In the U.S. led Iraq War, Iran Was the Winner

[surada]

Yea, I hear ya, my last vote for a Republican was in 1992, but after the invasion of Iraq, I will never again vote for any Republican.

Dumbest foreign policy blunder ever. Before the invasion there were 50 Christian churches in Baghdad.

 

[odanny]

Dumbest foreign policy blunder ever. Before the invasion there were 50 Christian churches in Baghdad.

It was far more than that though, it was a deliberate and calculated attempt to ignore the deaths of 3000 Americans and use that tragedy in order to foment a war. That, to me, is unforgivable.

Had Al Gore been in office and done the same, I'd still be voting Republican.

 

[there4eyeM]

Yea, I hear ya, my last vote for a Republican was in 1992, but after the invasion of Iraq, I will never again vote for any Republican.

Clinton and Biden voted for it and are, thus, complicit. At least Obama voted against (I'm sure I read that somewhere).

 

[Grau]

Dumbest foreign policy blunder ever. Before the invasion there were 50 Christian churches in Baghdad.

I agree that the invasion was a moronic folly from which only Israel benefited.

I spent a few weeks in Bagdad in 1973 while I spent 10 - 11 months walking and hitch hiking around the Middle East.

 

[frigidweirdo]

Before the US invasion Iraq's oil industry was in terrible shape. In fact, Iraq was crippled by 2 decades of war and sanctions.

Since when was OPEC destroyed?

How was the Iraq's oil industry in bad shape before the 2003 invasion?

Iraq Crude Oil Production by Year (Thousand Barrels per Day)

www.indexmundi.com

In the year 2000, the year Dubya Bush got elected to the White House, the Iraqis were pumping out 2.5 million barrels of oil a year.

It took to 2011 for the figure to get back to that number.

The Iraqi oil production doesn't seem to have been a problem... except for the simple fact that in 1999 Hugo Chavez was elected leader of Venezuela.

The man didn't like the US, Latin America had suffered at the hands of the US interference for more than a century. He wanted to use Venezuela's oil money to make his country better for ALL PEOPLE.

Venezuela was considered one of the better countries in Latin America, it had wealth, the problem with the wealth was that it was very unequal.

Venezuela Before Chávez: Anatomy of an Economic Collapse by Ricardo Hausmann and Francisco R. Rodríguez - Americas Quarterly

During the 1970s, Venezuela was the richest country in Latin America. With the region’s highest growth rates and the lowest levels of inequality, it was also one of the most stable democracies in the Americas. But starting in the early 1980s, things fell apart. The nation endured three coup...

www.americasquarterly.org

"During the 1970s, Venezuela was the richest country in Latin America."

"But starting in the early 1980s, things fell apart. The nation endured three coup attempts and one presidential impeachment. Per capita growth plunged, and mass protests became the norm. What happened?"

"the editors and authors conclude that Venezuela’s dependence on petroleum exports eventually crowded out other factors necessary for a healthy economy. "

"wages declined by 70 percent in the 1980s and 1990s"

Hugo Chavez got into power because of US interference, the US's demand for cheap oil, and Chavez and the poorer people of Venezuela had had enough.

Chavez wanted to make money by making OPEC stronger. He went to form a meeting (very rare) of the leaders of OPEC countries and they decided to strengthen OPEC, reduce oil production to increase oil prices.

Guess who wasn't happy? The US.

OPEC is divided into two group.

Those who hate the US (Venezuela, Iran, Iraq and Libya) and those who hate the US but pretend to be its friend (like Saudi Arabia still does).

The US went after the former group. They knew the Saudis would give in if the four who hated the US gave up.

So, 2002, a coup against Chavez. It failed, ultimately, and Chavez was back in charge after a week not in charge. We know the US was involved in this coup, we know the people who helped were from a body in the US govt that supposedly promotes "democracy" by taking down democratically elected leaders.

2003 Bush (Mr oil man, and with his VP being Halliburton and doing the running of the show) found WMDs to be a big problem in Iraq (bullshit). So he invaded on a worse pretext than Putin's invasion of the Ukraine.

Iran.... they prepared for it. They took Afghanistan, which is on the other side of Iran to Iraq. Iraq and Afghanistan were going to be the entry points of the invasion. However, Iran saw otherwise and took the fight to Iraq, and the Saudis took the fight to Afghanistan and the US was never in a position to invade Iran.

So they did heavy sanctions. The same as they did to Venezuela. They couldn't invade Venezuela because Venezuela is one letter different from "Vietnam" (joke, it's the jungle, of course, that scares American politicians shitless).

Libya was then bombed by Obama.... Just to prove the power of big oil in the US.....

That's how they "destroyed" OPEC as a strong cartel.

 

[Deadstick]

Dumbest foreign policy blunder ever. Before the invasion there were 50 Christian churches in Baghdad.

Yes but they keep doing the same thing, Syria is a secular Country, the US have been trying their best to turn it into a Islamist hell hole by supporting a whole bunch of head hacking jihadis, they like to destroy Churches, same thing in Koovo where many Serb Churches were destroyed by Islamist nutters that Nato and the West supported, same in Libya, the video is a British and Commonwealth War cemetery in Libya, the scum smashing it up are people we supported and armed, the same bunch ended up murdering your Ambassador in Benghazi. people need to wake up to who their politicians are supporting but not sure they will. these cemeteries were not harmed while Gaddafi was in power.

 

[surada]

How was the Iraq's oil industry in bad shape before the 2003 invasion?

Iraq Crude Oil Production by Year (Thousand Barrels per Day)

www.indexmundi.com

In the year 2000, the year Dubya Bush got elected to the White House, the Iraqis were pumping out 2.5 million barrels of oil a year.

It took to 2011 for the figure to get back to that number.

The Iraqi oil production doesn't seem to have been a problem... except for the simple fact that in 1999 Hugo Chavez was elected leader of Venezuela.

The man didn't like the US, Latin America had suffered at the hands of the US interference for more than a century. He wanted to use Venezuela's oil money to make his country better for ALL PEOPLE.

Venezuela was considered one of the better countries in Latin America, it had wealth, the problem with the wealth was that it was very unequal.

Venezuela Before Chávez: Anatomy of an Economic Collapse by Ricardo Hausmann and Francisco R. Rodríguez - Americas Quarterly

During the 1970s, Venezuela was the richest country in Latin America. With the region’s highest growth rates and the lowest levels of inequality, it was also one of the most stable democracies in the Americas. But starting in the early 1980s, things fell apart. The nation endured three coup...

www.americasquarterly.org

"During the 1970s, Venezuela was the richest country in Latin America."

"But starting in the early 1980s, things fell apart. The nation endured three coup attempts and one presidential impeachment. Per capita growth plunged, and mass protests became the norm. What happened?"

"the editors and authors conclude that Venezuela’s dependence on petroleum exports eventually crowded out other factors necessary for a healthy economy. "

"wages declined by 70 percent in the 1980s and 1990s"

Hugo Chavez got into power because of US interference, the US's demand for cheap oil, and Chavez and the poorer people of Venezuela had had enough.

Chavez wanted to make money by making OPEC stronger. He went to form a meeting (very rare) of the leaders of OPEC countries and they decided to strengthen OPEC, reduce oil production to increase oil prices.

Guess who wasn't happy? The US.

OPEC is divided into two group.

Those who hate the US (Venezuela, Iran, Iraq and Libya) and those who hate the US but pretend to be its friend (like Saudi Arabia still does).

The US went after the former group. They knew the Saudis would give in if the four who hated the US gave up.

So, 2002, a coup against Chavez. It failed, ultimately, and Chavez was back in charge after a week not in charge. We know the US was involved in this coup, we know the people who helped were from a body in the US govt that supposedly promotes "democracy" by taking down democratically elected leaders.

2003 Bush (Mr oil man, and with his VP being Halliburton and doing the running of the show) found WMDs to be a big problem in Iraq (bullshit). So he invaded on a worse pretext than Putin's invasion of the Ukraine.

Iran.... they prepared for it. They took Afghanistan, which is on the other side of Iran to Iraq. Iraq and Afghanistan were going to be the entry points of the invasion. However, Iran saw otherwise and took the fight to Iraq, and the Saudis took the fight to Afghanistan and the US was never in a position to invade Iran.

So they did heavy sanctions. The same as they did to Venezuela. They couldn't invade Venezuela because Venezuela is one letter different from "Vietnam" (joke, it's the jungle, of course, that scares American politicians shitless).

Libya was then bombed by Obama.... Just to prove the power of big oil in the US.....

That's how they "destroyed" OPEC as a strong cartel.

Iraqi reserves were in terrible shape before the invasion. They had no money for reserve management.

 

[Deadstick]

Iraqi reserves were in terrible shape before the invasion. They had no money for reserve management.

But what business was that of the Americans?

 

[irosie91]

But what business was that of the Americans?

none at all----no reason to deal with Sadaam. He was doing a fine job
of genociding the shiites of Iraq out of existence and the kurds---and he
was even fighting with Iran-----the death toll was salutatory and a credit to
the Baathist cause. He had a terrific ambition for glory and was chock full
nitrogen mustard gas and into research into biologicals in the support of
pan arab nationalism. Had he been successful chances are the AYATOILET
would not have MADE IT in 1979 and Saudi arabia would not have to deal
with the hootie cooties

 

[Deadstick]

none at all----no reason to deal with Sadaam. He was doing a fine job
of genociding the shiites of Iraq out of existence and the kurds---and he
was even fighting with Iran-----the death toll was salutatory and a credit to
the Baathist cause. He had a terrific ambition for glory and was chock full
nitrogen mustard gas and into research into biologicals in the support of
pan arab nationalism. Had he been successful chances are the AYATOILET
would not have MADE IT in 1979 and Saudi arabia would not have to deal
with the hootie cooties

Better have a word with Rumsfeld he provided Sadaam with the gas to kill those people, then blamed Iran LOL!!

 

[irosie91]

Better have a word with Rumsfeld he provided Sadaam with the gas to kill those people, then blamed Iran LOL!!

Rumsfeld "provided" Sadaam with gas to kill "what people" What gas and what
people did Rumsfeld want to kill?

 

[Deadstick]

Rumsfeld "provided" Sadaam with gas to kill "what people" What gas and what
people did Rumsfeld want to kill?

It's all here, and George Galloway brought it up at the Senate hearing when he made those Senators look like the liars they were.

Rumsfeld 'helped Iraq get chemical weapons'

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld helped Iraq build up chemical and biological weapons, it was revealed last night

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[frigidweirdo]

Iraqi reserves were in terrible shape before the invasion. They had no money for reserve management.

It was producing enough oil.

 

[surada]

But what business was that of the Americans?

In 1998 Saddam Hussein asked the US to lift sanctions on their oil production so they could bring Halliburton in to restore and upgrade their reserves because they were on the verge of being lost forever.

I don't honestly know why the US would care except Israel wanted Saddam Hussein deposed and Syria destabilized. Blair set up Operation Mass Appeal to sell the war on Iraq in 1998... the same year the dual citizens of the PNAC wrote to Clinton to attack Iraq. Iraq was so broken that they were not a threat to the US or Iraq's neighbors.

Do you remember the booze wars in Arabia in November of 2000? It was completely asinine. Sir Derek Plumbly was in charge. They blamed the Palestinians, but they got caught. Brits were bombing other Brits in the kingdom.

I'd been in Arabia that Spring. We howled with laughter over the bullshit about booze wars. It was the British version of keystone cops. A completely incompetent screw up.

 

[irosie91]

It's all here, and George Galloway brought it up at the Senate hearing when he made those Senators look like the liars they were.

Rumsfeld 'helped Iraq get chemical weapons'

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld helped Iraq build up chemical and biological weapons, it was revealed last night

www.dailymail.co.uk

ROFLMAO @ the DAILYMAIL and George Galloway. ----Iraq did not use weaponized
Anthrax on any population .... OR Bubonic plague----your article makes no sense at all.

 

[Deadstick]

ROFLMAO @ the DAILYMAIL and George Galloway. ----Iraq did not use weaponized
Anthrax on any population .... OR Bubonic plague----your article makes no sense at all.

The Daily Mail is a rightwing British newspaper and supporter of the US , they also supported Hitler before WW2, it's from official documents you muppet.

 

[irosie91]

The Daily Mail is a rightwing British newspaper and supporter of the US , they also supported Hitler before WW2, it's from official documents you muppet.

right---and I happen to know---Sadaam was working on weaponized biologicals
like anthrax and bubonic plagues but he could never bring it off---he gassed
the kurds with nitrogen mustard and sarin and a few other nerve gases

 

[surada]

It's hard to create a larger foreign policy disaster than invading Iraq was. Iran says "Thank you, and Death to America."




If visitors to Baghdad knew nothing of Iraqi politics, they could be forgiven for thinking that the trim-bearded, green-uniformed man whose larger-than-life photo is everywhere in the Iraqi capital was Iraq’s president.

Along the boulevard that tracks the Tigris River and inside the Green Zone, the seat of Iraq’s government, the likeness of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani towers above roundabouts and stands astride medians. The last person to be so glorified was Saddam Hussein, the dictator deposed and killed in the American-led invasion of Iraq that began almost exactly 20 years ago.

But Mr. Suleimani was Iranian, not Iraqi.

The commander of the Quds Force, the external arm of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards Corps, he achieved near-mythic status in Iraq as an influential force who helped bind Iraq and Iran after the invasion. It was thanks in large part to Mr. Suleimani, whom the United States assassinated in Iraq in 2020, that Iran came to extend its influence into almost every aspect of Iraqi security and politics.

That, in turn, gave Iran outsize influence over the region and beyond. Tehran’s rise exposed the unintended consequences of Washington’s strategy in Iraq, analysts and former U.S. officials say, and damaged the United States’ relationship with its regional allies.

The invasion “was the original sin,” said Emile Hokayem, a senior fellow for Middle East security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a British think tank. “It helped Iran bolster its position by being a predator in Iraq. It’s where Iran perfected the use of violence and militias to obtain its goals. It eroded the U.S.’s image. It led to fragmentation in the region.”

The U.S. State Department declined to comment on the impact of the war in Iraq.

“On Iraq specifically, our focus is on the 20 years ahead; less about looking backward,” the department said in an email response to questions. “Our partnership today has evolved far beyond security, to a 360-degree relationship that delivers results for the Iraqi people.” All of that was enabled by the political changes that the American invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, set in motion. Later on, the 2014 takeover of a large area of northern Iraq by the Islamic State terrorist group prompted Iraq to turn to Iran as well as the United States for help, cementing Iran’s grip.

As destabilizing as the Iranian involvement has been for many Iraqis, it has been at least as unsettling for much of the rest of the region. Iraq and Iran are the two largest Middle Eastern countries with a Shiite Muslim majority, and Shiites emerged the Iraq war empowered across the region — often unnerving their ancient sectarian rivals, the Sunni Muslims, who dominate most other Arab countries.

Under the Iraqi dictatorship, the Sunni minority had formed the base of Mr. Hussein’s power; once he was killed, Iran set up loyal militias inside Iraq. It also went on to dismay Saudi Arabia and the other Persian Gulf monarchies and Israel by supporting proxies and partners, such as the Houthi militia in Yemen, that brought violence right to their doorsteps.

Before 2003, it would have been hard to imagine Saudi Arabia, a pillar of the United States’ Middle East policy for decades and a leading Sunni power, showing open anger toward American leaders over their conduct in the region. But the Saudi king at the time did just that in a January 2006 meeting with the American ambassador to Iraq, telling him that the way Washington saw things going in Baghdad reflected “wishful thinking,” according to a State Department cable released by WikiLeaks in 2010.

By the time of that meeting, Iraqis had approved a new Constitution and held parliamentary elections that swept Shiite parties to power, and Sunni-Shiite sectarian tensions had escalated. Saudi King Abdullah told the ambassador that before Mr. Hussein’s ouster, his kingdom — Iran’s longtime rival for influence in the Middle East — could count on Iraq as another Sunni power keeping Iran in check.

Now, he said, Iraq had been handed to Iran like “a gift on a golden platter.”

The United States, whose military muscle guided its policies, often with little sensitivity for Iraq’s religious and political dynamics, according to analysts, was not the country best placed to make lasting inroads in Iraq.

Iran, by contrast, could build the bonds created by the Shiite faith it shared with many in Iraq’s population.

Iranian and Iraqi clerics, along with millions of pilgrims, frequented Shiite shrines in both countries each year and enjoyed a mutual understanding of each other’s culture. Tribes and families span their nearly 1,000-mile-long border. And the father of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, spent 13 years in Iraq’s Shiite pilgrimage city of Najaf, while Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, was born in one Iranian holy city and educated in another.

In 1980, when Iraq invaded Iran, the United States and other Western countries quietly supported Iraq in the ensuing war.

The eight-year conflict was so devastating that some analysts say it shaped the mentality of an entire generation of Iranian leaders, making them determined to never again allow Iraq to grow strong enough to attack them. That could explain why, under Mr. Hussein’s repressive rule, which empowered Iraq’s Sunni minority over its Shiite majority, Iran gave shelter and support to both Shiites and Kurds in the Iraqi opposition. When the United States toppled Mr. Hussein, it neutralized Iran’s foremost enemy without Tehran’s having to lift a finger. Afterward, the Americans diminished Sunni power in Iraq by dismantling the country’s army and purging the Sunni-dominated governing elite.

Iran saw opportunity.

“What they were looking for and have been looking for isn’t Iranian control,” Ryan Crocker, a former United States ambassador to Iraq, said of Iran. “It’s Iraqi instability.” After the 2003 invasion, Iranians streamed into Baghdad and Iraq’s Shiite-dominated south: construction engineers to rebuild Iraqi cities, political consultants to train Shiite activists before the Iraqi elections, media professionals to establish Shiite-owned television channels.

Iranian pilgrims who had been barred in the Saddam Hussein era from visiting Iraq’s Shiite shrines now hurried across the border to the Shiite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf, where Iranian companies invested in acres of hotels and restaurants for the millions of worshipers, many of them Iranian, who visit the shrines each year.

A good number of the Iraqi leaders who emerged after 2003 also had ties to Iran. The Shiite and Kurdish opposition politicians who had taken refuge there years before returned to Iraq after the invasion. Some of Iraq’s largest Shiite parties had backing and technical support from Iran, putting politicians from those parties in Iran’s debt when they won seats.

The Americans “somehow didn’t make the connection with Iran explicitly and understand that it’s not the Shiites you are giving the upper hand to, it’s the Shiites backed by Iran,” Marwan Muasher, who was then Jordan’s foreign minister, said last week.
Across Iraq’s southern border, Saudi Arabia and its gulf allies watched with growing frustration. Gulf wariness of Iran dated back centuries. Less than 150 miles of Persian Gulf waters separate Iran from the Arabian Peninsula, a dynamic that has long fueled trade rivalries and territorial disputes. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Sunni gulf monarchies feared that Iran would export its brand of Shiite theocracy across a region traditionally ruled by Sunnis.

These days, no Iraqi prime minister can take office without at least the tacit approval of both the United States and Iran, an arrangement that often produces prime ministers torn between Washington and Tehran. Iraqis with connections to Iran hold posts throughout the government.

The cost of Iranian influence to Iraqi development and stability has been high.

Cut off from the world economy by sanctions, Iran has found an economic lifeline in Iraq, which buys about at least $7 billion in Iranian exports a year while selling only about $250 million of goods in return. The fine print on many medicines shows that they are Iranian made, and large quantities of Iranian construction materials come stacked on truck convoys across the border every day.

Although Shiites in Iraq’s political elite tolerated Iran’s activities and respected General Suleimani, resentment of Iran among other Iraqis helped set off mass antigovernment demonstrations in 2019 in which protesters demanded an end to Iran’s interference in Iraqi affairs.

Beyond Iraq, Iran has used every conflict in the region to extend its reach. It inserted fighters into Syria after the 2011 Arab Spring revolt, aiming to prop up the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. It supported the Houthis in Yemen’s civil war against a Saudi-led coalition, establishing Iranian influence on the southern Saudi border. And it further cemented its position in Iraq and Syria by recruiting and training Shiite fighters against the Islamic State.

“Every opportunity that there was in the region, the dominoes fell in Iran’s favor,” said Vali Nasr, a professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University. Exploiting Iraq’s weakness, he added, gradually turned into “a powerful foreign policy tool for Iran on the regional level.”

Particularly worrisome to its Sunni Arab neighbors was Tehran’s consolidation of influence across a so-called Shiite Crescent stretching from Iran through Iraq and into Syria and Lebanon. Some Sunni governments, chief among them Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, blamed the United States — the country they had long depended on to have their backs — for failing to stop Iran from moving goods, weapons and personnel freely across the region, analysts say.

Later quarrels in the relationship arose over what the gulf saw as the U.S. failure to intervene in Syria or to protect the gulf from Iranian-linked attacks on Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. The State Department said the United States values its relationship with the gulf and is committed to “to strengthen cooperation, coordination, and consultation with our gulf partners in all fields, including security, counterterrorism, and economic partnership.” The gulf remains deeply connected to the United States, but since the 2003 invasion it has looked to broaden and deepen its ties to China and Russia as alternative partners. When Saudi Arabia agreed to restore diplomatic relations with Iran last week, for example, it did so in Beijing.

That agreement was the latest sign that Saudi Arabia has decided to try engaging with its adversaries rather than holding them at arm’s length as the gulf monarchies did for years in Iraq.

Despite Iraq and its gulf neighbors’ shared Arab identity, they all but forfeited the competition for influence to Iran: Whereas Iran was the first to establish an embassy in Baghdad after the United States invasion, a Saudi ambassador to Iraq arrived in Baghdad only last week.

Likewise, the Saudis did not open their deep pockets to Iraq until a few years ago, when they began a tentative effort to invest in infrastructure.

“The only thing we can do is to give the Iraqis another choice that isn’t only Iran,” said Hesham Alghannam, a Saudi political scientist. “We can’t corner them and then blame them for going with the Iranians.”

In U.S.-Led Iraq War, Iran Was the Big Winner

In the 20 years since the United States invaded Iraq, Iran has built up loyal militias inside Iraq, gained deep political influence in the country and reaped economic benefits. For Washington, these were unintended consequences.

www.nytimes.com

Excellent post and accurate..

 

[surada]

right---and I happen to know---Sadaam was working on weaponized biologicals
like anthrax and bubonic plagues but he could never bring it off---he gassed
the kurds with nitrogen mustard and sarin and a few other nerve gases

You mean in those refrigerated box trucks they captured?

The US provides the gas ... and hanged Saddam Hussein for the same thing Churchill did in 1920.

 

[surada]

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