How Successful Was Barzani’s Washington Visit?

WASHINGTON DC – Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, has been in Washington this past week. Along with his ministerial delegation, Barzani met with almost every single powerful Obama Administration official including the US President himself, Vice President Biden, and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter. 
 
Even though Kurdistan is part of Iraq, Barzani tried to project that he was in Washington only as a Kurdish leader, and not an Iraqi one. For instance, the hotel where he stayed for a week, the Ritz Carlton, raised only one Middle Eastern flag: Kurdistan’s. 

After describing his White House meeting as “very successful,” Barzani declared that independence was on its way for the Kurdish people. 

How significant was Barzani’s visit to Washington? Why has this trip in particular filled Mr Barzani with optimism? And what kind of relationship does the United States now have with the autonomous region in northern Iraq? 

In our Washington studios, Rudaw’s Namo Abdulla talks to:

- Nussaibah Younis, senior Research Associate at the Project on Middle East Democracy in Washington DC, author of 'Invasion to ISIS: Iraq, State Weakness and Foreign Policy’

- Ernie Audino, Retired Brigadier General in United State Army. Ernie spent a year in Kurdistan fighting alongside the Kurdish Peshmerga forces against the terror group known as the Islamic State (ISIS).