in Syria and Iraq after Daesh [Islamic State] is to set up a security belt between Syria and Iraq.” Such a security belt, the article stressed, would be used to “sever geographical links between members of the axis of resistance and prevent the creation of a Shiite crescent from Tehran to the south of Lebanon by passing through Baghdad and Damascus.”
It continued: “This presence also aims to hinder the expansion of the Popular Mobilization Forces in eastern borders of Iraq and limit their access to the shared Iraqi-Syrian borders.”
It is a mistake to think that Americans have easily accepted defeat, it emphasized. “They are imposing a long-term war of attrition on regional countries” to weaken them and “divide regional countries” in a way that would guarantee Israel’s national security interests. The author concluded by saying that Iran-led resistance groups would be the biggest obstacle to America’s ambitions in the region.
Comment: The U.S. media reported earlier this month that the Trump administration has held talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi about the prospect of keeping American troops in Iraq after the ouster of the Islamic State in Mosul and other major Iraqi regions. While U.S. and Iraqi officials acknowledged that discussions were at a preliminary stage and not finalized, the news has troubled Tehran. In the past year, the U.S. military and Iran-backed militia groups have been de facto allies in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq. But now that the terrorist group is on the brink of defeat, Iran and its Iraqi proxies have already stepped up propaganda against the U.S. objectives in Iraq. Recently, several Iran-controlled Iraqi militia groups within the Popular Mobilization Forces have openly called on the Baghdad government to expel American advisors that are assisting the Iraqi security forces in Mosul.
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