 |
| Maliki (top) and Assad in meetings with Khamenei |
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is playing his
regional trump card: Iraq to replace Syria and Iraq’s powerful Shiite Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki to supersede Syria’s embattled Alawite President
Bashar al-Assad.
Tehran’s theocratic government and Baghdad’s
Shiite-dominated leadership have been moving closer all the time. And both
share a similar interest in supporting Damascus.
Iraq abstained from a 2011 Arab League vote to
suspend Syria’s membership. It is now quietly shipping crucial fuel oil
supplies to Assad’s regime.
Iraq has also been laundering money for the Islamic
Republic to help it overcome sanctions and ferry weapons and fighters to the
Assad government.
Since it promised to ask Syria-bound airplanes
passing through its airspace to land for random inspections after Washington
said they could be ferrying arms to Damascus, Baghdad searched one cargo plane
only.
At the same time, an agreement between senior Iraqi
and Iranian officials allowed Tehran to make larger and more systematic
transfers of weapons and fighters to Syria overland via Iraq.
Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad will be travelling to Baghdad shortly to confer with Maliki.
Maliki, who is in Moscow
on a working visit to consolidate
political, economic and defense ties and discuss developments in Syria,
meets later today with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A joint statement
issued after Maliki’s talks on Tuesday with his counterpart Dmitry Medvedev
said more than $4.2 billion in arms deals were agreed between the two sides as
part of a tighter military cooperation plan.
Moscow will supply 30
Mil Mi-28NE night/all-weather capable attack helicopters, and 50 Pantsir-S1
gun-missile short-range air defense systems. The contracts are among the
biggest ever signed between Iraq and Russia.
Further discussions
were also said to be underway for Iraq’s eventual acquisition of a large group
of MiG-29 fighters and helicopters along with heavy weaponry.
Russian arms industry
analyst Russian Pukhov of the Center for Analysis of Strategy and Technologies,
a Moscow-based think tank, tells Novosti the deal showed Baghdad's desire to
break Washington's monopoly of arms supplies to Iraq.
"It's clear that
America's influence on Iraq has been excessive. The Shiite government of this
country is starting to conduct itself more independently of Washington, and
more looking toward Iran," he said.
Russia is seeking to
take its ties with Iraq to a new level and win almost certain support for its position
on Syria.
Baghdad needs Moscow’s
help in defense and military areas and needs arms to “defend itself and fight
terrorism,” Maliki said in the Russian Foreign Ministry mansion on Monday.
Tariq Alhomayed, editor-in-chief
of the leading Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat, believes Maliki aspires to be
Assad’s “substitute” in the region.
Alhomayed explains in today’s
leader:
The Iraqi premier’s visit to Russia and his
signing of a large arms deal with Moscow evoke ruminations to ponder as to
strategic choices and regional power balances, chiefly as regards Syria
Maliki is obviously trying to reconcile the
irreconcilable. He is after simultaneous alliances with Tehran, Washington and
Moscow, something no one was able to do in the region.
Turkey’s zero-problems foreign policy finds
Ankara today immersed in the region’s problems. Independently of policy,
problems pop up even when you ignore them. And they will drown you if you don’t
tackle them properly.
A huge Russian arms deal won’t rebuild the
Iraqi army, not when the U.S. continues to train and equip the Iraqi military.
It is an open secret that Moscow’s chief arms
clients are either isolated Arab regimes, or ones trying to blackmail the U.S.
and Europe for political gain.
If Iraq wanted to be an active Arab power
player supportive of democracy and stability, why do a deal with Moscow, chief
spoiler of a UN Security Council solution for Syria?
All evidence suggests Maliki yearns for
superseding Assad. He is reassuring Moscow that it has a client ready to buy
Russian weapons at present.
What Iraq has done is simply gift the Russians
an alternative to Assad’s regime. Moscow can now claim it is far from being
isolated in the Arab world.
Maliki hankers after superseding Assad in the
region, albeit rolled out in new packaging. The new packaging will prove faulty
nevertheless, for how can Maliki square the Tehran-Washington-Moscow circle or
forge exceptional ties with his fellow-Arab countries?
Maliki’s wish to serve in Assad’s stead in
the region transpires from his own remarks – that Baghdad needs Moscow’s help “to
fight terrorism.”
Russia has been regurgitating “to fight
terrorism” since the outbreak of the Syrian Revolution.
With the Russians taking “terrorists” to mean
“Sunnites,” Maliki comes along to seek their cooperation in fighting them.
No need to think long and hard: Maliki
aspires to supplant Assad in the region as the protector of its minorities and all
the rest.
