A safe overland corridor between Iran and Syria via
Iraqi Kurdistan will be a godsend for Bashar al-Assad’s regime and a nightmare
for Turkey.
Saleh Qallab, a renowned Jordanian journalist and
former information minister, says Tehran and its Baghdad allies are actively trying
to intimidate Erbil to endorse the plan.
The corridor would give Iran a direct supply route to
the Syrian regime and to Hezbollah in Lebanon, right up to the borders with
Israel.
Qallab today describes the Tehran-Baghdad game plan
in an op-ed titled “The
Volatile Triangle” for Kuwait’s al-Jarida in this way:
With all that is taking place in and around Syria,
keep your eye on the convergence lines of the Iraqi-Turkish-Syrian borders.
Now that Assad’s regime handed control of Syria’s
Kurdish areas -- including the major cities of Qamishli and al-Hasaka -- to the
PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), regional border clashes could break out at any
time soon.
Once they do, current political power balances
throughout the Middle East will change.
Tehran has been since 2003 harassing the Kurds in
northern Iraq to give Iran an overland corridor to Syria and Hezbollah in
Lebanon and the capacity to fence off southern Turkey.
Massoud
Barzani, the president of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, has categorically
refused to play ball. He is aware the corridor would turn Iraq into an Iranian
vassal state, allow Iran to project its power throughout the Middle East and block
southern Turkey’s aperture to the Arab world.
Jalal
Talabani (the current president of Iraq) never stopped stirring up the
corridor idea to:
- Undermine Barzani as the icon leader of Kurds in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria and everywhere else
- Enhance his status as a stooge of Iran alongside (Iraqi Premier) Nouri al-Maliki and others in Syria, Lebanon and the rest of the Middle East.
With Assad’s regime now on its last legs, the plan
has been brought back to life by:
- Damascus’ handover of the Syrian Kurdish areas to the PKK and its, and Talabani’s, affiliate Democratic Union Party
- Renewed pressure on Barzani by Maliki, who last week sent thousands of Iraqi government troops to the Zumar district, where they attempted to cross Kurdish lines, push back Barzani Peshmerga forces and control the convergence lines of the Iraq-Turkey-Syria boundaries at the Ibrahim Khalil border crossing near the Khabur (Tigris) river.
This
puts Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem’s visits last week to Tehran and
Baghdad in perspective.
Would
Iran send units of its elite Revolutionary Guards to forcibly create a safe
corridor to Syria through northern Iraq in collusion with Talabani?
If
so, could Turkey remain tightlipped and not get embroiled?
Watch
out for a regional free-for-all.
