Gen. Hayden warns of Russian and Iranian gains following IS defeat

WASHINGTON DC, United States (Kurdistan 24) - Gen. Michael Hayden, former head of the CIA and NSA (National Security Agency), is worried about the inroads that Russia and Iran are making in the wake of the defeat of Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria.

“The Iranians, Hezbollah, the Alawite forces in Syria,” Hayden told Kurdistan 24, “supported by the Russian Air Force, have actually been, in a race car sense of the word, drafting on the American success in Raqqa and the Euphrates valley.”

In other words, Iran, Syria, and Russia are successfully exploiting the US-led military success against IS.

“I’m not optimistic,” Hayden continued, “because I see the construction of an Iranian land bridge that stretches from Tehran through Iraq through Syria, all the way to Beirut.”

Hayden is a major voice on US national security policy. Appointed CIA Director by George W. Bush in 2006, he held that position until early 2009, when Barack Obama appointed Leon Panetta, Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff, as his successor.

Speaking at an annual Jamestown Foundation conference, Hayden characterized the Trump administration’s policy toward IS in Iraq and Syria as “Obama plus.”

“There aren’t any hard turns,” Hayden told his Jamestown audience.

Trump had “an increased emphasis” on defeating IS and allowed “more freedom of action at the tactical level.” That is important, Hayden stated, because it “makes you more effective,” but it does not fundamentally change the outcome.

“We have also seen continuity between the Obama and the Trump administrations,” Hayden continued, “in an absolute unwillingness to embrace what happens” after you have defeated IS.

Indeed, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently made the astonishing admission that the State Department had been unprepared for the accelerated defeat of IS brought about by the Trump administration’s more aggressive tactics.

“We in the State Department have really had to run fast to catch up with the military success with the diplomatic plans as to what comes after the defeat of [IS],” Tillerson said last week in a major speech, delivered at the Atlantic Council.

Kurdish President Masoud Barzani, it may be recalled, repeatedly pressed the US to develop a plan for post-IS political reforms in Iraq, but Washington was unresponsive.

Absent a US vision for the political future of Iraq and Syria, Hayden explained to his Jamestown audience what he saw emerging: “a fracturing of the patches of land we used to call Syria and Iraq.”

“They’re not coming back,” he said. “I don’t think they’re coming back at all. They’re certainly not coming back as the unitary states that they once were.”

“I fear that we have quietly allowed ourselves to outsource the political solution to post-[IS] Iraq [and] Syria to the Russian Federation.”

That is a remarkable statement, as White House National Security Adviser, H. R. McMaster, previewing the Trump administration’s national security strategy which the President will announce Monday, identified Russia (along with China) as a “revisionist power,” undermining the international order, and a major US concern.

The fractured entities that Hayden sees emerging in Iraq and Syria, include an Iraqi “Shiastan,” sensitive to Iranian influence, but “not a puppet,” as well as a Syrian “Alawistan.”

“I think you end up with a Kurdistan or two,” he added. “What’s missing is the ‘Sunnistan.’”

Hayden suggested that his Jamestown audience would well understand “the entities that need to exist for us to get to stability.” 

He made clear that he was not talking about independent states, but political representation—a sense within each significant community that the governing authority was addressing its needs and concerns.

Without a “Sunnistan,” Hayden said, another IS would most likely re-emerge.

“I fear that as good as we are at killing our enemies, we’re going to have to go and do it again” in “three or four or five years.”

Kurdistan 24 also spoke to Hayden last December, at the same conference. Donald Trump had just been elected president but had yet to take office, and he was significantly more upbeat.

Hayden explained that he had visited the Kurdistan Region in his capacity as Director of the CIA, and, before that as NSA Director.

“I found that one of America’s best friends in this part of the world were the people of Kurdistan,” Hayden said. “They were good, open, focused on economic development, good allies to the United States.”

“I enjoyed visiting them. I enjoyed exchanging ideas with them. I enjoyed cooperating with them on items of mutual interest. So I think my government should continue to deepen and strengthen its cooperation with Kurdistan.”

Editing by Nadia Riva