Under the guise of beating back Sunni jihadists in Iraq who are benefiting from Obama’s “regime-change” policies in Syria, the administration is openly considering U.S. military cooperation with the Iranian regime to prop up Tehran’s ally in Baghdad. Neoconservative U.S. lawmakers are pushing the wild idea, too. Ironically, perhaps, the Assad regime’s Syrian warplanes, using intelligence supplied by Iran, have reportedly been pounding the hardline Sunni Islamist forces that seized control over wide swaths of Iraq in recent days. In other words, U.S. foreign policy in Iraq is now aligned with the regimes in Syria and Iran — the same officially listed “state sponsors of terror” that the Washington, D.C., establishment has been seeking to overthrow for years as part of the “axis of evil.”
Already, the chief of Iran’s feared Quds military force and thousands of Iranian troops are in Iraq working to stop the quick advance of the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). The radical Sunni jihadist group, of course, has been among the many barbaric beneficiaries of massive assistance from the U.S. government and its Sunni Arab and European allies in Syria — part of the failing effort to depose Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. Obama, meanwhile, announced the deployment of several hundred U.S. troops to Baghdad, supposedly to help provide security at the American embassy from ISIS militants. He also claimed the administration would not put “boots on the ground” in the latest civil war.
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Separately, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry suggested military cooperation with the theocracy in Tehran was a very real possibility. As part of the supposed effort to beat back the fresh insurgency running wild in Iraq, Obama and the Iranian Mullahs apparently have “shared interests.” When asked in an interview with Yahoo News whether the administration would cooperate with Iran in Iraq, Kerry said: “We need to go step-by-step and see what in fact might be a reality, but I would not rule out anything that would be constructive in providing real stability.” There is a good chance of open cooperation between the two governments and militaries, he suggested.
“We’re open to discussions if there is something constructive that can be contributed by Iran, if Iran is prepared to do something that is going to respect the integrity and sovereignty of Iraq and ability of the government to reform,” Kerry added in the interview, apparently oblivious to the cruel irony — and perhaps ridiculousness or even criminality — of the unfolding U.S. foreign policy disaster in the Middle East. After Kerry’s comments, a Pentagon spokesman was quick to deny that there are plans in place to work with Iran on Iraq.
Last week, though, despite recent official reports suggesting that Iranian authorities have been backing Shiite militias in Iraq and undermining U.S. government goals, a State Department spokesperson claimed the Obama administration and the dictatorship in Iran “certainly have a shared interest” in fighting ISIS. Even if the administration does not directly cooperate with the Iranian and Syrian regimes, they will still presumably be on the same side in the Iraqi conflict. According to news reports, semi-official discussions between the Obama administration and Iranian officials actually took place on the sidelines of a nuclear summit in Vienna.
The U.S. government, Kerry continued in the Yahoo interview, is “open to any constructive process here that would minimize the violence, hold Iraq together, and eliminate the presence of outside terrorist forces that are ripping it apart.” Of course, no mention was made of the fact that those “outside terrorist forces” were benefiting from U.S. arms and funding across the border in Syria despite Obama’s pledge to only support “moderate” jihadists. Obama is also apparently looking at “every option that is available” in Iraq, including possible drone strikes, Kerry added. Not intervening in foreign quarrels, as the Founding Fathers advised, appears to be off the table at this point.
Even some neoconservative Republicans who have been banging the war drums against Iran for years — largely the same group of RINO warmongers that backed Obama’s arming and funding of the al-Qaeda-linked Syrian “rebels” now overrunning Iraq — were busy pushing for an alliance with Tehran. Speaking on CNN, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of the top anti-constitutional warmongers in a Congress that is packed with them, compared working with Iran in Iraq to disastrous U.S. government support for communist mass-murderer Joseph Stalin in World War II. The ruthless despot in Moscow “was not as bad as Hitler,” Graham claimed without explaining his calculus. Of course, the U.S. government’s building of the Soviet war machine directly contributed to the enslavement of billions of people and the extermination of at least a hundred million — probably many more. “The Iranians can provide some assets to make sure Baghdad doesn’t fall,” Graham opined.
On the other hand, neocon Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz), who appears to have a bizarre soft spot for the Sunni jihadists in Libya and Syria, disagreed with forming an alliance with Iran to fight ISIS. Among other concerns, he pointed to the Iranian regime’s support for Shia jihadists and its ties to various forces fighting on behalf of Syrian “President” Assad. In contrast with arguments pushed by Graham and the Obama administration, McCain claimed that the U.S. government’s interests did not “align” with the Iranian regime’s in this case. With the Republican neocon faction at odds with each other over what to do, it appears that the globalist foreign policy establishment has at least in some sense lost control over the fruits of its never-ending foreign interventionism — unless chaos and death was the desired outcome.
Among non-interventionists, however, the ongoing tragedies across the Middle East, resulting in large part from U.S. government meddling, offered more evidence that Washington, D.C., should mind its own business. Former presidential candidate and Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), who now serves as chairman of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, suggested that the U.S. government should stay out of the latest conflict rather than aid one side — or even both. “We have a choice: Should we work real hard to preserve a government [in Iraq] that may become a very, very close ally with Iran, or should we throw our support with al-Qaida, which we have done in the past?” asked Paul, a major figure in the growing non-interventionist movement. “I don’t want to pick between the two.”
Other governments comprising the Western internationalist establishment, meanwhile, also appear to be shifting gears on Iran — at least for now. The British government, for example, just announced that it would be re-opening its embassy in Tehran amid the alleged “shared interest” in countering ISIS. “There has never been any doubt in my mind that we should have an embassy in Tehran if the circumstances allowed,” said U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague. “Iran is an important country in a volatile region.” The ongoing takeover of Iraq by Sunni jihadists has given the effort to restore bilateral relations a major boost, analysts said about the announcement.
If Americans needed more reasons to shun the globalist, warmongering establishment in both parties, developments in Iraq the last few days have certainly provided them. Not only is the U.S. government burying Americans in odious debts that can never be repaid, the carnage unleashed by Washington’s unconstitutional “interventions” abroad has produced nothing but horror, terror, and death. Christians in Iraq, who were protected under Saddam’s brutal regime — a U.S. ally prior to the Persian Gulf War — are now on the brink of extinction. The Iranian and Chinese regimes, along with al-Qaeda perhaps, appear to have been the biggest beneficiaries of the U.S. government’s invasion and occupation of Iraq. Libya is in ruins after Obama’s United Nations-approved war, with U.S.-armed jihadists running wild. Syria has become a bloodbath and Christians are especially in the crosshairs, too. Now Washington, D.C., wants more. It is time for Americans to finally demand that Congress end the never-ending interventionism.
Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is currently based in Europe. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU.
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