In protesting against alleged Iranian weapons shipments to Syria through Iraqi airspace, Washington may be doing little more than playing to the gallery, writes Salah Nasrawi While it could look as if the Obama administration is pressing Iraq's Shia-led government to bar alleged weapons shipments to Syria through Iraqi airspace, Washington's protests could be more rhetorical than part of a clearly defined policy. The logjam over the alleged arms airlifts has also raised quizzical eyebrows among critics, who question the US administration's attempts to influence the Iraqi government at a time when the US's clout in Iraq has been diminishing nearly a year after it withdrew all combat forces from the country. The administration recently raised fears that Iranian planes were ferrying weapons, and possibly also Iranian Revolutionary Guard fighters, to the Syrian regime across Iraqi airspace and urged the government in Baghdad to ground Iranian aircraft flying over Iraq for inspection. Last week US Vice President Joe Biden, delegated by President Barack Obama with the task of managing the White House's dealings with Baghdad, pressed Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki in a telephone call "to prevent any state from taking advantage of Iraq's territory or air space to send weapons to Syria." Some US congressmen have been demanding that the administration take tougher action with Al-Maliki over the flights. Senator John Kerry, chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, expressed his bafflement that the Iraqis were not more grateful to the US for "helping them build their democracy, support them, put American lives on the line, and money into the country". The US mainstream media have also joined the tirade, with some angrily pointing to what was described as an Iraqi lack of gratitude to the United States for invading Iraq in 2003 to rid the country of the then president, Saddam Hussein, and bestow freedom and democracy on the country. The US treasury department said it had identified 117 Iranian aircraft it said had been ferrying weapons to the Syrian regime. The department said the planes were delivering weapons and Iranian forces under the cover of "humanitarian shipments". Iraq has vehemently denied that the transfers are taking place across its airspace and has demanded that Washington provide evidence of the alleged shipments. In a signal of its readiness to cooperate with the US, however, Iraq said last week that it had blocked a North Korean plane from entering its airspace on suspicion that it was carrying weapons to Syria. There is little possibility of verifying the American claims, and Iraq could not do much to stop the Iranian flights even if it chose to since the country has been essentially without air defenses since the US withdrew its troops in December. In addition, there is little doubt that Iraq's Shia-led government, which feels its own survival depends on the fate of Syria's Alawite-led regime, will stand firmly with its Iranian ally to prevent the downfall of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. Iraqi Shia leaders fear that if Al-Assad falls, Syria will splinter along sectarian lines, and this could bring a hardline Sunni government to power in Damascus -- a nightmare scenario for Iraqi Shias who have been facing a Sunni insurgency in Iraq since their coming to power following Saddam's ouster in 2003. The Iraqi Shia leaders also seem to be less than convinced that Washington has a well-defined policy on Syria beyond the promise of supporting the anti-Al-Assad uprising. They wonder why the US, which has not been actively involved in efforts to overthrow the Al-Assad regime, wants Iraq to take risks it isn't prepared to run itself. Unless Washington can persuade the Iraqi Shia leaders that regime change in Syria will not undermine their own hard-won power, the Iraqi Shias are unlikely to cooperate on the issue of the Iranian flights. Indeed, the Iraqi Shia leaders realise that Washington's ability to influence the course of events in Iraq has been drastically diminished, if not utterly vanquished, since the withdrawal of the US forces. Washington might have other options to deal with Iraq's defiance. One idea being floated by some congressmen in Washington is that the US should make aid to Iraq contingent on cutting off the flights from Iran that are suspected of ferrying weapons to the Al-Assad regime. This idea envisions halting the military part of the 2008 Strategic Framework Agreement between the US and Iraq, which entails defence cooperation. In December, the Iraqi government made initial payments to the US for two squadrons of F-16 fighters to be delivered next year. Washington has pushed the delivery date back to 2014, after expressing its concerns about increasing Iranian influence in Iraq. Washington may now consider a further delay, although State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland has said that the administration does not support linking aid to Iraq to demands for Baghdad to inspect the suspect Iranian aircraft. Among the sticks Washington could use is the threat to halt or slow down educational, cultural, and economic ties with Baghdad, threatening the country's diplomatic isolation, or to give explicit support to the Iraqi Kurds in their endeavour for more autonomy or even to break away from Iraq. Among the carrots available to the US administration, Washington could offer Al-Maliki badly needed military and security cooperation that could involve intelligence assistance in the fight against Al-Qaeda, as well as boost Iraq's military capabilities in much-needed areas such as air defence and naval forces. Al-Maliki has reportedly rejected proposals that US forces help monitor Iraq's airspace or carry out inspections on Iranian flights. For a country that is expected to receive some $200 billion from oil revenues this year alone, there is a limit to what the US can achieve through financial or other inducements. The Obama administration has already moved to find a new tone to respond to Al-Maliki's challenge, with the state department saying on Friday that it plans to remove the Iranian opposition group the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) from its list of terrorist organisations. By delisting the group, which has been involved in covert attacks against the Iranian regime in Tehran, Washington is sending a message that it may now arm and fund the group in pursuit of a proxy war with Iran. The initiative has angered Al-Maliki, who has announced that Iraq still considers the MEK, which has some 3,000 members in Iraq, to be a terrorist group, and he has called on the United Nations to comply with a previous agreement to remove the fighters from Iraq. Whether the Obama administration is aiming for a genuine showdown with Al-Maliki's government over Iran's weapons shipments, or whether it is only for public consumption, Washington seems to lack effective force in its Iraq policy that could convince Al-Maliki to be involved in efforts to overthrow the Al-Assad regime. In facing down Al-Maliki, the US administration's putting pressure on Iraq to scale down its alliance with Iran could be futile and even counter-productive. At a time when Iraq's Shia-led government feels existentially threatened by the Syrian upheaval, it is likely that it will favour its alliance with Shia Iran over any praise from Washington.
