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Middle East
A US soldier stands at Taji base north of Baghdad on December 29, 2014. File photo: Ali al-Saadi/AFP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Iraq and the wider Middle East are becoming less and less important for the United States, an Iraqi expert told Rudaw in a panel last week.
“The Middle East is less and less important to US policy. The only important piece is Israel and the relationships that can be built within the Middle East with the state of Israel,” Rend al-Rahim, co-founder of the Iraq Foundation said during an online panel by Rudaw Research Center on October 22.
“For example, the UAE is now very important and has been important because of their relationship with Israel,” added the Iraqi expert, who worked as the head of the Iraqi mission in Washington DC between 2003 and 2005.
“As of Iraq itself, it is rather a stale topic,” believes al-Rahim, adding that the US returned to Iraq in 2014 when Islamic State (ISIS) controlled swathes of Iraqi land “not because of necessarily love of Iraq but because of Iraq’s intrinsic importance to US policy.”
“So, Iraq is sort of a topic that the US I think would rather not deal with. That’s true whether it is [Donald] Trump or [Joe] Biden.”
The US will hold a presidential election on November 3, and both Trump and Biden continue to rally for votes across the country.
Regarding attacks against US mission and interests by Iran-backed militia groups in Iraq, al-Rahim said Biden is “less impulsive. He is going to be more deliberative, more consultative, and more predictive.”
Douglas Silliman is the former US ambassador to Iraq. He has served under both former President Barack Obama and President Trump.
“I have had conversations with Biden and President Trump and senior members of both administrations about Iraq and the region,” he said during the panel.
He thinks there are a lot of similarities between Biden and Trump’s policy on Iran, adding that both will be specifically concerned about attacks on the US embassy and the fight against ISIS.
Both “will continue to be concerned about the lack of complete defeat of Daesh inside Iraq and in the region, and counterterrorism will be a big part of Iraq policy,” said Silliman, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
They will be concerned about Iran’s “meddling” in Shiite militia groups, he added.
Andrew Parasiliti, the president and chief of content officer of Al-Monitor told the panel that both candidates will respect the territorial integrity of Iraq.
He believes that if Biden becomes US president, “there will be a slow-down in terms of the discussions on withdrawal in Iraq.”
Trump has said multiple times that he wants to withdraw from Iraq and end “endless wars.” US soldiers have already withdrawn from several Iraqi bases this year, compounded by Iran-backed attacks on Iraqi bases hosting US-led coalition troops.
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