Where does Iraq fall in the new US administration’s policy?

The international community is still awaiting the perceptions and visions of the US president-elect’s administration regarding the crises and files that have greatly complicated the term of the outgoing President Donald Trump.

Everyone is waiting because Trump put them on a hot plate and reheated it when he failed to win a second term in the presidential elections, threatening to attack this or that party as if he wanted revenge on his opponent not in the ballot box where he failed.

There is no certainty in the mechanism of action of the US president-elect’s administration. What are the priorities in its foreign policy? Is Iraq one of these priorities or not?

Iraq was one of the important files absent from the US presidential election race, unlike the previous elections in which it had been present since 2003, as it was an important issue in America, reflected in the heavy presence of US diplomats in the embassy in Baghdad, which is the largest US embassy around the globe. We may note that there are more sensitive issues for the new American administration to deal with in the Middle East

Some are more sensitive issues than the Iraq file, such as the Iranian nuclear agreement and the Israeli file, with its new determinants and developments. However, the truth is that the Iraqi file is by no means far from the rest of the files because the repercussions of these files are reflected in one way or another on its political, economic and security situation and developments. We remember that when President Trump decided to withdraw from the Middle East under the slogan “America first”, he opened a channel for Israel to have the upper hand in dealing with the Middle Eastern files on Israeli terms, and Iraq is not exempt from this policy. However, the complexity of the political, security and economic situation in Iraq may have spared it direct Israeli action.

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American sources talk about a new approach, as the US president-elect’s administration is trying to restructure American policy in Iraq by preferring political solutions to military solutions and dealing with the Iraqi case partly independent of the Iranian case.

It is difficult to imagine excluding Iraq from US policies in light of geopolitical and geostrategic factors and handing this responsibility over to other parties, whether regional or foreign. Iraq may have gone through special circumstances during President Trump’s presidency, but the leaked information from Washington indicates that the Biden administration did not want to continue with the same policy that the Trump administration pursued, both in Iraq and the entire region.

US President-elect Joe Biden visited Iraq 24 times between 2010 to 2012 and met with most of the country’s leaders and officials. Therefore, he has a clear vision of the situation and developments in the Gulf state. It is also worth noting that in 2006 he proposed a project to divide Iraq into three regions, in addition to the district of the capital, Baghdad.

A European diplomat spoke about the consequences of the American political action during President-elect Joe Biden’s presidency regarding Iraq, based on the positions of the US president-elect’s team, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan.

The European diplomat believes that both Blinken and Sullivan are well aware that the dilemma of security and terrorism is still gnawing at the Iraqi body, and it is necessary to work to close this file and strengthen the ability of the Iraqi government to extend its influence and control over all Iraqi regions.

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This diplomat, who served in Washington and who is interested in American policy in the region, believes that the elected US administration seeks to separate the Iranian and Iraqi files, and therefore does not want to link the Iraqi file with developments in the Iranian file. They believe that resolving the Iranian file will contribute greatly to enhancing security and stability not only in Iraq, but also in a number of regions in the Middle East, and this in turn will lead to the reformulation of the Iraqi forces, including the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), which is now under the leadership of the Iraqi government by a decision of the House of Representatives. The European diplomat believes that Biden’s victory may cause a division within Iraqi society due to some Iraqi circles fearing the consequences of the improvement of Iranian-American relations and its reflection on developments in Iraq in a way that does not serve the interests of these circles.

The European diplomat concluded by saying that the Biden administration would seek to formulate a new US approach in Iraq based on the perceptions that Biden has held since he was in former President Barack Obama’s administration, taking into account the American political, economic and military priorities. This is without excluding the Iraqi political reality that is different from during Obama’s time.

This article first appeared in Arabic in Al-Sabaah on 16 December 2020

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.