Obama acts to protect, support Iran with Iraqi intervention

Obama willingness to send military personnel and supplies to Iraq is a confusing twist, only if you ignore Iran’s fear of ISIS on its borders

No one was more shocked than President Barack Obama that he is sending more American troops into Iraq and bombing the Islamic State of Iraq’s convoys.

But, the Iranians must be pleased that once again, Obama has lined up his foreign policy with the goals and interests of Tehran.

Speaking on the South Lawn of the White House Aug. 9, the president was asked if he had second thoughts about withdrawing troops from Iraq.

Obama said the question mystified him. “What I just find interesting is the degree to which this issue keeps on coming up, as if this was my decision.”

The president then went on to explain that President George W. Bush, who heretofore was a warmonger, was actually a naïve peace-at-any-price hippie—and the man who took American troops out of Iraq.

But, hey, Mr. President, forgive us if we seem confused.

The sad truth is that the only constant to Obama foreign policy is that he does whatever is good for Iran.

Here is the quick list: Egypt, Libya, Syria and Iraq.

In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak was an opponent of Iran and since taking power in 1981, he continued his country’s relationship with Israel and blocked the Iranians from the Suez Canal. In 2011, the Muslim Brotherhood—with the support of Obama—overthrew Mubarak.

Immediately upon taking power, the MB broke off communications between the Israeli and Egyptian armies, opened up the Suez Canal to Iran and started to spin up Hamas, the Iranian front group in Gaza.

When the MB harassed and tortured Christians and burned Christian churches, there was nary a peep from Obama.

Only when the Egyptian people rose up against their MB tyrants did Obama make a move.

After seeing the fate of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Muammar Kaddafi “came to Jesus” and turned in,  shut down his own program of weapons of mass destruction and made some amends for his role in the Lockerbie airline bombing. Always a strange bird, Kaddafi post-2003 was working to reengage with the West and his children were sent out to make nice.

For Iran, Kaddafi presented two problems. First, overtly, he signaled to the rest of the Islamic world that even the craziest Muslim leader on earth could make a deal with the West. Second, covertly, Kaddafi provided critical intelligence about terrorism networks and black market arms trading.

It is not widely known, but many of the anti-Iraqi insurgents were from Libya’s eastern tribes, and the area around Benghazi. In 2010 and 2011, when Iraq had all the look and feel of a stable and maturing democracy, those insurgents started going home. Once home, they started agitating with a confidence born from their combat experience in Iraq.

This point is key: when Kaddafi, a man becoming America’s friend, moved against the former insurgents, who had been killing American soldiers in Iraq, Obama moved against Kaddafi.

In a short war, Obama and NATO destroyed the Kaddafi regime and another Iranian problem was solved.

In the months after the end of the regime, American Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, working with CIA paramilitaries and operators, attempted to channel stockpiles of military equipment and materiel from the old regime to Syrian rebels. Stevens may have thought he was executing American policy, but on the night of Sept. 11, 2012, the nation’s most senior national security leadership allowed the mission in Benghazi to be overrun by militants, in an attack that killed Stevens and three other Americans.

Three years ago, the government of Bashir Assad looked like a goner. Think of the possibilities of what could have been. A peaceful and democratic Syria would have taken away a major threat to Israel’s existence and it would have put the kibosh on Iranian troublemaking in Lebanon.

That was enough for Obama to say: Whoa!

Despite having American troops in neighboring Iraq, and despite the overwhelming loathing for Assad and his ruling clique, Obama slow-walked assistance, until the middle-class, pro-Western rebels were squeezed out and the only rebels left were The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant army, or ISIS.

Of course, when the American military left Iraq, its roads and airspace became open to the Iranian logistics support of Assad—a move that on its own guaranteed the survival of the regime.

The Assad regime reached an understanding with ISIS, which left the rebel army in control of the countryside and left the government with the cities. This non-aggression pact, while tenuous along the loose borders, brought the revolution in Syria to a stop.

Secure in its Syrian gains, ISIS was free to invade Iraq.

What does this have to do with Iran?

The American media has an infuriating habit of explaining Iraq as if it were Caesar’s Gaul, divided into three parts: Sunni, Shia and Kurd. Suffice to say, this formula fails to account for tribal or ethno-cultural factors.

Yes, the Iranians have infiltrated all parts of the Iraqi government and have used the instruments of the state to harass and attack Sunnis.

Yes, the Iranians are Shia and the majority of Iraqis are Shia.

But, Iraqis are nearly all Arabs, ethnically. The Iranians are Persians, and this is a major, major rub. For all of their machinations, the Iranians must act covertly through agents because Arabs do not want to live under the thumb of Persians.

Look back in June, when Secretary of State John F. Kerry held talks with Tehran for the purpose of forming a military alliance to confront ISIS.

Clearly, ISIS is a threat to the Iranian project to create a pan-Persian sphere of influence that would run from west from Iran through Iraq and Syria and to the sea. Heck, having ISIS next door is a threat to Iran-proper.

The purpose of the talks was to work out American support for Iranian intervention into Iraq. To simpletons, relying on the Sunni v. Shia formula this makes perfect sense. But, the reality on the ground is that even in the overwhelmingly Shia South, Iraqis would take up arms against Persian “liberators.”

Now it is August and ISIS is only getting stronger. It is poised to take Baghdad and move against the southeastern provinces of Wasit, Masan and Basra that are key markets and trade areas for the Iranians—not to mention a huge swath of their border.

The media is telling us that American aid to the Iraq government is in response to the plight of the Iraqi Christians. But, seriously, we have seen in Egypt, Libya and Syria that this administration does not pick up the phone when Christians are in trouble.

However, over and over, when Obama does act—and sometimes in a panic—it is to support and foster the interests of Iran.

Now, when a real army inching towards the Iranian border, the president whose very candidacy in 2008 was based on his opposition to troops in Iraq, and whose determination to withdraw American troops from Iraq was unhindered by logic or America’s interests, is ramping up our military assistance to Iraq and has increased our personnel there to roughly 1,000, up from 200 one year ago.

If only the Iranians were worried about the security of our border with Mexico or the burden of our federal debt, we could really see some improvements here at home.