A volunteer Shiite fighter, a member of what is known as the Popular Mobilisation units, gathers in the city of Samarra on March 5, 2015, ahead of moving into Tikrit. Some 30,000 Iraqi security forces members and allied fighters launched an operation to retake Tikrit, the largest of its kind since Islamic State (IS) group forces overran swathes of territory last June.AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP / Getty Images
It's been said that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." But, when it comes to Iraq and Iran, it's not quite so simple, as the United States and allies such as Canada are finding out.
During the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, Washington made a clear choice: Iran, ruled by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was the enemy. After all, it was Khomeini's followers who had overrun the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held dozens of Americans hostage. Consequently, Jimmy Carter's administration went to work helping Saddam Hussein's forces take the fight to Iran's Revolutionary Guard. U.S. officials provided Iraqi commanders with almost daily intelligence briefings on where Iran's forces were located and what they were up to. The war was still a draw, except that more than a million people died.
These days, the United States and a coalition that includes Canada have decided that Islamic State is the enemy since it has overrun large areas of Iraq, threatening the peace and sanctity of this recovering country and the region. In the anti-IS campaign involving coalition aircraft and Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces, the United States finds itself in a defacto alliance with none other than Iran, its old enemy.
Iran too is doing much to help Iraqis fight back against Islamic State. In fact it's doing a lot more than the U.S.-led coalition. While Canadian and other forces are training Iraqi Kurds, and coalition jets are bombing select IS targets, Iranian-back militias and Iranian forces themselves are leading the charge against Islamic State strongholds. The IS invasion last year was stopped in large part because of Iranian assistance.
This week the target is Tikrit a major Sunni city in the centre of Iraq that is famous for two things: It was the birthplace of Saladin, the great Kurdish warrior who drove the European Crusaders from the Holy Land, and home to Saddam Hussein, the brutal Iraqi dictator who would have liked to drive Kurds and Shiites out of his country.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Americans this week that Iran is as radicalized today as it ever has been and should not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. He also argued that just because Iranians are fighting against Islamic State doesn't make them good guys. The Shia radicals of Iran and the Sunni radicals of Islamic State are "competing for the crown of militant Islam," he told the U.S. Congress. There may be something to that.
On Monday, the two competitors squared off as a reported 30,000 Iraqi personnel launched an assault on towns in the Tikrit area that have been occupied by IS forces since June.
The attack force was comprised of regular Iraqi army units (mostly Shiites), Shia Iraqi militias, who make up about two thirds of the forces, and some Sunni tribal militias who also have opposed the IS invasion. At the helm of the operation, was Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force, who has been directing operations for some of Iraq's Shia militias. Alongside the fighters Iranian advisers and troops were reported to be operating artillery and surveillance drones.
There was no U.S. or coalition aircraft anywhere near the fighting; nor were there any Canadian or other coalition trainers on the ground. Iraqi officials said they had not asked the United States or its partners for help. In this battle at least, it is Iran and Iraq that are the friends in the fight against the enemy, Islamic State. The United States and Canada are sidelined.
"We still welcome the international alliance's support," Ali al-Alaa, an aide to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, told reporters this week. "But if they won't be supporting us, we have no problem."
There might be a big problem, however, if the predominantly Shia attack force attempts to drive the Sunni residents out of the Tikrit area along with the IS fighters, or to carry out reprisals against the population. Such things were perpetrated by Shia militias that defeated IS forces recently in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad.
In June, when IS forces moved into the Tikrit area, there was an apparent massacre of some 1500 Shia cadets at a former U.S. base known as Camp Speicher. The mass execution was said to have been carried out with the assistance of Sunni groups from the area, groups that once were loyal to Saddam Hussein.
While Iraqi officials say they launched this large-scale operation in Tikrit to lay the groundwork for an assault later this year on the IS-occupied northern city of Mosul, others, including U.S. commanders, aren't so sure. They worry that the Shia forces may have revenge against the Sunnis foremost in mind and that a sectarian bloodbath may result.
Sitting on the sidelines, however, they can only watch and wait.
Eds note: An earlier version incorrectly identified Iranian commanders as the beneficiaries of daily U.S. intelligence briefings.