Uncle Sam’s Futile Bid to Wean Away Iraq from Fraternal Iran

By: Kayhan Int’l 

The US is taking the government and people of Iraq for a ride on the assumption that the Land of the Two Rivers is a fertile ground for tomfoolery. 

Washington, which failed to seize control of oil-rich and strategically situated Iraq through the macabre crimes of the takfiri terrorists it had created in complicity with Saudi Arabia, thinks that its devilish designs can succeed in weaning away Iraq from time immemorial and fraternal neighbour Iran.

This was evident by the recent claims of the US Energy Secretary Rick Perry on providing Iraq with Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG).

What a laughable statement by a senior official of the quixotic US president, Donald Trump the dotard, to say: "The US is well prepared to be a transparent, competitive and reliable source of liquefied natural gas to Iraq.”! 

Does Perry think that officials of the elected government in Baghdad are a bunch of ignorant bums ready to put their trust in the very same wolf that was a supporter of the bloodthirsty Saddam during the 8-year war against the Islamic Republic of Iran in the 1980s as well as the periodic bouts of massacre of the Shi’a Arab majority and the ethnic Kurds carried out by the US-backed Ba’th minority regime?

The Americans are no friends of the Iraqi people, and have no right to meddle in the affairs of Mesopotamia. If they think they can turn the Iraqi government in one of those pet poodles they have placed in neighbouring Arab states, they are living in a fool’s paradise. 

The bonds between the Iraqi and Iranian peoples are too solid to be shaken by Uncle Sam’s machinations, in view of the fact they transcend history and historical developments. Moreover the two neighbouring countries are well aware of each other’s potentials and how best to continue their commercial, industrial, cultural, religious, and historical relations. 

Trade transactions between Iran and Iraq currently stand at $12 billion, and are all set to reach $ 20 billion figure. 

Iraq has made it clear time and again that it does not recognize the illegal economic sanctions the US has imposed on its friendly and fraternal neighbour which saved it from turning into ‘Takfiristan’. 

So any talk of American pressures on Iraq in this regard is useless, and the two countries will continue to expand relations, whether Washington likes it or not. 

As a matter of fact, the arrogant Americans are totally ignorant of the state of Iraq’s hydrocarbon resources.

True, Iraq has large proven natural gas reserves. Iraq is the world’s 13th largest holder of proven natural gas reserves which stand at 3,158 bcm. Yet it produces only a mere 0.9 bcm of marketable natural gas, most of which is re-injected to maintain crude oil production.

This means energy-starved Iraq is in dire need of natural gas supplies for running its industries and providing people with much needed fuel. 

There may be several world countries possessing natural gas for sale, including Qatar in the Persian Gulf, but compared to Iran, which shares a lengthy border with Iraq, no gas imports could be as cheap and readily available as those from the Islamic Republic.

For this reason Tehran and Baghdad struck an agreement for supply of 35 million cubic meters of Iranian natural gas on a daily basis to the Iraqi capital city of Baghdad, and an additional 25 million cubic meters of gas per day to the port city of Basra.

Last June, Iran’s gas supply to Baghdad began at a rate of 7 million cubic meters per day, and as per the agreement, will soon increase to 35 million cubic meters daily. 

If Perry and his colleagues in the thuggish administration of Trump have any sense they will stay out of Iraqi affairs. The Iraqi people do not like the criminal US, and the only reason the government of Baghdad is asking Washington to exempt it from any penalties in case of continuing trade with Iran, is out of diplomatic courtesy. 

The Iraqis are preparing for the day to lawfully and legally kick out the remnants of American military personnel from Iraq, since like the Iranians they fully know as long as they adhere to the dynamic teachings of Islam as taught by the Prophet and his Infallible Ahl al-Bayt, the US cannot do a damn thing.

Fraternal Iran-Iraq Ties Frustrate US-Saudi-Zionist Designs

By: S. Nawabzadeh

Although speaking different languages, no two countries in the world are bonded together by such close historical, cultural and religious ties, dating back several centuries, if not millennia, as Iran and Iraq.

As a matter of fact, the fraternity between the peoples of the Iranian Plateau and Mesopotamia has withstood the test of time, including almost three-and-a-half intermittent centuries of Ottoman occupation of Iraq followed by the anti-people pseudo nationalist regimes that rose and fell on either side of the joint border.

The rootless Pahlavis in Tehran were a British creation and so was the imported Hashemite dynasty in Baghdad as well as the military dictatorships in its aftermath that indulged in jingoism.

Yet so firm are the age-old ties binding Iranian and Iraqi Muslims, colonialist agents failed in their divisive designs, even when the US imposed the 8-year war on the newly-founded Islamic Republic in the 1980s through Saddam of the repressive Ba’th minority regime of Baghdad.

It means, if such an intricately planned bloodbath failed to create bad blood between the Iranian and Iraqi people, could the recently manufactured crises such as burning down of the Iranian consulate in Basra by thugs on the payroll of the US and Saudi Arabia, or the anti-Iraqi propaganda on the Zionist-controlled social media by dubious elements claiming to be Iranians, drive away the two nations from each other!

Certainly not.

Much to the chagrin of the Americans, the Saudis and the Zionists – all three of whom have failed to take control of Iraq – the arrest of perpetrators of the Basra consulate attack, followed by the unity march staged in that port city by throngs of people carrying the Iraqi and Iranian flags, and the composition of the broad-based representative government that is finally taking shape in Baghdad, are indicative of the joint will in Tehran and Baghdad to further cement the time-honoured brotherhood.

One need not harp on the pre-Islamic era when for eight long centuries Iran and Iraq were one single realm standing like a solid bulwark against the eastward expansion bid of Imperial Rome and then the Christian Byzantine Empire. 

Neither is there any reason to refer to the Islamic era, including the founding of Baghdad as a cultural-academic melting pot by the Abbasid caliphate with the help of their Iranian viziers, and the dynasties that ruled the one single state of Iraq-Iran in the subsequent centuries till the Ottoman occupation of Iraq in the mid16th century – the Buwaihids, the Seljuqs, the Ilkhans, the Jalayarids, the Timurids, the Qara-Qoyunlo and the Safavids.

Nor is there any necessity to mention regular help from Iran and the Iranian people whenever the people of Iraq staged uprisings against Ottoman rule, or the role of the Iranian ulema in transforming holy Najaf into the world renowned seminary of Islamic studies and Arabic culture. 

This is proof of the fact that the strong support provided by the Islamic Republic of Iran to its Iraqi brethren during the reign of terror of Saddam, the brutal American occupation that followed, and the recent US-Saudi abortive bid to take over the country through the Takfiri terrorists, are not some new and unwarranted developments.

In view of these undeniable realities, if the harebrained Americans think they can succeed where the British failed, they are living in a fool’s paradise.

It is but natural for the people of Iraq – both Arabs and Kurds, whether Shi’a or Sunni – to stand beside their brethren in Iran, fully knowing that in addition to their overseas enemy, the US, their chief regional enemy is the Wahhabi cult of the spurious entity called Saudi Arabia, which used to fund to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, the genocide of Shi’a Arab Muslims and the ethnic Kurds. 

In other words, the Iraqi people are too mature to be swayed either by Washington’s propaganda tirade to endorse the illegal sanctions against Iran, or the bribes of Riyadh in building a football stadium in Basra and the doling out of a few million dollars of the stolen oil wealth of the deprived people of Qatif, to some suspicious elements. 

Therefore, senior Iraqi Lawmaker Intisar Hassan al-Musawi is absolutely right when she says the presence of the American consulate in Basra is a threat to Iraq’s security and sovereignty, as borne out by the recent ransacking of government offices and burning of the Iranian consulate in that city by anti-social elements on the payroll of the US and Saudi Arabia. 

So what Iraq’s newly elected Sunni Muslim Parliament Speaker, Mohammad al-Halbusi, said regarding firming of fraternal ties with Islamic Iran and invitation to his Iranian counterpart, Dr. Ali Larijani, to visit Baghdad, should not come as a surprise.

The expected election of veteran Iraqi politician Adel Abdul-Mahdi as the new Prime Minister heading a broad-based representative government of the countries various political, ethnic, and religious groups, will bring more surprises for the US, the Zionists, and reactionary Arab regimes.  

Futile Bid by the US to Disrupt Iran-Iraq Time-Tested Ties

The US, defeated and disgraced throughout our region, if not the whole world, is trying to make a stealth comeback through the postern, and this time in Iraq.

The American hand is barely concealed in the recent incidents of violence wracking Iraq, whether in the kidnapping and killing of people by remnants of the macabre head-chopping and raw human liver-chewing Takfiri terrorists, or the blasphemous acts and anti-Islamic slogans of miscreants that have infiltrated the protest rallies in some southern towns and cities because of economic problems.

Washington is mad with rage at the patriotic people of Iraq, including the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) that were formed on the instructions of Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Sistani to defend the country against the sudden surge in 2014 of the Takfiri terrorists which armed by Israel, funded by Saudi Arabia, and directed by the US, seized Mosul and were rapidly advancing toward the capital Baghdad until stopped, rolled back and decisively defeated, thanks to the timely training and supply of weapons by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

This made the US to hastily change its tactics and by pressuring certain sections of the Iraqi government it staged an ‘official’ military comeback in order to airdrop crates of arms to the terrorists and to target Iraqi troops and PMU positions on the pretext of ‘mistaken identity’.

When this plan also failed, thanks to the steadfastness of the PMU, the US realized that the Takfiri takeover of Iraq was a lost cause, and in a bid to retain its foothold it made a token contribution to the liberation of Mosul, but made sure that the terrorist ringleaders, such as the Zionist agent Abu Bakr Baghdadi, will not fall into the hands of the Iraqis or their Iranian advisors, by stealthily evacuating them to safe sites across the border in Syria.

Then, with last May’s general elections further foiling its bid through the polls to install a client regime in Baghdad, the US has tried every trick up its sleeve to prevent the hung parliament from forming a broad-based national government, but so far all its efforts have been in vain since the parties representing Iraq’s majority community have together emerged as the winners.
The soon to be formed national government is not only expected to be a firm link in the chain of the Resistant Front stretching from Iran to Lebanon through Syria, but also officially terminate the mandate of American military presence on Iraqi soil.

A truly independent Iraq does not need any US or European troops, and has to knit ranks with its friendly neighbours, especially the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has always championed the cause of the oppressed Iraqi people, whether the Arab Shi’a Muslim majority or the ethnic Kurds, right from the days of repression of the Ba’th minority regime of Saddam and throughout the 8-year war the US had imposed on Iran in a vain attempt to create bad blood between the two fraternal Muslim peoples.

It was Iran which hosted millions of Iraqis during their persecution at the hands of the American-assisted and Saudi-supported Saddam. In view of this fact, it is but natural for Iraq and its patriotic people to acknowledge "the friend in need is a friend indeed”.

Moreover, right since the Islamization of Mesopotamia and the Iranian Plateau the Iraqis and Iranians have been beside each other, sharing a common religion centred on devotion for the Prophet’s Blessed Household (Ahl al-Bayt) and an urbanized culture that saw the building of the city of Baghdad over a millennium ago by the Abbasids on the advice of their Iranian viziers and in accordance with the plans drawn by Iranian architects. 

So, how could the upstart Americans break such a firm bond that is steeped in history, spanning more than a millennium of Islamic brotherhood – and much more in view of the fact that for 8 centuries before the advent of Islam Ctesiphon near Baghdad was the capital of Iran’s Parthian and Sassanid Empires, which assisted by the Babylonians and migrant Arab tribes like the Lakhmids (Banu Lakhm, originally from Yemen), thwarted the repeated bids of the Roman Empire to expand eastward into Syria and Mesopotamia?

Now, in another self-defeatist move that will eventually see the final exit of the US from the whole region, the harebrained Donald Trump and his team of stupid thugs who resort to preposterous lies and have no information whatsoever about the nations of Iran and Iraq, think that the sloganeering of some paid miscreants against Iran and the patriotic popular forces of Iraq in the protest rallies, will turn Mesopotamia into a pro-American land for infiltrating Iran and disrupting the link of the Resistant Front that travels all the way towards the Mediterranean Sea and Occupied Palestine that is awaiting liberation.

As we have been saying for the past few decades, right through the years of the 8-year imposed war, Iran and Iraq share a common destiny, which means it is the practical vision of the God-oriented system of the Islamic Republic which has been the winner in the face of the most severe US sanctions that will again decisively defeat any American plot, irrespective of its political or military magnitude.  

- Kayhan Int’l