Iraq Urges Iran to Respect Nuclear Accord

Iraq's top diplomat Friday called on Iran to respect the landmark deal covering its nuclear program, which has been weakened by the US decision to withdraw from it and Tehran's backing away from certain commitments.

"We think the JCPOA is a good agreement," said Iraq's Foreign Minister Mohammed Ali al-Hakim, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed by Iran in 2015 with Russia, China, Germany, Britain and the United States.

Under the terms of the deal, the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, is charged with regular inspections of declared facilities in Iran such as uranium mines and centrifuge workshops for up to 25 years.

The aim is to ensure that Iran is not holding undeclared stocks of nuclear material and is not enriching uranium past a certain level.

"We encourage the Iranian government to stick to the JCPOA and stick to the spirit of the agreement and continue with it," he told reporters in Oslo during a press briefing at a conference on combating sexual violence in humanitarian crises.

The already strained relations between Washington and Tehran have deteriorated in recent weeks.

Iran has suspended some of its commitments under the JCPOA, a year after US President Donald Trump pulled out of the deal, while his administration has reinforced economic sanctions against the Islamic republic. 

The Pentagon, which has already sent an aircraft carrier, a warship, B-52 bombers and a Patriot missile battery to the region, is considering sending additional troops to the Middle East, US Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan announced Thursday. 

"The last thing we need is another conflict in the area. We've already had a lot of conflicts in the area," al-Hakim said Friday.

“I don't think anybody wants $200 per barrel of oil coming soon," he added.

Iraq has said it is prepared to help de-escalate the situation. 

On Tuesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi announced that he intended to send delegations to the US and Iran "very soon" in an attempt to ease tensions between the two countries.

Photo: IRNA

Iraq Caught in the Middle of US-Iran Face-Off

By Ali Choukeir

Scarred by two decades of conflict, Iraq finds itself caught in the middle of a US-Iranian tug-of-war, fearing it could pay the price of any confrontation between its two main allies.

Analysts say third parties may seek to exploit the latest spike in tensions between Tehran and Washington to spark a showdown that serves their own interests.

Iraq "pays a disproportionate tax on Iranian-American tensions and (has) an unenviable front-line position in any future conflict between the two," said Fanar Haddad, an Iraq expert at the National University of Singapore.

During the three-year battle to oust the Islamic State group from Iraqi cities, powerful Iran-backed Shiite militias on the ground effectively fought on the same side as US-led coalition warplanes in the skies.

But since Iraq declared victory over the jihadists in December 2017, relations between Washington and Tehran have deteriorated sharply.

In May last year, US President Donald Trump pulled out of a landmark 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and later re-instated tough sanctions.

This April, Washington dubbed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a “foreign terrorist organization", prompting Iran to designate US troops across the region as "terrorists".

Tensions escalated this month, with Washington deploying a carrier group and B-52 bombers to the Gulf over alleged, unspecified Iranian "threats".

The Trump administration last week ordered non-essential diplomatic staff out of Iraq, alleging Iran-backed armed groups posed an "imminent" threat.

On Sunday, a rocket was fired into the "Green Zone" of Baghdad that houses government offices and embassies, including the US mission.

There has been no claim of responsibility.

For Iraqi political analyst Essam al-Fili, the rocket attack was a sign some sides want to pull Tehran and Washington into a confrontation in Shiite-majority Iraq.

"There are those who want to fight Iran with other people's weapons, and those who want to fight the US with other people's weapons," he said.

But he added that Iran has "so far favored restraint in Iraq, a country which is vulnerable on the security front".

Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi has echoed those fears, saying Tuesday that Iraq would "very soon send delegations to Tehran and Washington to push for calm.”

He warned that Iraq "does not have the option of distancing itself" from US-Iranian tensions, and stressed the need to "avoid giving other parties the space to inflame the situation".

'Settling Old Scores'

Several groups in the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary coalition that battled IS denied any link to the rocket attack, with Assaib Ahl al-Haq chief Qais al-Khazali pointing a finger at "Israeli interests".

Analyst Karim Bitar stressed that "the stakes are so high that Iranian proxies cannot act without an explicit green light" from Iran's Revolutionary Guard force.

Tehran and Washington "know perfectly well that it's an unwinnable war and that an all-out confrontation would be devastating for both the US and Iran", said Bitar, an expert at France's Institute for International and Strategic Affairs.

But, he added, "the inflammatory rhetoric of the past few weeks plays right into the hands of Iran's hardliners" as well as pleasing Saudi Arabia and Israel, "bent on settling old scores with Iran".

Tehran accuses its regional Sunni rival Riyadh and archfoe Israel of pressing the Trump administration to adopt a hard line.

But experts doubt the crisis will result in a head-on confrontation with Washington.

"There won't be a direct war. The United States is counting on a collapse of the (Iranian) economy, which could be accompanied by limited air strikes," said Iraqi political scientist Hashem al-Hashemi.

He said Washington may also urge Israel to carry out air strikes against Iran's militia allies in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.

Meanwhile, memories of American interventions in recent years could also dampen Washington's appetite for an offensive.

"The US foreign policy and security establishment knows full well that attacking Iran would make the Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya wars look like walks in the park," Bitar said.

"So besides some messages that could be sent on the Iraqi arena, unless utter madness prevails, a large, open, direct war is still unlikely."

Photo: IRNA

Iran Leader Urges Iraq to Demand US Withdraw Troops

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called on Iraq to demand US troops leave "as soon as possible", warning that Washington is plotting to remove the Iraqi government.

The remarks came during a visit to Tehran on Saturday by Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi, whose country is under pressure from the United States to distance itself from Iran.

"You should take actions to make sure the Americans withdraw their troops from Iraq as soon as possible because wherever they have had an enduring presence, forcing them out has become problematic," Khamenei told Abdel Mahdi.

"The current government and parliament in Iraq and the political figures are not what the US desires; they plot to remove them from the political scene of Iraq," he said, according to his official website.

Abdel Mahdi, on his first official trip to Iran, also met Saturday with President Hassan Rouhani, who visited Iraq last month.

Baghdad is under pressure from Washington to limit ties with its neighbor, particularly after the United States withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal last year and hit Tehran with sanctions. 

Iran has close but complicated ties with Iraq, with significant influence among its Shiite political groups.

The two countries fought a bloody war from 1980 to 1988 and Tehran's influence in Baghdad grew after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq toppled the government of Saddam Hussein.

Iran was the first country to respond to Iraqi calls for help after Islamic State group jihadists captured Mosul in 2014 and threatened to overrun Baghdad and Kirkuk.

Tehran dispatched "military advisors" and equipment overnight along with the Revolutionary Guards elite Qods Force commander Qasem Soleimani to prevent IS jihadists from approaching its western borders.

Terrorism Blacklist

According to the Wall Street Journal, Washington is planning to designate the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization, an unprecedented move that would escalate tensions between the two countries.

The newspaper, quoting unnamed officials, said President Donald Trump's administration would announce the long-mulled decision as soon as Monday.

But it said that the Pentagon and the CIA were concerned the move would increase risks for US troops without doing much more to damage the Iranian economy.

Iran's parliament has vowed to retaliate by passing an urgent bill putting American troops on a terrorism blacklist alongside the Islamic State group, the semi-official news agency ISNA reported.

“Even though we believe one should not play along with America's extreme acts, the reality is that we must retaliate," the head of Iran's influential national security and foreign policy commission, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, told ISNA.

A statement signed by a majority of MPs in support of the bill said any action against Iran's national security and its armed forces was "crossing a red line" and the US administration would "regret" its decision. 

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp was formed after the 1979 Islamic revolution with a mission to defend the new system.

Designating the Guards as a terrorist organization would "effectively be a service to terrorists," Falahatpisheh said, since they have "the biggest role in combatting terrorism" in the region.

Photo Credit: IRNA

Iraq PM to Make First Official Iran Visit Saturday

Iraqi premier Adel Abdel Mahdi will travel to Iran on Saturday, a member of his office said, in his first official visit to the country rivaling Washington for influence over Baghdad.

The US reimposed tough sanctions on Tehran's energy and finance sectors last year but has granted Baghdad several exemptions to keep temporarily importing Iranian gas and electricity, crucial to Iraq's faltering power sector.

Abdel Mahdi, 77, has repeatedly said Iraq wants good ties with both the US and Iran. 

The prime minister would spend two days in the Islamic republic, a member of his office told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to press.

He was expected to discuss "the issue of trade outside the framework of sanctions" in addition to "the rapprochement and the convergence of views between Iran and Arab countries", the official said. 

Iran is the second-largest supplier of imported goods to Iraq and also enjoys vast political influence in the country, particularly among Iraq's Shiite parties. 

Those factions credit Iran for helping Iraqi armed forces defeat the Islamic State group in a fierce three-year battle that ravaged much of the country. 

Since declaring victory over IS in 2017, Iraq has strived to make a diplomatic comeback as a mediator among regional rivals.

A string of top officials have visited the Iraqi capital in recent months, including Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in March, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in January, and a host of Arab leaders. 

During his weekly press conference on Tuesday, Abdel Mahdi said he was planning trips to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States, without specifying dates. 

The premier has rarely travelled since coming to power in October, making his first trip abroad in late March to Egypt.

There, he met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and King Abdullah II of Jordan to discuss economic and security cooperation among the three countries. 

Last month, Iraq's speaker of parliament Mohammed al-Halbusi travelled to the US, where he said his country would need to rely on Iranian gas and electricity for another three years.

Photo Credit: President.ir

Iran Foreign Minister in Baghdad for Talks

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met with his Iraqi counterpart in Baghdad on Sunday for wide-ranging talks, including on US sanctions against Tehran.

The visit came just days after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a surprise stop on his regional tour to urge Iraq to stop relying on Iran for gas and electricity imports.

Washington has granted Baghdad a waiver until late March to keep buying Iranian gas and power, despite reimposing tough sanctions on Tehran in November.

After a two-hour meeting on Sunday, Iraq's top diplomat Mohammed Ali al-Hakim said he had talked through the restrictions with his counterpart. 

"We discussed the unilateral economic measures taken by the US and are working with our neighbour (Iran) on them," Hakim said.

Zarif slammed Washington's role in the region.

"These failures have continued for the past 40 years and my proposal to countries (in the region) is to not bet on a losing horse," he told reporters. 

Iran's foreign minister went on to meet Iraqi premier Adel Abdel Mahdi, who released a statement affirming: "Iraq's policy is built on seeking the best ties with all of its neighbors." 

Zarif is expected to attend several economic forums in various Iraqi cities, including Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdish north.

 While in Baghdad, he discussed numerous political and economic issues with his Iraqi counterpart including Syria and Yemen.

Hakim said Iraq was in favour of the Arab League reinstating Syria's membership, eight years after suspending it as the conflict there unfolded.

Following Zarif's visit, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is also expected to travel to Iraq in the near future.

Iran is the second-largest source of imported goods in Iraq.

Besides canned food and cars, Baghdad also buys 1,300 megawatts of electricity and 28 million cubic meters of natural gas daily from Iran to feed power plants.

That dependence is uncomfortable for Washington, which sees Tehran as its top regional foe and expects Iraq to wean itself off Iranian energy resources. 

But energy ties between Baghdad and Tehran appear to have remained close, with Iran's oil minister visiting Baghdad last week to denounce US sanctions as "totally illegal.”

Photo Credit: IRNA