Misjudgements by USA in Iraq and Iran

Towards the end of the segment about Iran on today's Listening Post, it was revealed that the Americans had released a propaganda video aiming to take advantage of the current unrest in Iran. Its theme was that life was better under the Shah. As the commentator remarked, people's memories are not that short. There is a reminder here of the 1953 suppression of Iranian democracy by Macmillan and Eisenhower,  and of previous foreign interventions. Incidentally, although President Obama apologised for America's part in that coup, no British government has done so.

For the USA to assassinate an Iranian official on Iraq's supposedly sovereign territory in a blaze of publicity is being read as a humiliating show of American dominance and of Iraqi government ineffectiveness. It is not only the Shia in Iraq but also the Sunni who are now demonstrating against the presence of US forces, and US influence generally, in Iraq. Having identified Soleimani some time ago as the master-mind behind Iran's client militias abroad, one wonders why the US did not adopt the same sanctions policy against him as they are now employing against eight other named officials, rather than blatantly breaching international law.

Besides, according to old Iraq hand Patrick Cockburn in the i newspaper at the weekend, Soleiman's and Khomenei's policies in the Middle East had become counterproductive.

Nobody watches the changing political winds in Tehran as closely as Iraqis, whose country is where the US-Iran struggle is being fought out. 

"Iraq is in a critical position," says an Iraqi Shia politician in Baghdad quoted in Middle East Eye. "The policy that Khomenei pursued in managing the region is no longer successful. The Iranian Revolutionary Guar contributed to creating problems in Iraq that turned into a burden for Iran and became an obstacle to its negotiations with the US."

The US however is handicapped by its view of Shia as a monolith, whereas the Shia communities in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon have separate overriding concerns. Besides,

in Middle Eastern politics, everybody tends to overplay their hand at one time or another, usually when they come to overconfidently believe that they can put their opponent permanently out of business. The US has repeatedly fallen into this trap in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria - and it is all too likely to do the same in its confrontation with Iran, which will remain a dangerous stalemate at risk of tipping into war.