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Circling the square

Joyce Karam of Al Hayat yesterday asked me some interesting questions about Iraq, Iran, Syria and the United States.  Here are her questions and my answers:

Q.  Where does the US relation with Nouri Maliki stand today? Is he a valuable
ally or more of a necessary one?

A.  Maliki is both a valuable and a necessary partner (rather than ally).  Necessary because he holds power in Iraq, which is a key country in the Middle East, one that is increasing its oil exports rapidly.  That is something the Obama administration greatly appreciates.  Valuable because the Americans view him as at least partly cooperative on Syria and Iran, as well as on oil production.

Q.  Where does Maliki himself stand inside Iraq? How much has the Barzani-Sadr-Allawi alliance damaged him?

A.  I don’t think they’ve done him much real damage.  He has outmaneuvered his
political opponents, who seem unable to win a confidence vote in parliament
and more unable to construct an alternative majority.

Q.  How do you read Ankara’s rapprochement with Barzani? Should it make Baghdad nervous?

A.  Ankara’s rapprochement with the Iraqi Kurds is in my view the natural course of things.  So long as Kurdistan is willing to cooperate with Turkey against the PKK, there is no reason for Turkey not to enjoy a good relationship with relatively secular (but still Muslim) Kurdistan.  There is a lot of money to be made from investment opportunities in Kurdistan, and from trade across the border, including in oil.  Baghdad has a choice:  it can resist the development of close Turkey/Kurdistan relations, or it can jump on that
bandwagon and enhance its own relations with Ankara.  I wish they would do the latter.

Q.  Has Turkey miscalculated given the increasing armed Kurdish activity on
Syrian border?

A.  I don’t think so.  Turkey has known that opposition to the Asad regime would bring retaliation from Damascus in the form of encouragement to extremist Kurds to attack inside Turkey.  That is one of the risks Turkey decided to run when it supported the Syrian opposition.  Turkey will eventually want the Syrian Kurds to do what the Iraqi Kurds have done:  help restrain the more radical Kurds and open up to Turkish trade and investment. There is no reason that can’t happen in a post-Asad Syria.

Q.  The US wants the Arab states to engage Maliki, would that help in making him less dependent on Iran?

A.  Of course the Sunni Arab states should engage Maliki, but I don’t think they are ever going to be completely comfortable with Maliki, whom they don’t trust.  The most important factor in Iraq’s international alignment is the route by which its oil is exported. If it continues to be exported through the Gulf within range of Iranian guns, Tehran will have enormous influence in Iraq.  If the Iraqis wisely begin to diversify and export more oil to the north and west, via pipelines that will have to be built in the future, then
Iraq will be tied more tightly to the West.

Q.  If the Syrian regime falls, how do you see that impacting politics inside Iraq?

Any new regime in Syria will be less aligned with Iran and more aligned with the Sunni Arab states.  That will create initially some strains with Maliki, but there will still be a lot of common interests, including I hope the prospect of exports of oil from Iraq through Syria to the Mediterranean.