Iraqis suspect Turkey of eyeing the establishment of permanent military bases on their soil.

​Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar began an official visit to Iraq on Monday that observers considered an extension of Turkey’s efforts to impose its security and military equation on Iraq.

This equation, which Ankara has already started implementing on the ground, is based on making Iraqi territories an advanced line of defence for Turkish security and a battleground for Turkey’s war against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants.

Ankara is counting on imposing its equation by force through the intensification of its military operations inside Iraq and the expansion of these operations beyond the border areas inside Iraq.

Iraq announced two deals with countries that Iran hopes can be gradually moved further into its sphere of influence. One of the two, Lebanon, is already seen by Tehran as a key player in the Shia crescent of power that it has been meticulously developing for years - as a counterpoint to the U.S.’s own sphere of influence centred on Saudi Arabia - that stretches from Syria and Lebanon through Iraq and Iran and then south into Yemen.

According to comments last week from Iraq’s new Oil Minister, Ihsan Abdul Jabbar, following a meeting in Baghdad with his Lebanon counterpart, Raymond Ghajar, Iraq will begin exporting fuel to Lebanon this month.

​The geopolitical imperative underpinning this announcement cannot be overstated, given that Iraq itself suffered from extreme power shortages over the summer and remains subject to intermittent power failures in various regions.

So poor is Iraq’s own ability to generate sufficient power for its needs – based on any sort of fuel – that it is locked in to a rolling electricity and gas import deal with Iran that has been the source of extreme friction between it and the U.S. for years. Without any apparent hint of irony, Iraq’s Jabbar stated at the time of announcing the new arrangement with Lebanon last week: “The exported fuel [is] expected to cover the requirements of the Lebanese power stations to generate electricity.”

Iranian Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian has highlighted Tehran and Baghdad’s determination to raise the value of annual trade exchanges to $20 billion, pointing to the major role that the private sectors and a joint investment fund could play in working towards that goal.

Delivering a speech to Iran-Iraq Economic Conference on Tuesday, Ardakanian said the main and common target of the two neighbors at the level of political leaders is to increase the value of annual bilateral trade exchanges to $20 billion.

The energy minister explained that achievement of the trade target requires plans to allow the private sector to get involved in the economic activities freely, remove the trade obstacles, set up a joint investment fund, and settle the problems arising in the transportation industry, standard and customs issues, or the preferential trade arrangements.
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The Iranian Energy Ministry has been tasked three months ago with handling the affairs of Iran-Iraq Economic Cooperation Joint Commission, he noted, saying the first successful plan was to convene the commission after six years.

Iraq denounced on Saturday as “unacceptable” a U.S. decision to blacklist the leader of a state umbrella group for mainly Iran-backed Shi’ite militia.

Washington imposed sanctions on Friday on Faleh al-Fayyad, head of Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF).
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The U.S. Treasury accused him of leading militia that killed hundreds of protesters with live ammunition during a crackdown on anti-government demonstrations in 2019. It said he had coordinated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

​“We confirm that the decision was an unacceptable surprise,” the Iraqi Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding that “it will carefully follow up with the current and the new administration in Washington on all decisions issued by the U.S. Treasury Department against Iraqis.”

​Iraq’s judiciary says it has issued an arrest warrant for outgoing President Donald Trump in connection with the killing of an Iranian general and a powerful Iraqi militia leader last year.

​An arrest warrant was issued Thursday for outgoing President Donald Trump in connection with the killing of an Iranian general and a powerful Iraqi militia leader last year, Iraq's judiciary said.

The warrant was issued by a judge in Baghdad s investigative court tasked with probing the Washington-directed drone strike that killed Gen. Qassim Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the court's media office said. They were killed outside the capital’s airport last January.

Al-Muhandis was the deputy leader of the state-sanctioned Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella group composed of an array of militias, including Iran-backed groups, formed to fight the Islamic State group.

Soleimani headed the expeditionary Quds force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iraq buys gas and electricity from Iran to supply about a third of its power sector

​The US has granted Iraq a three-month extension to a sanctions waiver allowing it to import Iranian gas, an Iraqi official told AFP Monday.

The move represents a welcome reprieve for a country that relies heavily on its neighbour for energy supplies.

Iraq buys gas and electricity from Iran to supply about a third of its power sector, worn down by years of conflict and poor maintenance and unable to meet the needs of the country's 40 million population.

What does it look like when you “liberate” a country that hasn’t asked for it, when you unleash a violent chain of events creating the conditions for an even worse tyranny than before?

Those who witnessed Iraq in the wake of the American invasion in 2003, the failures of reconstruction, and the rise and fall of ISIS, say one need look no further than that country today to get your answer.

The Washington Post last week reported that there are still a million internally displaced Iraqis who fled the 2014 takeover of ISIS and the ensuing war to overthrow it — with many living in soon-to-be-shuttered government-run camps. Meanwhile, COVID has sent an already fragile economy spiraling toward collapse, with salaries in the major cities left unpaid, reconstruction projects stalled or completely aborted. A new central government is still trying to find its legs, more than a year after deadly street protests washed over the country. According to experts who spoke with RS, direct attention from the Western powers that sent this country on its present course is scattershot, with aid easily corrupted by a burgeoning kleptocracy across the provincial governments and Baghdad.
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“The trauma on Iraq has been despicable,” said Abbas Kadhim, who spent his own youth in an Iraqi IDP camp in the 1990s before coming to the United States, where he observed the 2003 war and its aftermath from a distance. Now he is the director of the Iraq Initiative at the Atlantic Council in Washington, trying to rebuild broad diplomatic and political bridges with Baghdad. 

John M Patarini says in letter to New York Times he is ‘disgusted with the president’s actions’ after Trump pardons

​The mass shooting in Baghdad for which Donald Trump pardoned four American mercenaries was “a massacre along the lines of My Lai in Vietnam”, the lead FBI investigator in the case said, pronouncing himself “disgusted with the president’s actions”.

Nicholas Slatten was convicted of first-degree murder and Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard were convicted of voluntary and attempted manslaughter over the 2007 shooting, which happened in heavy traffic in Nisour Square.

Fourteen unarmed Iraqi civilians, among them a nine-year-old child, were killed when the mercenaries opened fire with weapons including machine guns and grenade launchers.

Oil-rich Iraq, its economy hobbled by neglect and corruption, has devalued its currency and had its imported electricity cut off for nonpayment.

​In a stall off a narrow, winding alley of Baghdad’s oldest market, Ahmed Khalaf sells the smallest luxuries: nail polish, plastic hair barrettes, colored pencils.

Even during the pandemic, by midmorning the stalls in Shorja market would normally be thronged with shoppers buying food staples and household goods. But last week the aisles were nearly empty.

“Our customers are mostly government employees, but as you can see they’re not coming,” said Mr. Khalaf, 34.

His troubles are a ground-level indicator of what economists say is the biggest financial threat to Iraq since Saddam Hussein’s time. Simply put, Iraq is running out of money to pay its bills.

“Based on an agreement which is going to be implemented in the coming days, Iraq is going to open a euro savings bank account in which the country’s debts to National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) and the Power Generation, Distribution, and Transmission Company (known as Tavanir) will be saved,” Ardakanian said on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting.

“Iraq's recent and past debts to our country will be transferred and saved in this account after being exchanged to euro,” the minister said.

This way, transferring the money or using it for purchasing basic goods and medicine will be less problematic considering the U.S. sanctions, he emphasized.
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According to the official, the savings in this account can also be used for paying Iranian contractors and companies’ dues in the mentioned country.