September 22, 1980: Iraq attacks Iran after a long history of border conflicts, motivated by fears that the Iranian Revolution of 1979 (in which the shah was put aside and the radical islamic regime of ayatollah Khomeini took over) would inspire de Shiite majority in Iraq to try the same. Iraqi troups managed, thanks to the revolutionary chaos in Iran, to make some progress into Iranian territory, but had lost almost all of it by June 1982. In the next six years it would be mostly Iran on the offensive.
August 20, 1988: when the cease fire finally came it took several weeks for all Iranian troops to withdraw from Iraqi territory and resettle behind the borders of 1975.
September 5, 2014: ayatollah Khamenei gives his blessing to cooperation with the United States to fight IS(IS) in the north of Iraq. Iranian supreme commander of the Quds, Qasem Soleimani, gets authorization to coordinate military operations with the US, Iraqi and Kurdish troops. Reason ? Iran says to see Sunni IS as a serious threat. But maybe more is going on.
Iran has been troubled with foreign “intervention”, especially from the US, in Iraq. And Iran has had boots on the ground for months in Iraq. No hypocrisy there. The US know that: last month US air strikes on IS troops around Amerli supported an attacking coalition of Iran backed Shia militias and Kurdish troops (who worked with the Iranian troops back in the Iraq-Iran War already). Even the defense of Baghdad against an attack by IS troops was coordinated by Quds supreme commander Soleimani at the head of Iraqi Shia militias.
And there’s more: Iran and the US maybe working together on air strikes for months. Indeed: the SU-25 jets Putin allegedly sent to Iraq at the beginning of July to help the US bomb IS troops according to some experts were of … Iranian origin.
So, if Iran has boots on the ground in Iraq since that long, why would ayatollah Khamenei make the cooperation with the United States official now ? Well, we’re thinking … nuclear weapons.
The sanctions of, amongst others, the United States against Iran because this last country has the ambition to have its own nuclear program – with as a “pleasant” byproduct atomic bombs – do still pertain. Iran does really dislike that, but it has the possibility to intervene in Iraq. It is thus not really strange that Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian minister of Foreign Affairs, said in August that Iran was willing to adhere to the international coalition against IS when … those sanctions would be lifted.
We don’t expect to hear that on the record before November – international talks on the subject should be finished by then -, but we do believe that Iran does have permission to continue its nuclear program already.
A nice reward knowing that Iran, which – as said – does have boots on the ground in Iran and isn’t secretive about that, thanks to the cooperation with the US could gain practical control over its neighbor …
Björn Roose
August 20, 1988: when the cease fire finally came it took several weeks for all Iranian troops to withdraw from Iraqi territory and resettle behind the borders of 1975.
September 5, 2014: ayatollah Khamenei gives his blessing to cooperation with the United States to fight IS(IS) in the north of Iraq. Iranian supreme commander of the Quds, Qasem Soleimani, gets authorization to coordinate military operations with the US, Iraqi and Kurdish troops. Reason ? Iran says to see Sunni IS as a serious threat. But maybe more is going on.
Iran has been troubled with foreign “intervention”, especially from the US, in Iraq. And Iran has had boots on the ground for months in Iraq. No hypocrisy there. The US know that: last month US air strikes on IS troops around Amerli supported an attacking coalition of Iran backed Shia militias and Kurdish troops (who worked with the Iranian troops back in the Iraq-Iran War already). Even the defense of Baghdad against an attack by IS troops was coordinated by Quds supreme commander Soleimani at the head of Iraqi Shia militias.
And there’s more: Iran and the US maybe working together on air strikes for months. Indeed: the SU-25 jets Putin allegedly sent to Iraq at the beginning of July to help the US bomb IS troops according to some experts were of … Iranian origin.
So, if Iran has boots on the ground in Iraq since that long, why would ayatollah Khamenei make the cooperation with the United States official now ? Well, we’re thinking … nuclear weapons.
The sanctions of, amongst others, the United States against Iran because this last country has the ambition to have its own nuclear program – with as a “pleasant” byproduct atomic bombs – do still pertain. Iran does really dislike that, but it has the possibility to intervene in Iraq. It is thus not really strange that Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian minister of Foreign Affairs, said in August that Iran was willing to adhere to the international coalition against IS when … those sanctions would be lifted.
We don’t expect to hear that on the record before November – international talks on the subject should be finished by then -, but we do believe that Iran does have permission to continue its nuclear program already.
A nice reward knowing that Iran, which – as said – does have boots on the ground in Iran and isn’t secretive about that, thanks to the cooperation with the US could gain practical control over its neighbor …
Björn Roose
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