US Is Waging War against Turkey and Iran

No more than a week has passed since Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced a “core coalition” involving 10 countries that were willing to support the U.S. effort in destroying the Islamic State. Since then, Britain has explicitly overruled any participation in military strikes on Syrian ground, while Germany has ruled out any use of force. It’s Turkey’s turn to show reluctance.

In response to the refusal of Tayyip Erdogan and Ahmet Davoutoglu’s government to assist in any operation in Iraq or to give the Americans the right to use Incirlik Air Base, as was the case in 2003 before the invasion against Saddam Hussein, an unprecedented attack against Turkey was unleashed in an editorial [published] yesterday in The Wall Street Journal. It was cited that, “Harder to get around is the reality of a Turkish government that is a member of NATO but long ago stopped acting like an ally of the U.S. or a friend of the West.”*

The editorship of the aforementioned newspaper, well known for its close ties with the Jewish lobby, has not hesitated to take one step further and submit a proposal, which will definitively break the ties between the U.S. and Turkey if it takes shape. “Incirlik has been a home for U.S. forces for nearly 60 years, but perhaps it’s time to consider replacing it with a new U.S. air base in Kurdish territory in northern Iraq,”* [the editorial] suggested, forcing us to imagine the moment the American military base commander would be shaking hands with the commanders of the P.K.K. Kurdish terrorist group.

It’s true, though, that bad relations between the U.S. and Turkey, as well as the Europeans’ polite refusals to John Kerry — even if Hollande symbolically sent two Rafale combat aircraft to patrol Iraq — were of course only one of the clouds in the sky of yesterday’s international conference to fight jihadi held in Paris. The exchange of accusations between Washington and Tehran in the context of Iran’s not being invited to the conference cast dark shadows over the relations of the two countries.

It caused extreme distress even in the ranks of the Iraqi delegation, who certainly know that Iraq plays a decisive role in establishing peace in the area, while it was the first country that stepped in to provide military assistance to Baghdad and the Kurds at the advance of the jihadi. Actually, the indications are that it will continue to do so, as demonstrated by the fact that the commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was sent to Iraq and thousands of members of the group have already been fighting the Islamic State.

The point is that the Cold War statements being made between the U.S. and Iran, both sides precluding the probability of collaborating against the jihadi, made it obvious that the two sides’ “honeymoon” — if there was ever one — is all in the past. It remains to be seen whether the negotiations for Iraq’s nuclear weapons will be blown to smithereens, something both Saudi Arabia and Israel require in order to bring the area to the brink of a generalized war. Geopolitical realities are changing one more time in the Middle East.

Peace can wait.

*Editor’s note: The original quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified because a paid subscription is necessary to access it.