MOSCOW, June 27 (RIA Novosti), Daria Chernyshova - As the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) is gaining control over more and more of Iraq and hundreds of Iraqi soldiers have been killed, cooperation between Tehran and Washington appears to be the only force that can prevent Iraq from falling into deeper crisis, Sreeram Chaulia, Professor and Dean at the Jindal School of International Affairs said.
“Right now Iraq is in a national crisis and Iran is the only state capable of assisting at short notice with Western support,” Chaulia told RIA Novosti. “US and Iran need pragmatic cooperation for intelligence sharing, maybe for limited operations on the ground that will scatter these ISIS elements and will create a panic among them, and will at least force them to go back to Syria.”
US President Barack Obama said he is not planning to send American troops back on the ground, while pledging 300 military advisers to help Iraq fight against Sunni extremists. At the same time many in American policy making circles are calling for decisive military action.
Commenting on what the US should do in Iraq, founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation Jacob Hornberger told RIA Novosti that Washington has already done enough damage to Iraq and the Iraqi people.
“[The US] needs to stay out of Iraq and get out of the entire Middle East,” Hornberger said. “It would be the best thing that could happen to the people in that part of the world and to the American people as well.”
“Renewed US intervention in Iraq will only add fuel to the fire raging in Iraq. It will make matters worse than they already are,” Hornberger added.
At the same time, if Iran goes to Iraq alone, “Saudis and Qatar will say that this is an invasion and against Sunnis.”
In the US, cooperation with Iran is largely demonized, but many are also calling for Washington to “dismantle its military empire and end its program of foreign intervention,” as Jacob Hornberger puts it.
“[The US] needs to leave other countries alone to work out their own difficulties and problems. The US government should not be involving our country in entangling alliances. It should instead be bringing all the troops home from everywhere and discharging them into the private sector and freeing the private sector of Americans to interact peacefully with the rest of the world,” Hornberger told RIA Novosti.
Sreeram Chaulia noted that the Middle East does not want US forces on the ground or bombing Iraq, as countries in the region still remember the calamities of the American occupation of Iraq.
“What Iran wants is some kind of an agreement with the US which will enable Iranians to be on the ground. [Iranians] don’t want Americans to start a bombing campaign in Iraq, they don’t want American special forces on the ground. I don’t think anybody in the region forgot the calamity of the American occupation of Iraq, I don’t think they want to return to that,” Chaulia said.
However, allying with Iran, means the US would have to overcome neo-Conservatives and the Israeli lobby, which oppose Iran and “have created a kind of phobia against Iran in the US policy making circles,” Chaulia asserts.
“President Obama himself is not so inclined to listen to the Israeli lobby that much,” Chaulia said. “But we are losing time, and the situation is getting pretty chaotic and serious, as more and more territories are being lost in Iraq. This is not a civil war, it is very important now to prevent it from civil war,” Chaulia warned.
