Killing of Iranian general leaves an opening for ISIS to 'regenerate'

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For ISIS militants, the U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani was a two-for-one win.

First, the killing of Soleimani removed the leader of one of ISIS' most effective opponents, responsible for building up the alliance of Iran-backed militias that did much of the ground fighting to drive militants out of their strongholds in Syria and Iraq.

The assassination has also redirected the wrath of those militias and their many political allies inside Iraq squarely against the U.S. presence there, raising doubts about the ­continued viability of the U.S.-led campaign to eradicate what is left of ISIS and to prevent its revival in both Iraq and neighboring Syria.

"This is precisely the sort of deus ex machina the organization needed to give it room to operate and to allow it to break out of its current marginality," said Sam Heller, an analyst at the International Crisis Group who studies the fight against ISIS. "Even if the American forces are not withdrawn immediately, it is very difficult for me to imagine that they can meaningfully continue the counter ISIS fight."

Former defense and intelligence officials said that the escalating U.S. confrontation with the Iran-backed Iraqi militias directed by Soleimani will now mean that the U.S. forces in both Syria and Iraq must worry as much about protecting themselves from attack as they do about fighting ISIS, a distraction that could seriously hamper the campaign. "They are going to be too focused on protecting the mission instead of on fighting ISIS," said Dana Stroul, a former senior Pentagon official and the co-chair of a congressionally sponsored bipartisan Syria Study Group.

But a more sweeping and immediate first test will come Sunday, when the Iraqi parliament is expected to vote on a proposal to expel U.S. forces.

The nearly 5,000 U.S. troops stationed in Iraq provide essential support to Iraqi forces trying to hunt down thousands of ISIS insurgents still plotting attacks from hideouts in remote rural areas, deserts and mountains.

 

Without U.S. surveillance, intelligence, transportation and air support, analysts said, ISIS fighters would detect the sweeps by Iraqi forces in plenty of time to escape and evade — allowing the ISIS fighters impunity to rebuild.

What's more, the intelligence and logistical support provided by the U.S. military is equally necessary to European and other military partners in the U.S.-led international coalition against ISIS.

Even the smaller contingent of fewer than 1,000 U.S. service members still deployed to fight ISIS in Syria would be impossible to sustain without support from the Americans inside Iraq. And some analysts argued that President Donald Trump's drawdown in Syria had already left U.S. forces vulnerable to attack while alleviating the pressure against ISIS.

As a result, a parliamentary vote to expel U.S. forces from Iraq would effectively end the military effort to defeat ISIS and thwart a comeback.

"That is the end of the ISIS mission as we know it," Stroul wrote in a text message.

 

The Iraqi government established after the U.S. invasion in 2003 has long struggled to balance its dependence on Washington and the West against its close ties to its neighbor Iran. The Iraqi government relied heavily on those Iranian-backed militias in the fight against ISIS.

What's more, U.S. officials have repeatedly reassured nervous Iraqis that the U.S. forces that returned in 2014 had come only to support the Iraqi fight against ISIS. U.S. diplomats and military officers have always emphasized that U.S. forces were present only at the formal invitation of the Iraqis and only to help increase the capacity of Iraqi forces to combat ISIS themselves.

But in the last week, U.S. forces in Iraq have assassinated not just Soleimani. The same drone strike killed a senior Iraqi militia leader who was also a top government security official and a former member of parliament. His Iraqi public relations chief was killed, too.

And in the preceding days, the U.S. had already killed more than 25 Iraqi fighters from a major Iran-backed militia. They were killed in a missile strike carried out in retaliation for a rocket attack that killed an American civilian contractor and wounded several other people at an Iraqi military base.

"Action of this type is an obvious grave breach of those agreed-upon terms" of the U.S. military's return to Iraq, said Heller of the International Crisis Group. Even if the parliament does not immediately expel U.S. forces, he said, "I don't see how, in the wake of these killings, the U.S. presence continues."

 

U.S. officials have long considered Soleimani a fearsome enemy. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, he helped form and direct Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq blamed for killing hundreds of Americans.

But in the fight against ISIS after 2014, the U.S. had tacitly accepted Soleimani as an awkward ally. Iran's Shiite Muslim clerical rulers found common cause with Washington against the Sunni militants of ISIS, and the Iranian-backed militias sponsored by Soleimani did much of the fighting on the ground while U.S. jets, helicopters and drones provided air power.

The militias also stopped attacking U.S. forces who returned to Iraq. And those forces settled into positions inside Iraqi military bases, where they depend for their safety and protection on Iraqi security forces — despite their hosts' many ties to Iran.

Now Trump is escalating confrontation with Iran, seeking to use sweeping economic sanctions to force Tehran to submit to new restrictions on its military activities and nuclear programs.

The Iran-backed Iraqi militias in recent months have once again begun to threaten or attack Americans. And when a mob instigated by one of the militias last week besieged the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad's heavily protected Green Zone, the failure of the Iraqi security forces to prevent the attack and the belated response after it started were both stark reminders of their limitations, in part because of their divided allegiance.

 

If the escalation leads to a larger battle in Iraq between the U.S. and Iran, the chaos would create the same conditions that have allowed ISIS to thrive in the past, said Ilan Goldenberg, a former Iran team chief in the Pentagon under President Barack Obama.

"That is a perfect situation for ISIS to regenerate," he said.