How Iraq Maneuvered the US Exit

The neocons’ treasured Iraq War myth of their “successful surge” is belied by the actual history of how Iraqi Shiite leaders collaborated with Iran to tamp down internal violence and then destroy neocon plans for long-term U.S. military bases to project power in the Middle East, as Gareth Porter explains.

By Gareth Porter

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s suggestion that the end of the U.S. troop presence in Iraq is part of a U.S. military success story ignores the fact that the George W. Bush administration and the U.S. military had planned to maintain a semi-permanent military presence in Iraq.

The real story behind the U.S. withdrawal is how a clever strategy of deception and diplomacy adopted by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in cooperation with Iran outmaneuvered Bush and the U.S. military leadership and got the United States to sign the U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki

A central element of the Maliki-Iran strategy was the common interest that Maliki, Iran and anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr shared in ending the U.S. occupation, despite their differences over other issues. Maliki needed Sadr’s support, which was initially based on Maliki’s commitment to obtain a time schedule for U.S. troops’ withdrawal from Iraq.

In early June 2006, a draft national reconciliation plan that circulated among Iraqi political groups included agreement on “a time schedule to pull out the troops from Iraq” along with the build-up of Iraqi military forces. But after a quick trip to Baghdad, Bush rejected the idea of a withdrawal timetable.

Maliki’s national security adviser Mowaffak Al-Rubaei revealed in a Washington Post op-ed that Maliki wanted foreign troops reduced by more than 30,000 to under 100,000 by the end of 2006 and withdrawal of “most of the remaining troops” by end of the 2007. When the full text of the reconciliation plan was published June 25, 2006, however, the commitment to a withdrawal timetable was missing.

In June 2007, senior Bush administration officials began leaking to reporters plans for maintaining what The New York Times described as “a near-permanent presence” in Iraq, which would involve control of four major bases. Maliki immediately sent Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari to Washington to dangle the bait of an agreement on troops before then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

As recounted in Linda Robinson’s Tell Me How This Ends, Zebari urged Cheney to begin negotiating the U.S. military presence in order to reduce the odds of an abrupt withdrawal that would play into the hands of the Iranians.

In a meeting with then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in September 2007, National Security Adviser Rubaie said Maliki wanted a “Status of Forces Agreement” (SOFA) that would allow U.S. forces to remain but would “eliminate the irritants that are apparent violations of Iraqi sovereignty”, according Bob Woodward’s The War Within.

Maliki’s national security adviser was also seeking to protect the Mahdi Army from U.S. military plans to target it for major attacks. Meeting Bush’s coordinator for the Iraq War, Douglas Lute, Rubaie said it was better for Iraqi security forces to take on Sadr’s militias than for U.S. Special Forces to do so. He explained to the Baker-Hamilton Commission that Sadr’s use of military force was not a problem for Maliki, because Sadr was still part of the government.

Publicly, the Maliki government continued to assure the Bush administration it could count on a long-term military presence. Asked by NBC’s Richard Engel on Jan. 24, 2008, if the agreement would provide long-term U.S. bases in Iraq, Zebari said, “This is an agreement of enduring military support. The soldiers are going to have to stay someplace. They can’t stay in the air.”

Confident that it was going to get a South Korea-style SOFA, the Bush administration gave the Iraqi government a draft on March 7, 2008, that provided for no limit on the number of U.S. troops or the duration of their presence. Nor did it give Iraq any control over U.S. military operations. But Maliki had a surprise in store for Washington.

A series of dramatic moves by Maliki and Iran over the next few months showed that there had been an explicit understanding between the two governments to prevent the U.S. military from launching major operations against the Mahdi Army and to reach an agreement with Sadr on ending the Mahdi Army’s role in return for assurances that Maliki would demand the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces.

In mid-March 2007, Maliki ignored pressure from a personal visit by Cheney to cooperate in taking down the Mahdi Army and instead abruptly vetoed U.S. military plans for a major operation against the Mahdi Army in Basra. Maliki ordered an Iraqi army assault on the dug-in Sadrist forces.

Predictably, the operation ran into trouble, and within days, Iraqi officials had asked Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), to intervene and negotiate a ceasefire with Sadr, who agreed, although his troops were far from defeated.

A few weeks later, Maliki again prevented the United States from launching its biggest campaign yet against the Mahdi Army in Sadr City. And again, Suleimani was brought in to work out a deal with Sadr allowing government troops to patrol in the former Mahdi Army stronghold.

There was subtext to Suleimani’s interventions. Just as Suleimani was negotiating the Basra ceasefire with Sadr, a website associated with former IRGC Commander Mohsen Rezai said Iran opposed actions by “hard-line clans” that “only weaken the government and people of Iraq and give a pretext to its occupiers”.

In the days that followed that agreement, Iranian state news media portrayed the Iraqi crackdown in Basra as being against illegal and “criminal” forces. The timing of each political diplomatic move by Maliki appears to have been determined in discussions between Maliki and top Iranian officials.

Just two days after returning from a visit to Tehran in June 2008, Maliki complained publicly about U.S. demands for indefinite access to military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and immunity from prosecution for U.S. troops and private contractors. In July, he revealed that his government was demanding the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops on a timetable.

The Bush administration was in a state of shock. From July to October, it pretended that it could simply refuse to accept the withdrawal demand, while trying vainly to pressure Maliki to back down. In the end, however, Bush administration officials realized that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who was then far ahead of Republican John McCain in polls, would accept the same or an even faster timetable for withdrawal.

In October, Bush decided to sign the draft agreement pledging withdrawal of all U.S. troops by the end of 2011. The ambitious plans of the U.S. military to use Iraq to dominate the Middle East militarily and politically had been foiled by the very regime the United States had installed, and the officials behind the U.S. scheme, had been clueless about what was happening until it was too late.

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006. [This article was originally published by Inter Press Service.]

8 comments for “How Iraq Maneuvered the US Exit

  1. Gerald R Perdue
    December 21, 2011 at 10:14

    With all the sabre rattling coming from Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta it would seem war is almost inevitable. Accept for the fact that an attack on Iran would drive the price of oil to $200 – $300 a barrel which would send our economy into a deep depression. Do you think our dear leaders are that insane? I truly don’t really know anymore.

  2. December 18, 2011 at 12:04

    When studying the Mddle east, it’s as well to look back to deep history.

    Start with the collapse of the Ottoam Empre and go on from there.

    The mid C20 model that these were men fallen into bad hands yearning to be free, doesn’t ctually work.

    The US is getting out of it, but give the Republicans a chance and they’ll want to give Iran a bloody nose, and it won’t work.

  3. News Nag
    December 18, 2011 at 08:52

    Yes, Bush et al didn’t want a full withdrawal, and everything’s backfired on them. Stupid is as stupid does. However, as the saying goes, “This is very good news for John McCain”, which means that a more open Iraqi and Iranian alliance will create an even more facile pretext for additional and even greater U.S. aggression in the region, notably against Iran and its nuclear program, ostensibly in order to ‘neutralize’ the increased influence of the new alliance. Empire is as empire does, as well.

  4. Anonymous
    December 18, 2011 at 03:23

    Perhaps an attack on Iran is certain now.

  5. JCDavis
    December 17, 2011 at 11:53

    When Iraq and Iran sign a mutual defense agreement, that will be the final irony in our corrupt and insane Middle East policy.

    • December 19, 2011 at 10:06

      You’ve got that right big time.

      Unfortunately, it appears to be a minority viewpoint! The one big question for the U.S. Government is how long democrats and republicans can continue our “corrupt and insane Middle East policy”?

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