In one amazingly stupid blunder Donald Trump just blew up any chance that the United States might positively influence the governance of Iraq and virtually insured that the Iraqi government will demand the removal of U.S. troops. The government of Iraq was weak and unpopular. There was broad protest in Iraq because the government was corrupt and unable to provide basic services to improve the lives of struggling Iraqis. The U.S. had the opportunity to play a positive role and increase our influence and reduce the influence of Iran. No more.
The unilateral assassination of Iranian Major General Suleimani by a drone strike ordered by Donald Trump has infuriated the government and Shiites of Iraq and turned them towards Iran and against the U.S. One can imagine, however, that the remnants of ISIS, however, are celebrating. General Suleimani’s forces were instrumental in crushing ISIS in Iran. The Kurds who Trump recently abandoned in Syria were also key forces in crushing ISIS. Our forces remaining in Iraq and Syria now have no reliable allies but they have many enemies.
An excellent opinion piece by Mohammad Ali Shabani, an expert on Iran at the University of London, explains Trump’s huge blunder. Please read the whole article at the Guardian.
www.theguardian.com/...
So what comes next? Predictably, the Iranian authorities have promised “severe retaliation”. How that unfolds in practice is anyone’s guess. There is certainly no shortage of US targets in the region. But Suleimani may, with his death, have already achieved the greatest revenge of all, and without firing a single bullet: namely, his ultimate objective of ending the US military presence in Iraq.
If he was indeed behind the attack on the US military base that ultimately precipitated his own assassination, then he has probably succeeded in trapping the US into initiating its own ejection from Iraq. So far, most Iraqi decision-makers, from the caretaker prime minister to the country’s highest spiritual authority, have condemned in no uncertain terms the violation of sovereignty that the assassination entailed.