03/12/15 – Nancy Youssef – The Scott Horton Show

Oh, John Kerry's Mideast Peace Talks have gone nowhere.
Hey y'all, Scott Horton here for the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
U.S. military and financial support for Israel's permanent occupations of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is immoral, and it threatens national security by helping generate terrorist attacks against our country.
And face it, it's bad for Israel, too.
Without our unlimited support, they would have much more incentive to reach a lasting peace with their neighbors.
It's past time for us to make our government stop making matters worse.
More support, CNI, at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
All right, y'all, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Our first guest today is Nancy Yousef, now at The Daily Beast.
Welcome back to the show, Nancy.
How are you doing?
Great to be with you.
Good, good.
Very happy to have you back on the show.
The article is called U.S. Warplanes Are Helping Iran Win.
Well, no doubt about that, I don't guess.
But helping them win what?
Where right now?
Well, right now the Iraqi forces who have Iranian advisors and Iraqi militias who also have Iranian advisors are in the Sunni city of Tikrit, which we know in this country most of all is Saddam Hussein's hometown, and they are battling the Islamic State forces there.
And one of the reasons the Islamic State has not been able to fend off the roughly 23,000 troops that are confronting them is that they can't move large numbers of troops, and they can't move large numbers of troops because of the U.S. air campaign, which has made it all but impossible for them to move any sort of large formations throughout the country.
And so the sort of second-order effect, if you will, of the U.S. air campaign is to help Iranian-backed forces and militias potentially take back the Sunni city from the Islamic State.
And now, I guess, original initial reports, at least, out of Tikrit were that the Shiite militias and the Iranians were going ahead.
They didn't even tell the Americans about it, and they weren't asking for any air support once they did find out about it.
Is that still correct?
The Americans aren't directly helping with this particular battle, but you're just saying they're keeping ISIS at bay all across the rest of the country.
That's exactly right.
And the U.S. was not told.
General Lloyd Austin, who's the head of U.S. Central Command, said they learned about it through drones, surveillance, if you will, that the offensive was happening.
And remember that there have been reports that the Iranian forces have their own air resources and are able to do their own strikes and surveillance as well.
So there's nothing to indicate that the U.S. has been doing anything directly to help in the Tikrit campaign.
Right.
And now, when you talk about their air power, are those just 1970s model F-14s, or do they have other planes that they've gotten from the Russians?
They have a few others, actually, that are a little bit more up-to-date, presumed, but not confirmed, at least out of the Pentagon, where I'm calling you from.
Right.
All right.
Now, wouldn't that be funny to see, you know, American and Iranian Navy planes fighting together, bombing the same targets together?
Anyway, yeah, so what you're really getting to here is it seems to me like maybe even in Washington, D.C., because of the jargon that's used, that some confusion is being caused by a refusal of the American side to be honest about what it is that they're dealing with.
For example, when they say Iraqi forces, what they mean is Iranian-backed Shiite militias and what's left of the Iraqi army, which is an Iranian-backed Shiite militia.
If they want to talk about Iraqis in terms of civilians, well, that includes all kinds of Shia, Sunni, and Kurds.
But there is no Iraqi forces.
The forces are already completely split along sectarian lines, correct?
Well, that was a result of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who got rid of Sunni generals and whatnot.
What I find interesting in all of this is how complex Iraq has made relations in that region, that it's led to strange bedfellows, and that the reality is that to defeat the Islamic State, it turns out it's going to have to be a sort of unspoken but joint U.S.-Iranian effort, that the U.S. can provide the superior air power and has said it's not going to provide ground forces, and that that's being supplemented by Iran.
The problem becomes long-term, what are the effects?
Because if the U.S. is seen as supporting Shia and those Shia militias then victorious, carry out ethnic cleansing or sectarian violence against Sunnis, is the U.S. seen as complicit?
That is, what is the Iraq that emerges if these militias are victorious in defeating the Islamic State?
What's left behind?
And who's going to make sure that it is as inclusive as the U.S. has called for?
Well, that's kind of what I mean about the jargon there.
If you go back ten years, they said, well, we're fighting for the Iraqi people against the terrorists, when in fact they were fighting for the Shiite militias against the Sunni militias, and helping kick all the Sunnis out of Baghdad, and helping create the groundwork, create the reasons why people would rally to the Islamic State or then Al-Qaeda in Iraq in the first place.
And it seems like that's the same kind of danger that they're going under now.
If they are really convincing themselves that these are, quote, Iraqi forces taking back Tikrit rather than Shiite forces invading and conquering Tikrit, then that's a major difference just in the way that it's explained and the way it's understood compared to the truth and what's actually happening on the ground there, right?
Well, I think you raise an interesting point, which is what is the priority?
Is the priority ridding Iraq of the Islamic State at any cost?
Or is the priority maintaining a multi-sect country and a representative government?
That right now at least neither one is possible.
That the Iraqi forces simply cannot conduct an operation needed on their own.
And the U.S. cannot concede that it is working in the U.S.
And so we have this sort of opaque war in which alliances are being made but not being spoken about.
The purposes are sort of different for each one of those countries.
I think the U.S. priority is keeping Iraq intact.
The Iranian purpose is to increase its influence in the region.
So when you say we don't really know, it's because everybody is sort of speaking in code, right?
Because this conflict has created so many strange bedfellows.
Yeah, and now I guess let me ask you this.
Do you know much about the Shiite militias working with Sunni tribal leaders?
I saw some pictures and read one report that said that there are Sunni tribes who are happy to work with the Shia against the Islamic State right now.
And I was thinking if they're powerful enough to really be a good partner with the Shiite militias, maybe they would be the ones who end up holding Tikrit rather than it being cleansed and the population replaced by Shiites.
That's right.
I mean that's the hope that there is some sort of alliance.
That the Sunnis that were seen as maybe fearing militias are saying, you know what, this is a better alternative.
That it is worth making that alliance to rid our community of the Islamic State.
That we don't want to live under the Islamic State.
My own sense is that, frankly, if given the choice, the Sunnis don't want to live under either.
They don't want to live under an Iraqi government in which militias have such a strong power.
And they don't want to live under the Islamic State either.
And so the question becomes how long does this alliance hold out?
You know, I think the concern about the ethnic cleansing is very real.
But so far we haven't seen evidence of it.
I think there is an awareness by all sides that to begin to conduct that now threatens the state, threatens the government, and threatens the U.S. coalition.
That the U.S.-led coalition will not stay intact if some of those Sunni Arab state partners start to see that.
And so it's all very delicate right now is how I would put it.
And everybody is being delicate in their language and in their approach and even in their military tactics.
Very contradictory policies it seems like here between the Americans and the Iranians as they're working together.
If the Americans really mean what they say about trying to hold the Iraqi state together, when the Iranian-backed factions, the Dawa Party and the Supreme Islamic Council, have been very clear since 2003 that all they want to do is break off Shia-stan.
They want strong federalism, meaning let the Sunnis rot out in the sun with the worst part of Iraq, with the least amount of developed oil resources.
And if they don't like it, tough.
And if they could get the Americans to take Baghdad for them, then that would be nice.
But otherwise, their agenda always was take Shia-stan, not try to conquer all of Fallujah, Tikrit, Mosul, etc., right?
Well, what's kept Iraq intact though is that nobody can survive independently.
That neither the Kurds nor the Sunnis nor the Shia can actually survive with an independent state.
And so what's happened is this sort of breakup along sectarian lines.
But no one has been pushing for the actual division of the state because nobody can sustain it.
And so that's what we're seeing, the manifestation of that.
Well, I can see the Shia and the Kurds needing each other, but why do the Shia need the Sunnis?
Well, because first of all, there is oil in some of those areas, in Mosul, for example.
And they don't need the instability of angering, if you will, their Sunni partners by cutting off a Sunni state.
That creates its own complications.
And the Kurds don't want that state broken up.
And so that pushes them to not want to push for an independent state, if you will, because the Kurds cannot survive independent without the resources of the central government.
So all of those factors come into play.
Very interesting.
Then we got, at the same time, we got them trying to lure the Jordanians further in there to fight on the side of Iran.
That should be interesting.
Well, we're out of time.
Thank you so much for your time again, Nancy.
Great to talk to you.
My pleasure.
Thanks.
Appreciate it.
Hey, y'all.
Scott Horton here.
And I'm so excited about Commodity Discs from CommodityDiscs.com.
They're one-ounce silver pieces with a QR code engraved on the backside.
Scan the code with your phone and get the instant spot price.
Commodity Discs are paving the way forward for the alternative currency community in America and around the world.
The QR code, Commodity Disc.
Technology has now finally made a real free-market silver currency viable.
And anyone who donates $100 or more to the Scott Horton Show at scotthorton.org, donate gets one free.
That's CommodityDiscs.com.
Hey, y'all.
Scott here.
First, I want to take a second to thank all the show's listeners, sponsors, and supporters for helping make the show what it is.
I literally couldn't do it without you.
And now I want to tell you about the newest way to help support the show.
Whenever you shop at Amazon.com, stop by scotthorton.org first.
And just click the Amazon logo on the right side of the page.
That way, the show will get a kickback from Amazon's end of the sale.
It won't cost you an extra cent.
And it's not just books.
Amazon.com sells just about everything in the world except cars, I think.
So whatever you need, they've got it.
Just click the Amazon logo on the right side of the page at scotthorton.org or go to scotthorton.org.