Iraqis and Americans both are scratching their heads trying to figure out the logic of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s threats this past week to close the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and bring all Americans home. His move comes just over a month after President Trump met Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Kadhimi in the Oval Office and declared, “Our relationship now is better than ever before.”
Pompeo is angry (with reason) about the presence inside Iraq of groups planning attacks on the U.S. Embassy compound, a nearly $1 billion fortress roughly the size of Vatican City. Frankly, Iraqis are angry too, as the attacks are both an affront to Iraq’s sovereignty and mostly miss the embassy and instead strike Iraqi homes.
The greatest logical problem, however, is the threat to acquiesce to Iran’s demands — a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq — unless Iran restrains militias it controls. This is equivalent to threatening to shoot yourself in the head to stop a sniper from trying to shoot you in the head.
Even if Pompeo is bluffing, the cost is high. At a time that allies’ confidence in the United States is plummeting, Pompeo signals once again that friendship with the U.S. is meaningless to the White House and the State Department. This plays into the hands of Russia and China at a time when they are seeking to convince Middle Eastern states that they, and not the U.S., are friends to trust.
This week will mark the one-year anniversary of a mass protest movement in Iraq to demand change and accountable government. Iran’s leadership fears the precedent of democracy and a government accountable to the Iranian people. This is the major reason why pro-Iranian militias fired into crowds of Iraqi protesters. The Iraqis would not be cowed, however, and ultimately, Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi resigned.
Parliament and the president put forward Kadhimi after two earlier, unsuccessful selections not merely as yet another candidate to occupy Baghdad’s Republican Palace but rather as an interim leader to guide Iraq until new elections could be held under new laws and regulations meant to make Iraqi parliamentarians more accountable to the people and unravel the stranglehold party bosses had until then enjoyed. Kadhimi was true to his promise and called new elections for next summer. Iraqi officials have already begun work on the polls, which could set Iraq on a more stable, less tumultuous course.
Elections are expensive. Countries recovering from state failure, war, or civil strife seldom have the money to print ballots, establish polling centers across the country, and conduct the sort of logistics that make elections possible. This is one of the reasons why the U.S. Agency for International Development recently pledged the same budget for 2021 as it earmarked to Iraq for 2020. USAID earmarked part of this allotment to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq to underwrite the elections. In this, it was alone among Iraq’s other partners, including European states in which actual support for Iraq’s democratic progress often lags far behind their rhetorical support.
Pompeo’s threat to close the embassy may be a bluff, but it will nevertheless distract the embassy from its purpose and job. The idea that diplomats and technocrats who need to pack up and depart will spend any time pushing Iraq forward to elections is risible. If USAID is not present, its pledges will go unfulfilled, endangering the elections upon which the future stability of Iraq depends.
Iraqi protesters are impatient, and the goodwill Kadhimi enjoys is evaporating. Should elections be postponed, the streets will erupt to the benefit only of Iran, the proxies it supports, and the politicians it buys. Kadhimi does not have the political base to weather endless election postponements. Indeed, his legitimacy rests solely on the idea that he is not just another self-serving politician who puts his power first. USAID’s withdrawal from Iraq will compound the problem as Iranian-backed charities, most controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, establish monopolies over areas in which the U.S. and its Western partners stop working.
The White House and the State Department may believe they are underscoring their seriousness to counter Iran, but the costs of Pompeo’s strategy far outstrip its benefits. Iraq should be no one’s battlefield. If Iran is the problem, then the U.S. should embrace policies that make Iran and its proxies pay directly.
Under no circumstances, however, should Trump and Pompeo undercut America’s strategic posture or undermine an election that, in combination with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani’s recent statements, is guaranteed to undercut the legitimacy of those groups most corrosive to Iraqi sovereignty and Iraq’s recovery. It’s not too late for Pompeo to clarify his statements to underscore America’s continued commitment to Iraq and highlight to both Iraq and the region the benefit that the strategic partnership brings to Iraq and the broader region.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
