Worldview: Iraqi's visit tests whether U.S. has Mideast policy
The visit of Iraq's Prime Minister Haidar Abadi to Washington this week will test whether the White House has any Mideast strategy beyond a nuclear deal with Iran.
Even administration optimists have revised naive hopes that an accord would stabilize the region.
"We can do two things at the same time," Secretary of State John Kerry told the PBS Newshour, meaning negotiate while standing up to Iranian interference in Yemen. The bigger question is whether the White House has a strategy to offset Iran's drive to dominate its neighbors, a drive that is fueling sectarian war throughout the region.
The test case is Iraq.
Abadi arrives as the war against ISIS is heating up within Iraq, the main battlefield for that struggle. But the Iraqi fight is being undercut by the machinations of Iran.
Our ill-planned Iraq war - and the heedless way President Obama quit Iraq in 2011 - boosted Iran's influence in the region and in Baghdad.
The previous prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, intensified links with Tehran and politicized Iraq's army, which collapsed when ISIS seized a third of the country. Abadi is a far better leader and acts as an Iraqi nationalist rather than a sectarian. He is trying to rebuild the Iraqi army - with U.S. help - but this will be a long process.
In the meantime, Shiite militias, some closely allied with Iran, have led the fight to liberate areas held by ISIS. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, head of the Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, has publicly let himself be photographed alongside Iraqi Shiite fighting groups.
Yet the occupied areas are populated largely by Sunni civilians, who are fearful of the Shiite militias - and of Tehran. Those areas won't be liberated unless local Sunnis rise up against ISIS.
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Worldview: Iraqi's visit tests whether U.S. has Mideast policy