is iran an ally or enemy? by bing west

8/10/2019 Is Iran an Ally or Enemy? by Bing West

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Allies and Enemiesin the war on Terror

Hoover Institution Working Group on Military History


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A HOOVER INSTITUTION ESSAY ON ALLIES AND ENEMIES IN THE WAR ON TERROR

Is Iran an Ally or Enemy?BING WEST

In 1916, the United Kingdom and France secretly signed the Sykes-Picot agreement

to divide between them the Islamic Ottoman Empire in Mesopotamia. When World

War I was concluded, the state of Syria emerged as a French colony, while England

asserted its rule over what was called Iraq. Thus no Islamic caliphate successor to the

Ottomans could threaten the oceanic trade routes or European geographic dominance

over the Cradle of Civilization. It was a shrewd plan, surviving for a century.

Now those state boundaries have disintegrated, although the United States government

has yet to admit the facts on the ground. In Syria, the besieged government of the

Assad regime clings to about half of the territory after causing 100,000 deaths and

forcing 400,000 people to become refugees, while various Sunni factions ght over

the other half. In Iraq, the Shiites control the south, the Kurds control the northeast,

and the Sunnis in the northwest are controlled by the extremist Islamic State of

Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The Sykes-Picot division of Mesopotamia no longer exists, except

in the minds of Obama White House operatives who will leave a full-scale disaster to

the next administration.

Why is this the trajectory? Because the administration has allied itself with Iran

without considering the consequences. Granted, had the administration reached a

veriable deal to roll back Irans nuclear weapons program by the end of November,

then allusions to President Nixons Opening to China in 1972 would have gained

resonance. To offset the Soviet Union, Mao Tse-tung did agree openly to strategic

discussions with America. Accommodations conducive to global stability followed.

Nothing similar has sprung from the interminable negotiations to prevent Iran from

developing nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles. At the same time, Irans

underling, Hezbollah, seeks to seize Lebanon and ghts to keep the Assad regime inpower in Syria.

It is against that background that the administrations confused policy about the

savage war in Mesopotamia must be evaluated. The rst principle in war is to know

your enemy who are you ghting, and what are his techniques and goals? The


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Bing West Is Iran an Ally or Enemy?

second principle is to know your allies those who stand beside you, deserving your

trust and working as a team.

Is Iran an enemy or an ally? Once Iran becomes a threshold nuclear state, it can only

be contained, not destroyed. Why is it necessary to destroy rather than contain ISIS?

Which is the greater long-term threat to American interests, ISIS or Iran? Must the

United States persist in its de facto military alliance with Iran inside Iraq in order to

combat ISIS?

Clearly, reaching a detente with Iran outweighs destroying ISIS. For a third time, the

president has extended negotiations with Iran about its nuclear weapons program. In

response, Iranian President Rouhani has promised that the countrys centrifuges will

not stop. 1 Iran has declared that it has a new IR-8 centrifuge with sixteen times more

power for enriching uranium than its existing 19,000 centrifuges.2 No longer is the

administrations purpose to eliminate Irans uranium enrichment; the president now

seeks a years warning before Iran deploys nuclear warheads on its long-range missiles.

President Obama has asked Iran to cooperate with us against ISIS. He has not explained

why ISIS is Americas existential enemy, while Iran is our secret ally. In World War II,

by allying with the Soviet Union against Germany, we saved thousands of American

lives. No similar rationale pertains to Iran.

The Shiite theocracy in Iran intends to become the dominant power in the Islamic

Middle East. Iran is aiding Bashar Assad in Syria and helping its own proxy

Hezbollah to gain control of Lebanon on Israels northern ank. A threshold

nuclear weapon assures the Iranian regime of protection against external attack,

internal afrmation of its prestige, and global recognition of its power. Irans

ambitions and behavior ensure continued hostility with the Sunni powers friendly

to the United States, including Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.

Iranian aircraft continue to y across Iraq to supply the Assad regime. Attacking

Assad, one columnist even speculated, might cause Iran to use its Shiite militias

in Iraq to retaliate against US forces there. 3 That sounds bizarre, but so are Iranian

actions. In 2011, Iran plotted to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador by blowing

up a restaurant in our nations capital. Dozens of Americans would have died. In

response to this intelligence, the administration chose to do nothing, scarcely a


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deterrent to future Iranian outrageous acts. Unsurprisingly, Iranian cyber experts

have hacked into the airline and oil industries in Saudi Arabia and have launched

numerous forays against American corporations and universities. 4

Between 2005 and 2011, Iran provided the Shiite militias in Iraq with advisers and

hundreds of explosive devices to kill Americans. 5 Today, Iranian soldiers are ghting

on the front lines alongside those same Shiite militias, in concert with the Iraqi

army. Our advisers are in the rear. Inside Iraqi operation centers, Iranian operatives

are systematically learning how America controls and applies its air power. From

intelligence sources, Obama knows in detail about this Iranian-Iraqi collusion. Iran

is the true protector of Baghdad and the Shiite south of Iraq.

What are the gains from the administrations strategy? So far, Iran has conceded

nothing in its quest for nuclear weapons and has shown no desire to emulate Russianleader Mikhail Gorbachev by relaxing its ideology, its control of its population, its

opposition to the American devil, its hatred of Israel, or its efforts to subvert the

Sunni states friendly to America. The risk to Obama is that Iran does not sign any

agreement.

This, however, is unlikely. Iran is cunning enough to eventually sign a piece of paper.

Once Iran signs something anything by the summer of 2015, then the White

House, supported by the European signatories, will boast that preventing nuclear

proliferation was as signicant as Nixons visit to China. ISIS has caused misery for a

few million and will burn itself out; nuclear weapons, rst in Iran and then rapidly in

a multiplying number of unstable states, would unleash hell across the Middle East.

Doing nothing about ISIS treading water and letting other forces determine the

course of history is marginally defensible, especially since the real game revolves

around Iran. The administration did nothing when ISIS seized Iraqi cities last June.

But when three Americans were publicly beheaded, the president pledged to destroy

ISIS. That opened up a massive conict theater and initiated a campaign that cannot

be completed in the next two years. In war, the duty of the commander-in-chief

is to rally the people to support the war goals, while providing the resources our

military commanders require for a war-winning strategy. In the conrmation

hearing, senators should ask the nominee for secretary of defense Ashton Carter

one straight question: have our military commanders endorsed our current strategy


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as sufcient to achieve the policy goal of destroying ISIS? An honest answer will

be no.

A few months ago, Iraqs divisive prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, was forced from

ofce. But the political parties, the patronage system, and most army commanders

have not changed. The Shiite militias and Iranian Republican Guards, together

responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers, are ghting alongside

the Iraqi army. Iranian troops are guarding areas in the south alongside Shiite

militias like Kataib Hizballah and Badr Corps.

General Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard,

is now giving advice to the Iraqi high command. In fact, a photo showed Suleimani,

who provided Shiite militias with assassination teams and powerful explosives in

2006 2008, on a battleeld north of Baghdad. He is a charismatic enemy, not agarrison general. 6

We are now in a position to start going on some offense, Obama said on

November 9.

Who is we? The Iranians, not the Americans, are in the ground ght. They are

now also providing Iraqi forces with air support, recently bombing ISIS targets. Rear

Admiral John Kirby, a spokesman for the administration, was typically wishy-washy

and uncommunicative in responding to a question about the Iranian air campaign.

We are not taking a position, he said, on these particular reports regarding these

particular strikes. 7

Not taking a position means not doing or saying anything, thereby further

endorsing the silent alliance between the Iranian and American military units

engaged in Iraq. The Pentagon is breaking all its own rules, set in place decades ago.

There is no other theater on the globe where US air control centers would allow

unknown and unscheduled ghter aircraft to y unannounced sorties and drop

bombs at will.

It is insufcient to shrug this off, as did one Pentagon ofcial, by saying, Iraq owns

the airspace. Iraq lacks basic air control safety competence. One midair collision with


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an American aircraft would create a political restorm on Capitol Hill. The Pentagon

is gambling that highly unlikely event does not happen. But any American or NATO

pilot who repeated anywhere what the Iranians are doing would face court-martial for

reckless endangerment. The US military is gradually twisting its fundamental rules

to rationalize advising and ghting in Iraq alongside our foe, Iran. Sooner or later,

Murphys Law will strike and Congress will predictably erupt, claiming it had no idea

what was going on.

Theres no coordination militarily between the United States and our troops, our

military operations there and those of Tehran or the Iranians inside Iraq, Kirby told

CNN. Theres no coordination at all. 8

The admirals statement is disingenuous. Of course there is coordination; its called

geographic separatism. Iranians stay with certain units in certain locations, andAmerican advisers do the same. American aircraft bomb to the north, while Iranian

aircraft bomb to the east. In the eyes of a normal person in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Israel,

Syria, or America, the militaries of Iran and of the United States are ghting on the

same side. Thats the accepted denition of being allies. But if Iranian air and ground

forces are acceptable inside Iraq today, why were they not acceptable in 2005, when

US troops were locked in a seesaw battle against Al Qaedas Sunni extremists?

What Obama policy has changed since 2009, and why? To date, Obama has sent

four letters to the Iranian leadership, pleading for cooperation in ghting Sunni

Islamists. America does not need Irans military help. The problem is that northern

Iraq cannot be retaken by the Iraqi army, which lacks the necessary will, leadership,

organization, and equipment. To seize Fallujah in 2004 required a hard battle by

American Marines. To seize northern Iraq will require the equivalent of ve Fallujahs,

with World War II level destruction of the cities. That will not happen. The Iraqi

army will never morph into the US Marine Corps.

The Iraqi army will remain incompetent because of corrupt leaders. The basic aw

in the US advisory concept is the lack of authority to remove corrupt host nation

commanders. The Shiite soldiers of the Iraqi army cannot rout the Sunni Islamists by

direct assault. Northern Iraq can be retaken only from within by Sunni and Kurdish

tribes. But because the army has repressed the Sunnis and Kurds, there is no trust.


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ISIS is consumed by bloodlust. The Islamists are systematically hunting down

and executing the Sunnis who joined the Awakening in 2006 2007 and fought

alongside the Americans. The message below typies the e-mails our former

advisers are now receiving:

Hi, my frnd -it is so hard time for us. i miss our honor time in falluja we were heros

not like the pusses ofcers now there so bad guys IsIs is get to much strickes from

us air it is so active many of the leaders of isis tocks they r families out of falluja

and saglawia before they tocks the best houses in falluja ( high ring ofceres and

government leaders ) and put they r familes there now tock them out . must of the

isis guys comes frome out of falluja . i was tried to want in arbil but no way no arab

can go there.

The writer is a Sunni police ofcer who went over to the Marine side, pointed out

Al Qaeda operatives inside Fallujah, and is now hiding among his neighbors, unableto escape. By pulling out all our forces in 2011, we abandoned this ofcer and

thousands like him.

A gap the size of the Grand Canyon has opened between the members of the military

who served in Iraq and the civilian policymakers in the White House who serve a

political agenda detached from nay, unaware of the human costs of loyalty in

war. Novelist Karl Marlantes has observed that policymakers should view themselves

as virtual warriors. To understand what an adviser really does, they should read the

memoirs of advisers in Iraq, like Owen Wests The Snake Eaters .9 As they do so, they

should mentally beam themselves onto the battleeld where they have placed our

warriors. The legendary Marine Corps general, Jim Mattis, urged everyone under his

command eventually, all our troops in the Middle East to image themselves in

battle. He did not use the verb imagine . He stressed imaging transporting oneself

into the mud, blood, and fury. The policymaker becomes the warrior, the killer.

Those in the White House who presume to play on a geopolitical chessboard have

the obligation to understand that each pawn is a human being with emotions and

free will. They should not undertake what they cannot comprehend. The basic

criterion for promotion inside the military is leadership. In fact, this is so elementary

that many promotion boards do not explicitly consider it. Nonetheless, no one can


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advance through six ranks from lieutenant to colonel without dozens of assessments

of leadership capabilities. True, some are promoted who will fall. By and large,

however, the promotion system works. Most colonels in their early forties have

displayed consistently the competence and values of the organization.

The selection of the key personnel on the national security staff of the commander-

in-chief is not done by any systematic means. Usually, a president will select as his

national security adviser a person whose chief characteristic is a proven dexterity to

write about or, better yet, manipulate the complexities and subtleties of international

problems.

In 1985, the National Security Council (NSC) staff went badly off the tracks and

undertook a foolish, self-directed operation: selling weapons to Iran in order to free

American captives in Lebanon. The NSC staff, perhaps intoxicated by the power ofproximity to the commander-in-chief, had forgotten that its only role was to function

as a coordinating staff for the agencies that conducted operations. Frank Carlucci, a

former secretary of defense, took over at the NSC to straighten it out.

Unfortunately, in the Obama administration the NSC staff became the operational

arm of the commander-in-chief, evaluating every situation through the prism of

politics and presidential image. The NSC staff is a campaign staff, without military

background or leadership values, without an understanding of how critical trust is

up and down the chain of command when the cost is lives.

Trust is what is lacking throughout Iraq. When Iraq was disintegrating in late 2006,

the Sunni tr ibes in western Anbar Province came over to the side of the strongest

tribe the Americans. The tribes saw the Americans as their defenders against both

Sunni extremists and what they called the Persian government in Baghdad. In

2007 2008, General David Petraeus expanded the Sunni tribal alliance to include

Baghdad and the north. American company commanders and advisers supervised

the boundaries and enforced the protocols between the tribesmen and the Iraqi

army. It was the shift in allegiance by the Sunni tribes, not battleeld success by

the Iraqi army, that brought temporary stability to Iraq. We then left, and the Shiite

government oppressed those tribes. In turn, they felt betrayed by America.


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In June, Atheel al-Nujai, the Sunni governor of Mosul, argued in favor of three

Iraqi cantons: Sunni, Kurdish, and Shiite. He presented a plan for a Sunni army

autonomous from Baghdad. In December, he said a tribal militia could not work and

disavowed his own proposal for a quasi-independent Sunnistan. Was he telling the

truth in June or December?

Why should the Sunnis or Kurds trust us sufciently to tell us the truth? Our current

policy has placed the Sunni and Kurdish tribes under the direct control of the Iraqi

army that they loathe. This insures battleeld discord and duplicity.

The administration has also given the Baghdad government authority over all aid and

advisers to the Sunni and Kurdish tribes. Instead, US aid should ow directly to the

tribes. To persuade them to again risk their lives, they need an incentive: namely, that

they will retain local rule after the war.

Stability among Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds requires a steadying American inuence.

This in turn requires a status of forces agreement so that US military units will

remain after the ISIS threat ebbs. In theory, Obama has been given a do-over. He

pulled out our troops and Iraq fell apart. Now were back. So will we stay this time?

Not a chance. The Shiite government in Baghdad will laugh in our face. Iran

currently has more inuence than do we. Opposing one enemy ISISshould not

be done under terms that advantage our other enemy, Iran. If the end state is an

Iraq inside the orbit of Iran, we have failed.

NOTES

1 Adam Kredo, Iran: Americans Have Very Clearly Surrendered, Washington Free Beacon, November 25,2014, http://freebeacon.com/national-security/iran-americans-have-very-clearly-surrendered.

2 Jeffrey Lewis, The Iran Nuke Extension Is a Death Sentence, Foreign Policy, November 24, 2014.

3 Jackson Diehl, Obamas bet on Iran, Washington Post, November 9, 2014.

4 Joe Gould, Report: Iran Hackers Infiltrated Airlines, Energy, Defense Firms, Defense News, December 2, 2014.

5 USA Today reported on January 31, 1997, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq,and National Intelligence Director John Negroponte have said the new bombs are being provided by Iranand are killing U.S. troops. U.S. officials have declined to say exactly how many have been killed or how theweapons have been traced to Iran, which has denied supplying them. See also Tom Iggulden, US links


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Iran to Iraq bomb technology, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, December 2, 2007: Sen. John Kerry,D-Mass., said on the Senate floor recently that 90 percent of the EFPs detonated in Iraq had been used inBaghdad. Nobody questions that there are weapons going across the border. Nobody questions thoseof us who have been to Iraq and in the region know that there are Iranian instigators, agents in Iraq. Seealso Drew Brown, Sunni insurgents remain biggest threat to U.S. troops in Iraq, McClatchy Newspapers, February 28, 2007, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2007/02/28/15685/sunni-insurgents-remain-biggest

.html#storylink=cpy.

6 Armin Rosen, Irans Military Mastermind was Reportedly Present during Iraqs Biggest Victory SoFar, Business Insider, September 3, 2014: The response to ISISs push against the town of Amerli waslikely formulated by Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps QodsForce and probably the Middle Easts most effective operative. Suleimani leads the Guards operationsoutside of Irans borders, and has raked in a number of major strategic victories over the years.http://www.businessinsider.com/suleimani-was-present-during-battle-for-amerli-2014-9#ixzz3Cv4Hrd7S.

7 David S. Cloud, W.J. Hennigan, and Ramin Mostaghim, Recent Iran airstrikes in Iraq help drive IslamicState from 2 towns, Los Angeles Times, December 2, 2014.

8 Laurence Norman, U.S. Pledges to Fight Islamic State For as Long as It Takes, Wall Street Journal,

December 3, 2014.9 Owen West, The Snake Eaters: An Unlikely Band of Brothers and the Battle for the Soul of Iraq (New York: Free Press, 2012).


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Working Group on the Role of Military Historyin Contemporary Conflict

The Working Group on the Role of Military History inContemporary Conict examines how knowledge of pastmilitary operations can inuence contemporary publicpolicy decisions concerning current conicts. The carefulstudy of military history offers a way of analyzing modernwar and peace that is often underappreciated in this age oftechnological determinism. Yet the result leads to a morein-depth and dispassionate understanding of contemporarywars, one that explains how particular military successesand failures of the past can be often germane, sometimesmisunderstood, or occasionally irrelevant in the contextof the present.

The core membership of this working group includes David

Berkey, Peter Berkowitz, Max Boot, Josiah Bunting III, AngeloM. Codevilla, Thomas Donnelly, Admiral James O. Ellis Jr.,Colonel Joseph Felter, Victor Davis Hanson (chair), Josef Joffe,Frederick W. Kagan, Kimberly Kagan, Edward N. Luttwak,Peter Mansoor, General Jim Mattis, Walter Russell Mead, MarkMoyar, Williamson Murray, Ralph Peters, Andrew Roberts,Admiral Gary Roughead, Kori Schake, Kiron K. Skinner, BarryStrauss, Bruce Thornton, Bing West, Miles Maochun Yu, andAmy Zegart.

For more information about this Hoover Institution Working Group

visit us online at www.hoover.org/research-topic/military.

About the Author

BING WEST

Bing West, a former assistantsecretary of defense and combatMarine who served as an adviserin Vietnam, has written six booksabout the American wars in Iraqand Afghanistan. His latest isOne Million Steps: a Marine Platoonat War (Random House: 2014).

is iran an ally or enemy? by bing west

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