The long-term effects of the rise of ISIL are unpredictable, but one outcome is already clear: it has given a boost to Iranian influence in Iraq such that Tehran has now become the dominant power.
It is no secret that the legacy of George W Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 has been to change the balance of forces in the region in favour of Iran. This was not America’s stated goal, just an example of the dangers of the ill-considered use of force.
For years, Iran has chosen to exercise its influence below the radar. Now it is effectively in command of the fight against the ISIL jihadists and its role is out in the open.
This situation has its roots in Iran’s reaction to the US invasion. As the US army arrived on Iran’s border, Iranian leaders picked up hints that regime change in Tehran was next on Washington’s agenda. Not surprisingly, the clerical leadership directed its efforts, through well trained Iraqi exile forces such as the Badr Brigade, to making Iraq so weak that it could never again invade or be used as a launch pad for US intervention.
As Iranian agents provided factions fighting the US military with deadly IED armour-piercing technology, they found to their delight that the Americans shared one goal with them: that a system of one man, one vote should give power to the Shia majority. In effect this has meant that former exile politicians sympathetic to Iran have taken power with the support of the Americans, to the detriment of secular forces.
The Iranian strategy of keeping Iraq weak and dependent has now reached a logical conclusion. With the Americans gone, the broken Iraqi state has fallen into the lap of Iran. It would be too conspiratorial to see this as a long-term strategy dreamed up in Tehran. At this stage it looks like a dangerous case of overstretch, leaving Iran with responsibility for a failing state.
Iran seems to have ignored the fact that the sectarian policies of the former prime minister, Nouri Al Maliki, and his repression of leading Sunni politicians, would provoke a backlash in the west of the country. When this sense of Sunni victimhood was channelled by the jihadists of ISIL, it proved far more potent than anyone forecast.
Since the ISIL rampage, Iran has taken on the effective command of the Iraqi security forces and helped to mobilise the Shia militias. The line between the army and the militias has become blurred almost to extinction. This is taking place in defiance of the views of Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, Iraq’s leading Shia cleric, who has consistently spoken up for a secular Iraqi state for all its citizens.
The danger is that the Iranians are drawing too much on their own experience. They used religion to mobilise the basij, a youth militia, to fight Saddam Hussein in the 1980s and more recently to stamp out political opposition at home.
In Iran, a country where the overwhelming majority of the population are Shia, religion and the state have gone together since the 16th century. In Iraq, with a significant disaffected Sunni majority, this is a recipe for communal strife. Reports from Human Rights Watch in northern Iraq show that the militias that drive out ISIL fighters from northern Iraq are destroying the houses of the Sunnis to stop them returning. Sectarian cleansing is on the rise.
Some Iraqi officials have blamed the Americans for leaving the door open to an Iranian takeover. The Americans were slow to send their air force to attack ISIL, they say, leaving Iraq no choice but to rely on Iran. This is not fair. The Americans had spent billions training and supplying the new Iraqi army. They could not be expected to jump to serve as the air force of Shia sectarians.
The phrase on the lips of Iranian officials now is “Iraq’s security is Iran’s security”. No doubt this is meant to be reassuring – a contrast to the unreliable Americans. But the logical conclusion is that Iraq is being set up as an extended security perimeter.
Iran and the US are now on the same side against ISIL, coordinating closely enough not to kill each other by mistake, but keeping a distance. While Americans soldiers operate from the Kurdish Regional Government in the north, Iranians and their local lieutenants manage the Iraqi security forces from Baghdad. One of these is the new interior minister, Mohammed Ghabban, a Shia politician with the Badr Organisation, who answers to Hadi Al Amiri, head of the party and its military wing.
Does this mean that Iran and America will find common cause after more than 35 years of enmity? It seems unlikely. With 10 days to go before the deadline for agreement on a deal to restrict Iran’s nuclear programme, Iran has good reasons to make some concessions that would lead to the lifting of crippling sanctions. A comprehensive nuclear agreement that might be approved by the US Congress looks out of the question, however.
But there is a more serious issue. Iran has a particular sense of its own place in the region, and the regime cannot afford to engage with the US as a junior partner. The Revolutionary Guards are not seeking to work with America but to drive it out of the region.
The forecast for Iraq does not look good. The Shia know that the country’s richest oil assets are in the south – their territory – while the wells in the north are either old or controlled by the Kurds. A shrunken, rump Shia-led state, open to those Sunnis and other minorities who want to live among them, is now a real possibility.
If that happens, the population of the west of Iraq may have to fend for themselves until ISIL is destroyed. After that they may find themselves reduced to the role of supplicants to the Shia state.
Alan Philps is a commentator on global affairs
Twitter: @aphilps
