Iraq’s Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi is coming to Washington next week with his hand out. Reuters is reporting that the PM will ask President Obama for billions of dollars in U.S. weapons to fight Islamic State, but wants to defer payment until later.
Wimpy couldn’t have asked more politely for his hamburger.
But is this really a good idea? What guarantee is there that there will even be an Iraqi government a year from now — or at least one that would be willing to live up to its commitments to pay the U.S. back?
But Iraq thinks they have a hole card — Iran. If they don’t get the arms from us, they say they will look to Tehran for assistance.
Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi is grappling with an insurgency by militants from Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot that emerged from the chaos in Iraq and neighboring Syria and seized much of northern and central Iraq last year.
He is also facing a cash crunch thanks to a plunge in oil prices that is ravaging Iraq’s state finances. The government is projecting a budget deficit of roughly $21 billion this year.
Visiting Washington for the first time as prime minister, Abadi hopes to convince a war-weary United States Iraq deserves more U.S. manpower and arms three years after U.S. troops withdrew from the country in December 2011, as his fledgling army confronts Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL.
“ISIS is everybody’s problem now,” said the senior Iraqi official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “You can’t run away from the problem if it comes to Canada or goes to France,” he said in reference to attacks by people influenced by Islamic State or al Qaeda in those countries.
The senior Iraqi official hinted Baghdad could turn to Tehran if it did not get the aid it wants from Washington.
“If that’s not available, we’ve already done it with the Iranians and others,” he said, saying that was not the first choice. “The PM is committed to the U.S. … What he also wants to make sure is that he has a partner that he can rely on.”
That makes two of us, Mr. Iraqi official. The Iraqi government has yet to show that they have any desire to include the Sunni Muslims in the national life of the country. There is a reason a lot of them are supporting Islamic State: Iraqi Shias are massacring them, stifling economic opportunity, shutting them out of government jobs, and not allowing them to rise through the ranks in Iraq’s security services.
I say let them go to Tehran for arms. The Iranians are already exerting tremendous influence on the government. They even control the half million Shia volunteer militias that make up the most reliable fighters in the Iraqi forces. No amount of U.S. aid will change the dynamic that Iran is going to dominate Iraq for the foreseeable future.
Why waste the money and arms on a country that might not even exist in a few months?
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