Iran Focus
London, 2 Aug – The Iranian Regime dominates its neighbour Iraq in almost every way and is unwilling to surrender this power, but could Iraq evict them with help from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)?
Abdulrahman al-Rashed, the former General Manager of Al Arabiya News Channel, wrote an op-ed on Al Arabiya in which he assessed that Iraq, which is an oil –rich country, is more than capable of restoring its powers if the Iraqi nationalists work together and that it is in the interests of the GCC to support Iraqi independence.
Rashed wrote: “ I reiterate my opinion that the Gulf’s dissociation policy was a wrong policy that made it easy for the Iranians to interfere and expand and that viewing Iraq as a sectarian component is a misrepresentation of the political facts and it reflects a lack of understanding of the dynamics of politics and the society there.”
Why would Iran seek to control their fellow Gulf state?
In Iraq, Iran rules the roost, controlling everything from the government to the economy and even, according to a New York Times report, the media and the illegal drug trade.
Iran claims that Iraq will collapse without the Iranian Regime and that they reclaimed Mosul from ISIS, but there are both lies.
The truth is that Iraq is necessary to the Iranian Regime’s dream on a Shiite Crescent stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Meditteranean and they have been working on this for 14 years now.
According to Rashed, Tehran has now become the centre of Iraqi politics and Iraqi politicians visit Iran to receive support from their commanders.
The veteran journalist compared this to the Syrian occupation of Lebanon.
Sayyed Muqtada al-Sadr, an influential Iraqi politician who rejects Iranian domination and wants independence for Iraq, and Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi recently visited Saudi Arabia on separate occasions, which many have seen as a restoration of traditional allyships.
This is a clear about face from the official Iraqi line perpetrated by politicians like the current vice president Nouri al-Maliki.
Rashed wrote: “[Sadr and Abadi’s] stance is not based on rejecting good relations with their neighbour, Iran, but on rejecting its domination.”
These are just some of the awful things that Iran currently does in Iraq:
• Seizing resources, be it drilling for oil in Iraqi oil fields or diverting water from Iraq to Iran
• Laundering money through Iraqi banks
• Establishing Iraqi militias that answer to Iran, not Iraq
• Interfering in the government by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC)
• Appointing governors and heads of municipalities who work for Iran
• Managing state and private media outlets
Rashed wrote: “Iraq is a big country and it’s not a banana republic for the extremist security and religious regime of Tehran which the latter can financially drain to fund its military adventures in Syria, Lebanon and other countries.”
Rashed noted that it is the duty of all countries in the Middle East to stand up to Iranian domination of foreign countries, like the domination of Iran’s Quds Brigade over Iraqi state institutions.
He wrote: “The Iraqis need the entire world to hear them say that they will fight Iranian domination and expel the Revolutionary Guards from their country. This is the Iraqis’ project and not the project of Gulf countries, Arabs or others.”
