Rep. DeSantis: US hurt by Iranian-backed attack on Kurds, “We need to do better”

"Don’t we need to support people like the Kurds more robustly than we have?"
kurdistan24.net

WASHINGTON DC, United States (Kurdistan 24) – Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Florida) said in a congressional hearing Wednesday that the US itself was hurt when Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed militias attacked Kirkuk and other disputed areas in mid-October in a military operation directed by Gen. Qasim Soleimani, head of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

It “hurts our national prestige, when you have people like Soleimani,” who “have a lot of American blood on their hands, attacking an ally like the Kurds with American equipment left over from the Iraq campaign,” DeSantis said.

“We’ve got to do a lot better than that,” he added.

DeSantis, a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) who served in Fallujah, chairs the Subcommittee on National Security of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The Subcommittee oversees the work of the Departments of State, Defense, and Homeland Security.

DeSantis introduced the subject during a hearing on the defeat of the Islamic State (IS), as he asked a witness—Michael Pregent, an Iraq expert at the Hudson Institute, who also served in OIF—“Don’t we need to support people like the Kurds more robustly than we have either under Obama or, so far, under the Trump administration?”

Pregent agreed, noting that the Kurdish Peshmerga “have been an ally since the beginning, since we entered Iraq.”

“They’ve been instrumental [in] not only defeating [IS] but also defeating al-Qaeda during the surge effort and in the first phase” of OIF, he said.

“What’s happened,” Pregent continued, “unfortunately, under this administration, is that our Kurdish allies have been abandoned.”

Pregent noted that “hours” after President Donald Trump’s Oct. 13 speech, declaring that the IRGC “in its entirety” would be designated a terrorist organization, Soleimani “used his Shia militias,” which had access to US tanks and other equipment, to attack the Kurds.

“We should have done something about that,” Pregent said. “It sent a loud message to our Kurdish allies, but it also sent a loud message to Qasim Soleimani.”

Kurdistan 24 spoke with Pregent after the hearing and asked him about the significance of the electoral alliance between Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and the Iranian-backed Shia militias, known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) or Hashd al-Shaabi.

“The fact that Abadi even decided to do it, says a lot,” Pregent replied, even if the alliance proved short-lived after the PMF declared they would not be working with Abadi.

Pregent described the militias’ electoral slate as “basically an IRGC list” that includes notorious figures, like Qais al-Khazali, who have killed Americans.

Pregent also noted Abadi’s complaint to the US Secretary of State last October when he cautioned Rex Tillerson against “trying to drive a wedge” between the Iraqi security forces and the PMF.

That was “very telling,” Pregent said. “The narrative that Abadi is our guy in Baghdad is falling apart.” 

That is also the view of Hassan Hassan, a senior fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington, and author of a best-selling book on IS.

Writing Wednesday in the Emirati paper, The National, Hassan stated that Abadi’s alignment with the PMF undermined “the view in Washington that [he] is a bulwark against sectarian forces with strong links to Iran.”

“It dispels myths created in western capitals” about the real difference between Abadi, and his predecessor, Nouri al-Maliki, whose sectarianism is widely seen as having paved the way for IS’ rise in 2014.

If Pregent and Hassan are correct, the latest turn of events reflects a colossal US misjudgment about Abadi and Iraq’s domestic politics more generally.

Indeed, Pregent revealed to Kurdistan 24 a particularly dismaying view of developments in Iraq.

“I expect that every candidate running for Prime Minister will start asking the United States to leave” the country, Pregent said.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany