Foreign Policy article: The Biden administration's deliberate absence from Iraq gave Iran the upper hand

Former US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Schenker criticized the Biden administration's policy in Iraq, noting that the country has become less stable than it was before the era of the new administration, and that American interests there are more vulnerable to threat.

Schenker said - in an article for the American Foreign Policy magazine - that Biden boasted about 6 weeks ago in an article published by the Washington Post that the Middle East has become "more stable and secure" than it was during the era of his predecessor, Donald Trump.

Speaking about Iraq, he pointed out that the missile attacks against US forces and diplomats had witnessed a noticeable decline.

The writer comments that Biden may be right about the decline in targeting US forces in Iraq, but this single measure is not sufficient to bolster his claims about the stability of the country, as almost all other measures indicate that Iraq today is less stable than it was in January 2021 when Biden took office in the United States.

Schenker said that the recent events constituted a remarkable transformation in Iraq, which only 10 months ago seemed to be on the verge of forming a government that would take it upon itself to reduce the destructive role played by Iran-backed militias in the country, and to impose Iraqi sovereignty on its largest neighbor.

Now that Iran's political allies have the upper hand in Iraq, the country's fragile democracy is under unprecedented threat, and for the first time in a decade, violence even among Shiite groups is likely.

Washington missed the opportunity

Schenker went on to say that it should not have gone this way, as the biggest winner in the parliamentary elections that took place last October was Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, who called during the election campaign for an Iraq that is not dominated by Washington or Tehran.

Al-Sadr's coalition obtained a majority in parliament when it won 329 seats in the House of Representatives, defeating the Iranian-backed Shiite Islamist parties that represent the political arms of the militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces.

The writer pointed out that the Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr - whose Mahdi Army confronted the American forces during the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the American forces almost killed him at the time - is not a magic solution, but recently he presents himself as a national figure who fights corruption and opposes the military activities of the crowd forces. Popular militias in Iraq targeting diplomats and US forces in Iraq.

Schenker - who is now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy - believes that the Iraqi legislative elections could have contributed to weakening Iran's control in Iraq, but the American disengagement that occurred during the government formation process left a void that Tehran quickly filled with enthusiasm.

Strengthening Tehran's influence

In his article, the American diplomat pointed out that the continuation of the recent crisis and its call by al-Sadr to dissolve parliament and hold early elections under the amended election law, and the opposition of the coordination framework backed by Iran to those demands;

It led to an escalation of tensions between Shiites in Iraq.

He said that regardless of the consequences of the current crisis and the solutions that will put an end to it, it will lead to strengthening Iran's position in Baghdad, which means abort the will of the Iraqi voters who voted overwhelmingly for change in the elections last October.

Schenker questioned the ability of the United States to influence the aforementioned scenario, which leads to strengthening Tehran's influence in Iraq, and said that the US administration had made little efforts to prevent this.

He said that during the 9 months between the announcement of the election results and the sit-in carried out by al-Sadr's supporters in the Iraqi parliament, the number of visits by senior officials of the US State Department and the National Security Council to Iraq did not exceed two.

While the number of visits made by the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Esmail Qaani and other senior Iranian officials to Iraq, exceeded 10 visits in recent months to threaten their opponents and persuade their local partners to form the next government, according to the article.

Schenker concluded that this discrepancy in the number of visits between US and Iranian officials reflects the position of the United States, which has pursued a policy of non-interference in what is happening in Iraq, as the Biden administration did not use Washington's diplomatic and economic influence to protect the democratic process that is under attack by Tehran, as he described it.