Allies and Enemies

in the war on Terror

Hoover Institution Working Group on Military History

Is Iran an Ally or Enemy?

BING WEST

Military History

A HOOVER INSTITUTION ESSAY ON ALLIES AND ENEMIES IN THE WAR ON TERROR

In 1916, the United Kingdom and France secretly signed the Sykes-Picot agreement
to divide between them the Islamic Ottoman Empire in Mesopotamia. When World
WarI was concluded, the state of Syria emerged as a French colony, while England
asserted its rule over what was called Iraq. Thus no Islamic caliphate successor to the
Ottomans could threaten the oceanic trade routes or European geographic dominance
over the Cradle of Civilization. It was a shrewd plan, surviving for a century.
Now those state boundaries have disintegrated, although the United States government
has yet to admit the facts on the ground. In Syria, the besieged government of the
Assad regime clings to about half of the territory after causing 100,000 deaths and
forcing 400,000 people to become refugees, while various Sunni factions fight over
the other half. In Iraq, the Shiites control the south, the Kurds control the northeast,
and the Sunnis in the northwest are controlled by the extremist Islamic State of
Iraqand Syria(ISIS). The Sykes-Picot division of Mesopotamia no longer exists, except
in the minds of Obama White House operativeswho will leave a full-scale disaster to
thenext administration.
Why is this the trajectory? Because the administration has allied itself with Iran
without considering the consequences. Granted, had the administration reached a
verifiable deal to roll back Irans nuclear weapons program by the end of November,
then allusions to President Nixons Opening to China in 1972 would have gained
resonance. To offset the Soviet Union, Mao Tse-tung did agree openly to strategic
discussions with America. Accommodations conducive to global stability followed.
Nothing similar has sprung from the interminable negotiations to prevent Iran from
developing nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles. At the same time, Irans
underling, Hezbollah, seeks to seize Lebanon and fights to keep the Assad regime in
power in Syria.
It is against that background that the administrations confused policy about the
savage war in Mesopotamia must be evaluated. The first principle in war is to know
your enemywho are you fighting, and what are his techniques and goals? The

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second principle is to know your alliesthose who stand beside you, deserving your
trust and working as a team.
Is Iran an enemy or an ally? Once Iran becomes a threshold nuclear state, it can only
be contained, not destroyed. Why is it necessary to destroy rather than contain ISIS?
Which is the greater long-term threat to American interests, ISIS or Iran? Must the
United States persist in its de facto military alliance with Iran inside Iraq in order to
combat ISIS?
Clearly, reaching a detente with Iran outweighs destroying ISIS. For a third time, the
president has extended negotiations with Iran about its nuclear weapons program. In
response, Iranian President Rouhani has promised that the countrys centrifugeswill
not stop.1 Iran has declared that it has a new IR-8 centrifuge with sixteen times more
power for enriching uranium than its existing 19,000 centrifuges.2 No longer is the
administrations purpose to eliminate Irans uranium enrichment; the president now
seeks a years warning before Iran deploys nuclear warheads on its long-range missiles.
President Obama has asked Iran to cooperate with us against ISIS. He has not explained
why ISIS is Americas existential enemy, while Iran is our secret ally. In World WarII,
by allying with the Soviet Union against Germany, we saved thousands of American
lives. No similar rationale pertains to Iran.
The Shiite theocracy in Iran intends to become the dominant power in the Islamic
Middle East. Iran is aiding Bashar Assad in Syria and helping its own proxy
Hezbollahto gain control of Lebanon on Israels northern flank. A threshold
nuclearweapon assures the Iranian regime of protection against external attack,
internal affirmation of its prestige, and global recognition of its power. Irans
ambitions and behavior ensure continued hostility with the Sunni powers friendly
tothe United States, including Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.
Iranian aircraft continue to fly across Iraq to supply the Assad regime. Attacking
Assad, one columnist even speculated, might cause Iran to use its Shiite militias
in Iraq to retaliate against US forces there.3 That sounds bizarre, but so are Iranian
actions. In 2011, Iran plotted to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador by blowing
up a restaurant in our nations capital. Dozens of Americans would have died. In
response to this intelligence, the administration chose to do nothing, scarcely a

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deterrent to future Iranian outrageous acts. Unsurprisingly, Iranian cyber experts

have hacked into the airline and oil industries in Saudi Arabia and have launched
numerous forays against American corporations and universities.4
Between 2005 and 2011, Iran provided the Shiite militias in Iraq with advisers and
hundreds of explosive devices to kill Americans.5 Today, Iranian soldiers are fighting
on the front lines alongside those same Shiite militias, in concert with the Iraqi
army. Our advisers are in the rear. Inside Iraqi operation centers, Iranian operatives
are systematically learning how America controls and applies its air power. From
intelligence sources, Obama knows in detail about this Iranian-Iraqi collusion. Iran
isthe true protector of Baghdad and the Shiite south of Iraq.
What are the gains from the administrations strategy? So far, Iran has conceded
nothing in its quest for nuclear weapons and has shown no desire to emulate Russian
leader Mikhail Gorbachev by relaxing its ideology, its control of its population, its
opposition to the American devil, its hatred of Israel, or its efforts to subvert the
Sunni states friendly to America. The risk to Obama is that Iran does not sign any
agreement.
This, however, is unlikely. Iran is cunning enough to eventually sign a piece of paper.
Once Iran signs somethinganythingby the summer of 2015, then the White
House, supported by the European signatories, will boast that preventing nuclear
proliferation was as significant as Nixons visit to China. ISIS has caused misery for a
few million and will burn itself out; nuclear weapons, first in Iran and then rapidly in
a multiplying number of unstable states, would unleash hell across the Middle East.
Doing nothing about ISIStreading water and letting other forces determine the
course of historyis marginally defensible, especially since the real game revolves
around Iran. The administration did nothing when ISIS seized Iraqi cities last June.
But when three Americans were publicly beheaded, the president pledged to destroy
ISIS. That opened up a massive conflict theater and initiated a campaign that cannot
be completed in the next two years. In war, the duty of the commander-in-chief
is to rally the people to support the war goals, while providing the resources our
military commanders require for a war-winning strategy. In the confirmation
hearing, senators should ask the nominee for secretary of defenseAshton Carter
one straight question: have our military commanders endorsed our current strategy

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as sufficient to achieve the policy goal of destroying ISIS? An honest answer will
beno.
A few months ago, Iraqs divisive prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, was forced from
office. But the political parties, the patronage system, and most army commanders
have not changed. The Shiite militias and Iranian Republican Guards, together
responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers, are fighting alongside
the Iraqi army. Iranian troops are guarding areas in the south alongside Shiite
militiaslike Kataib Hizballah and Badr Corps.
General Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard,
isnow giving advice to the Iraqi high command. In fact, a photo showed Suleimani,
who provided Shiite militias with assassination teams and powerful explosives in
20062008, on a battlefield north of Baghdad. He is a charismatic enemy, not a
garrison general.6
We are now in a position to start going on some offense, Obama said on
November9.
Who is we? The Iranians, not the Americans, are in the ground fight. They are
now also providing Iraqi forces with air support, recently bombing ISIS targets. Rear
Admiral John Kirby, a spokesman for the administration, was typically wishy-washy
and uncommunicative in responding to a question about the Iranian air campaign.
We are not taking a position, he said, on these particular reports regarding these
particular strikes.7
Not taking a position means not doing or saying anything, thereby further
endorsing the silent alliance between the Iranian and American military units
engaged in Iraq. The Pentagon is breaking all its own rules, set in place decades ago.
There is no other theater on the globe where US air control centers would allow
unknown and unscheduled fighter aircraft to fly unannounced sorties and drop
bombs at will.
It is insufficient to shrug this off, as did one Pentagon official, by saying, Iraq owns
the airspace. Iraq lacks basic air control safety competence. One midair collision with

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an American aircraft would create a political firestorm on Capitol Hill. The Pentagon
is gambling that highly unlikely event does not happen. But any American or NATO
pilot who repeated anywhere what the Iranians are doing would face court-martial for
reckless endangerment. The US military is gradually twisting its fundamental rules
to rationalize advising and fighting in Iraq alongside our foe, Iran. Sooner or later,
Murphys Law will strike and Congress will predictably erupt, claiming it had no idea
what was going on.
Theres no coordination militarily between the United States and our troops, our
military operations there and those of Tehran or the Iranians inside Iraq, Kirby told
CNN. Theres no coordination at all.8
The admirals statement is disingenuous. Of course there is coordination; its called
geographic separatism. Iranians stay with certain units in certain locations, and
American advisers do the same. American aircraft bomb to the north, while Iranian
aircraft bomb to the east. In the eyes of a normal person in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Israel,
Syria, or America, the militaries of Iran and of the United States are fighting on the
same side. Thats the accepted definition of being allies. But if Iranian air and ground
forces are acceptable inside Iraq today, why were they not acceptable in 2005, when
US troops were locked in a seesaw battle against Al Qaedas Sunni extremists?
What Obama policy has changed since 2009, and why? To date, Obama has sent
fourletters to the Iranian leadership, pleading for cooperation in fighting Sunni
Islamists. America does not need Irans military help. The problem is that northern
Iraq cannot be retaken by the Iraqi army, which lacks the necessary will, leadership,
organization, and equipment. To seize Fallujah in 2004 required a hard battle by
American Marines. To seize northern Iraq will require the equivalent of five Fallujahs,
with World War IIlevel destruction of the cities. That will not happen. The Iraqi
army willnever morph into the US Marine Corps.
The Iraqi army will remain incompetent because of corrupt leaders. The basic flaw
in the US advisory concept is the lack of authority to remove corrupt host nation
commanders. The Shiite soldiers of the Iraqi army cannot rout the Sunni Islamists by
direct assault.Northern Iraq can be retaken only from within by Sunni and Kurdish
tribes. But because the army has repressed the Sunnis and Kurds, there is no trust.

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ISIS is consumed by bloodlust. The Islamists are systematically hunting down

and executing the Sunnis who joined the Awakening in 20062007 and fought
alongside the Americans. The message below typifies the e-mails our former
advisersare now receiving:
Hi, my frnd -it is so hard time for us. i miss our honor time in falluja we were heros
not like the pusses officers now there so bad guys IsIs is get to much strickes from
us air it is so active many of the leaders of isis tocks they r families out of falluja
and saglawia before they tocks the best houses in falluja ( high ring officeres and
government leaders ) and put they r familes there now tock them out . must of the
isis guys comes frome out of falluja .i was tried to want in arbil but no way no arab
can go there.

The writer is a Sunni police officer who went over to the Marine side, pointed out
AlQaeda operatives inside Fallujah, and is now hiding among his neighbors, unable
to escape. By pulling out all our forces in 2011, we abandoned this officer and
thousands like him.

A gap the size of the Grand Canyon has opened between the members of the military
who served in Iraq and the civilian policymakers in the White House who serve a
political agenda detached fromnay, unaware ofthe human costs of loyalty in
war. Novelist Karl Marlantes has observed that policymakers should view themselves
as virtual warriors. To understand what an adviser really does, they should read the
memoirs of advisers in Iraq, like Owen Wests The Snake Eaters.9 As they do so, they
should mentally beam themselves onto the battlefield where they have placed our
warriors. The legendary Marine Corps general, Jim Mattis, urged everyone under his
commandeventually, all our troops in the Middle Eastto image themselves in
battle. He did not use the verb imagine. He stressed imagingtransporting oneself
into the mud, blood, and fury. The policymaker becomes the warrior, the killer.
Those in the White House who presume to play on a geopolitical chessboard have
the obligation to understand that each pawn is a human being with emotions and
free will. They should not undertake what they cannot comprehend. The basic
criterion for promotion inside the military is leadership. In fact, this is so elementary
that many promotion boards do not explicitly consider it. Nonetheless, no one can

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advance through six ranks from lieutenant to colonel without dozens of assessments
of leadership capabilities. True, some are promoted who will fall. By and large,
however, the promotion system works. Most colonels in their early forties have
displayed consistently the competence and values of the organization.
The selection of the key personnel on the national security staff of the commanderin-chief is not done by any systematic means. Usually, a president will select as his
national security adviser a person whose chief characteristic is a proven dexterity to
write about or, better yet, manipulate the complexities and subtleties of international
problems.
In 1985, the National Security Council (NSC) staff went badly off the tracks and
undertook a foolish, self-directed operation: selling weapons to Iran in order to free
American captives in Lebanon. The NSC staff, perhaps intoxicated by the power of
proximity to the commander-in-chief, had forgotten that its only role was to function
as a coordinating staff for the agencies that conducted operations. Frank Carlucci, a
former secretary of defense, took over at the NSC to straighten it out.
Unfortunately, in the Obama administration the NSC staff became the operational
arm of the commander-in-chief, evaluating every situation through the prism of
politics and presidential image. The NSC staff is a campaign staff, without military
background or leadership values, without an understanding of how critical trust is
upand down the chain of command when the cost is lives.

Trust is what is lacking throughout Iraq. When Iraq was disintegrating in late 2006,
the Sunni tribes in western Anbar Province came over to the side of the strongest
tribethe Americans. The tribes saw the Americans as their defenders against both
Sunni extremists and what they called the Persian government in Baghdad. In
20072008, General David Petraeus expanded the Sunni tribal alliance to include
Baghdad and the north. American company commanders and advisers supervised
the boundaries and enforced the protocols between the tribesmen and the Iraqi
army. It was the shift in allegiance by the Sunni tribes, not battlefield success by
the Iraqi army, that brought temporary stability to Iraq. We then left, and the Shiite
government oppressed those tribes. In turn, they felt betrayed by America.

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In June, Atheel al-Nujaifi, the Sunni governor of Mosul, argued in favor of three
Iraqi cantons: Sunni, Kurdish, and Shiite. He presented a plan for a Sunni army
autonomous from Baghdad. In December, he said a tribal militia could not work and
disavowed his own proposal for a quasi-independent Sunnistan. Was he telling the
truth in June or December?
Why should the Sunnis or Kurds trust us sufficiently to tell us the truth? Our current
policy has placed the Sunni and Kurdish tribes under the direct control of the Iraqi
army that they loathe. This insures battlefield discord and duplicity.
The administration has also given the Baghdad government authority over all aid and
advisers to the Sunni and Kurdish tribes. Instead, US aid should flow directly to the
tribes. To persuade them to again risk their lives, they need an incentive: namely, that
they will retain local rule after the war.
Stability among Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds requires a steadying American influence.
This in turn requires a status of forces agreement so that US military units will
remain after the ISIS threat ebbs. In theory, Obama has been given a do-over. He
pulled out our troops and Iraq fell apart. Now were back. So will we stay this time?
Not a chance. The Shiite government in Baghdad will laugh in our face. Iran
currently has more influence than do we. Opposing one enemyISISshould not
be done under terms that advantage our other enemy, Iran. If the end state is an
Iraqinside the orbit of Iran, we have failed.

NOTES
1 Adam Kredo, Iran: Americans Have Very Clearly Surrendered, Washington Free Beacon, November 25,
2014, http://freebeacon.com/national-security/iran-americans-have-very-clearly-surrendered.
2 Jeffrey Lewis, The Iran Nuke Extension Is a Death Sentence, Foreign Policy, November 24, 2014.
3 Jackson Diehl, Obamas bet on Iran, Washington Post, November 9, 2014.
4 Joe Gould, Report: Iran Hackers Infiltrated Airlines, Energy, Defense Firms, Defense News,
December 2, 2014.
5 USA Today reported on January 31, 1997, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq,
and National Intelligence Director John Negroponte have said the new bombs are being provided by Iran
and are killing U.S. troops. U.S. officials have declined to say exactly how many have been killed or how the
weapons have been traced to Iran, which has denied supplying them. See also Tom Iggulden, US links

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Iran to Iraq bomb technology, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, December 2, 2007: Sen. John Kerry,
D-Mass., said on the Senate floor recently that 90 percent of the EFPs detonated in Iraq had been used in
Baghdad. Nobody questions that there are weapons going across the border. Nobody questions those
of us who have been to Iraq and in the region know that there are Iranian instigators, agents in Iraq. See
also Drew Brown, Sunni insurgents remain biggest threat to U.S. troops in Iraq, McClatchy Newspapers,
February 28, 2007, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2007/02/28/15685/sunni-insurgents-remain-biggest
.html#storylink=cpy.
6 Armin Rosen, Irans Military Mastermind was Reportedly Present during Iraqs Biggest Victory So
Far,Business Insider, September 3, 2014: The response to ISISs push against the town of Amerli was
likelyformulated by Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Qods
Force and probably the Middle Easts most effective operative. Suleimani leads the Guards operations
outsideofIrans borders, and has raked in a number of major strategic victories over the years.
http://www.businessinsider.com/suleimani-was-present-during-battle-for-amerli-2014-9#ixzz3Cv4Hrd7S.
7 David S. Cloud, W.J. Hennigan, and Ramin Mostaghim, Recent Iran airstrikes in Iraq help drive Islamic
State from 2 towns, Los Angeles Times, December 2, 2014.
8 Laurence Norman, U.S. Pledges to Fight Islamic State For as Long as It Takes, Wall Street Journal,
December 3, 2014.
9 Owen West, The Snake Eaters: An Unlikely Band of Brothers and the Battle for the Soul of Iraq (New
York:Free Press, 2012).

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Working Group on the Role of Military History

inContemporary Conflict

About the Author

BING WEST
Bing West, a former assistant
secretary of defense and combat
Marine who served as an adviser
in Vietnam, has written six books
about the American wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan. His latest is
OneMillion Steps: a Marine Platoon
atWar (Random House: 2014).

The Working Group on the Role of Military History in

Contemporary Conflict examines how knowledge of past
military operations can influence contemporary public
policy decisions concerning current conflicts. The careful
study of military history offers a way of analyzing modern
war and peace that is often underappreciated in this age of
technological determinism. Yet the result leads to a more
in-depth and dispassionate understanding of contemporary
wars, one that explains how particular military successes
and failures of the past can be often germane, sometimes
misunderstood, or occasionally irrelevant in the context
ofthe present.
The core membership of this working group includes David
Berkey, Peter Berkowitz, Max Boot,Josiah Bunting III, Angelo
M.Codevilla, Thomas Donnelly, Admiral James O. Ellis Jr.,
ColonelJoseph Felter, Victor Davis Hanson (chair), Josef Joffe,
Frederick W. Kagan, Kimberly Kagan, Edward N. Luttwak,
Peter Mansoor, General Jim Mattis, Walter Russell Mead, Mark
Moyar, Williamson Murray, Ralph Peters, Andrew Roberts,
Admiral Gary Roughead, Kori Schake, Kiron K. Skinner, Barry
Strauss, Bruce Thornton, Bing West, Miles Maochun Yu, and
Amy Zegart.
For more information about this Hoover Institution Working Group
visit us online at www.hoover.org/research-topic/military.

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