Tehran’s aspirations of establishing regional hegemony in the Middle East rest atop the continued status of Iraq as a militarily weak and politically malleable client state. Now, amid staggering levels of anti-Iran demonstrations across the country, the Iraqi people have a genuine shot at ejecting Tehran’s invasive political influence and creating a truly sovereign Iraqi state.

Yet as antipathy toward Iran continues to build across Iraq, the Islamic Republic isn’t going to cede its stranglehold over the country easily.
​
Forging new links in Shia Crescent

​The “Shia Crescent” concept is vital to understanding the political sentiments engulfing Iraq. In late 2004, King Abdullah of Jordan coined the idea of the Shia Crescent, a regional vector of militant Shia influence radiating outward from three key Shia-dominated government centers: Damascus, Tehran and Baghdad. As Iranian power grew in the region over the last decade, the Shia Crescent manifested itself and is now a reality on the ground. It remains relevant to both contemporary US foreign-policy making and broader Middle Eastern power dynamics.

Outside of Baghdad, the activities of Shia-backed organizations and state-sanctioned militia groups remain contested. Nevertheless, after the defeat of the Iraqi branch of Islamic State (ISIS) and the subsequent withdrawal of the bulk of US military forces, Iran has become increasingly audacious in its efforts to embed political and strategic influence in Iraq. Using a mixture of subterfuge and well-financed political support, Iran has cultivated considerable political influence along the initial arc of the Shia Crescent.

Shortly after Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq, the Tehran-backed Lebanese organization Hezbollah urgently met with Iraqi militia leaders, seeking to unite them in the face of a huge void left by their powerful mentor’s death, two sources with knowledge of the meetings told Reuters.

​The meetings were meant to coordinate the political efforts of Iraq’s often-fractious militias, which lost not only Soleimani but also Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a unifying Iraqi paramilitary commander, in the Jan. 3 attack at Baghdad airport, the sources said.

While offering few details, two additional sources in a pro-Iran regional alliance confirmed that Hezbollah, which is sanctioned as a terrorist group by the United States, has stepped in to help fill the void left by Soleimani in guiding the militias. All sources in this article spoke on condition of anonymity to address sensitive political activities rarely addressed in public. Officials with the governments of Iraq and Iran did not respond to requests for comment, nor did a spokesperson for the militia groups.

The discussions shed light on how Iran and its allied groups are trying to cement control in the unstable Middle East, especially in the wake of the devastating U.S. attack on a revered Iranian military leader.

The US and Iran have de facto collaborated in and over Iraq for decades. Iraqis are now protesting against both.

Choreographed sword fights, such as those traditionally performed in Gulf Arab countries, may look like clashes between deadly enemies but in fact require close coordination between the participants. Many Arabs believe the conflict between the United States and Iran in Iraq is similar. Conspiracy theorists detect a secret pact between them; more realistic observers see a standoff that benefits both sides, who therefore have a mutual interest in perpetuating it.

The United States ensures the allegiance of its protectorates in the region, and can continue to sell them billions of dollars’ worth of arms: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were the world’s second- and fourth-largest importers of arms between 2013 and 2017, and the largest and third-largest importers of US-made weaponry in 2018; Saudi Arabia had the world’s third-highest military expenditure in 2018, after the United States and China, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. In Iran, the backbone of the regime’s ideological hard-liners is the military-economic complex of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or Pasdaran (Guards); perpetuating the conflict allows them to maintain their dominance.

​Arab suspicions are not entirely unfounded, considering the history of relations between the United States, especially under Republican administrations, and the Islamic Republic since it was created in 1979. Iran greeted Ronald Reagan’s presidential inauguration in January 1981 by releasing the US embassy hostages. Journalist Seymour Hersh much later revealed that in 1980 Reagan campaign officials had negotiated arms deliveries to Iran with the collusion of Israel; the deliveries were made soon after the inauguration. Then came the deliveries of 1985–86, revealed during the Iran/Contra scandal: The Reagan administration sold arms to Iran through Israel, and illegally used the profits to fund right-wing guerrillas in Nicaragua.

US forces have started to withdraw from 15 bases across Iraq according to a report by Sky News Arabia.
​
France, Germany and Australia have also submitted requests to the joint special operations command to set up the withdrawal of their own forces from the country, the chair of the Iraqi parliamentary defence committee, Badr Al-Ziyadi, is reported to have said by Bloomberg.

​“The next government is responsible for setting a timetable, whether for the exit of foreign forces or the presence of military bases in some areas, especially in the Kurdistan region,” added Al-Ziyadi. “There is no movement or sorties of the coalition forces at the moment.”

However, a correspondent for Israel’s state-owned Kan tweeted that a US official told him the reports were not accurate and that the US is “continuing our fight with the Iraqi military against [ISIS]”.

EU Ambassador to Iraq Martin Huth described events in Najaf as a “sabotage of any political progress.”

​The takeover of the building known in Baghdad as the Turkish Restaurant, a discarded edifice that ordinary people reclaimed 100 days ago, turbocharged violent confrontations beyond Baghdad’s epicentre.

The violent surge came one day after Iraqi Prime Minister-designate Mohammed Allawi was sworn into office. Since then civilians donning blue caps and carrying pistols, knives and clubs have flooded protest squares.

They are unofficially known as the Blue Hats, loyalists of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Their presence garnered much attention, with the crowd accusing them of sabotaging, assaulting and killing protesters. However, their use of violence has not soured sentiments and protesters continue to peacefully push back.

Iraq's Defense Ministry stated on Thursday that Baghdad and Moscow are studying prospects to deepen military coordination.

The statement followed a meeting in Baghdad between Iraqi army chief of staff Lt. Gen. Othman Al-Ghanimi and Iraq's Russian Ambassador Maksim Maksimov, as well as a newly arrived defense attache.

Al-Ghanimi praised Russia's role in the combarting ISIS, saying they had provided Iraq's armed forces with advanced and effective equipment and weapons "that had a major role in resolving many battles."

The two sides also reviewed prospects for “cooperation and coordination,” as they emphasized the importance of exchanging information and coordination to prevent the resurgence of ISIS, according to the statement.

Iraqis have again taken to the street, still refusing to accept the “new” prime minister. Well, there is nothing new about Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi. He is part of the old regime — the regime that was put in place after the American invasion; the dysfunctional, corrupt sectarian regime that has caused the Iraqis so much suffering. The regime put in place by the US has not given Iraqis more freedom, dignity, security or better standards of living then they had under Saddam Hussein. It has ended up — even if unintentionally — giving illiterate militiamen control over the country. Therefore, instead of being controlled by one dictator, the Iraqi people are controlled by a group of thugs.

While George W. Bush had a vision, which some would say was Utopian and some would say Machiavellian, to spread democracy in the Middle East, the result in Iraq was a sectarian oligarchy. The process started with putting in place a constitution that had no connection with the social fabric of the country. The new constitution divided people into Shiite, Sunni and Kurds. When the law looks at and treats each citizen as a Sunni, Shiite or Kurd, the citizen will perceive himself as such before he considers himself to be an Iraqi.

The corrupt government did not invest in any productive sector and instead used the government facilities as cash cows. The different sectarian leaders hired redundant people just to increase their voter base. On top of that, government contracts were awarded at inflated price tags to enrich politicians and their cronies.
​
The Iraqi situation is very similar to the one on Lebanon. However, in Iraq the culprit is very obvious: It is the US. Though one cannot only blame America for all of Iraq’s calamities, the system was put in place while they controlled the country; hence it is their responsibility. Now that the US has realized the monster it created, it is trying to destroy it by applying maximum pressure, as part of President Donald Trump’s strategy to weaken enemies. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has threatened to sanctionofficials for corruption and for attacking protesters. Washington did sanction, in December, three militia leaders who were attacking protesterswith the help of Iran.

The War in Iraq cost nearly $2 trillion, roughly $8,000 per U.S. taxpayer, representing 9 percent of the national debt.

The current cost to the federal government for conflict zone operations in Iraq is an estimated $1.922 billion, including increases to the base budget in funding from the U.S. Department of State and United States Agency for International Development (USAID), homeland security, reenlistment bonuses, healthcare costs for active-duty and war veterans and accrued interest, according to a new report from The Cost of Wars project.

Without a war tax and few war bonds, direct war spending by the Pentagon resulted in interest payments of about $444 billion, the report estimated. The author warns even if the fighting stopped today, and the Trump Administration pulled out of all ongoing fights in the "Global War on Terror," those cumulative interest payments would continue to rise. If all war spending stopped today the existing war debt would "rise ... to $6.5 trillion by 2050," according to the report's estimates.
​
Over the last 18 years of engagements in South Asia and the Middle East, the American "government has financed this war by borrowing funds rather than through alternative means such as raising taxes or issuing war bonds," writes Heidi Peltier, the author of the report. "The costs of the post-9/11 wars include not only the expenses incurred for operations, equipment, and personnel, but also the interest costs on this debt."

More than a dozen protesters were killed in Iraq last week — pushing the total to over 600 since anti-government protests began last October. The movement has already resulted in the resignation of the prime minister and shows no signs of ending. This continued political instability and division in Iraq underscores why it is crucial to withdraw American military personnel before any more lose their lives in Iraqi chaos. We’ve seen this script play out before.

It is by now well-chronicled that the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was based on shockingly bad intelligence. Bush administration officials routinely claimed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and would use them against America if we didn’t act. As error-ridden, the decision to invade was, our failure to withdraw once the mistake had been made plain began a vicious cycle that has yet to be broken.

With Saddam deposed, the Bush administration could have worked with the existing Iraqi military to maintain public order and set the conditions for the Iraqi people to form a new government. The U.S. military could then have withdrawn beginning in late 2003. Instead, some in Washington wanted to try remaking Iraq in America’s image.

​First, they disbanded the Iraqi army, eradicated the core of the government, and tried to build new structures from scratch — while picking political winners and losers, thus making enemies of the losing Sunni portion of the population. The result was hardly surprising: the formation of a Sunni-led insurgency months later.

Former Iraqi Oil Minister Issam al-Chalabi told The Arab Weekly the licences bind Iraq to unfair contracts for more than 25 years.

​Analysts said they deplored the decision by the resigning Iraqi government to adopt suspicious deals that waste the country’s oil wealth. The move, an apparent violation of the government’s interim powers, was made despite Iraq’s political crisis and the mass protests pressuring the government.

The interim government approved a new round of licences, which had first been granted nine years ago by Hussain al-Shahristani, oil minister in the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Subsequent investigations claimed the deals were corrupt and unfair to Iraq.

Oil experts said the deals were harmful to Iraqi expertise, mortgaged the country’s economy to foreign interests and incurred tremendous losses to the state treasury. They added to rampant corruption at that time, inflated government spending and killed investment and development programmes, the experts said.