U.S. Target in Iraq is Maliki not ISIS

A perplexing game by the United States is currently being played with regards to the unfolding Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, or, if you prefer, ISIL -- Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant; it depends on the news outlet) offensive in Iraq. Tal Afar, a city of 200,000 in the north, has fallen to ISIS; ISIS also is reported to have ambushed a number of Iraqi volunteers (29 dead, 190 wounded) near Samarra. The U.S. is said to have met with senior Iranian diplomats in Geneva to discuss ways to defuse the crisis. Michael Gordon and David Sanger have the story, "U.S. Is Exploring Talks With Iran on Crisis in Iraq":

The outreach to Tehran was a surprising turnabout for the Obama administration, which has not held talks over regional crises with Iran. Cooperation between the United States and Iran to contain the Iraqi crisis would represent the first time the two countries have jointly undertaken a common security purpose since they shared military intelligence to counter the Taliban in Afghanistan after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

But don't get your hopes up that the rising caliphate could signal a rapprochement between Great Satan and the Islamic Republic. As Gordon and Sanger note in the next four paragraphs:

Mr. Kerry, in fact, worked furiously in January to persuade the United Nations to disinvite Iran from the Geneva peace talks on Syria, arguing that Tehran’s military support to Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, disqualified it from participating. 

The United States and Iran have long been bitter, and even deadly, rivals in Iraq. Iran’s Quds Force trained Iraqi Shiite militias that targeted American troops, and it supplied those militants with powerful explosive devices. The American military established a task force to hunt Iranian-backed Shiite Iraqi fighters. 

The Bush administration held talks with Iranian officials in Baghdad during the American occupation of Iraq. But those discussions made no headway. 

Moreover, the Treasury Department accused Iran this year of harboring an militant who provided support to Al Qaeda.

The real story here, as Obama makes a show of methodically deliberating military options, is what the U.S. is demanding in exchange for military strikes against ISIS:

The Obama administration’s strategy is to pressure Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and his Shiite-dominated government to form a multisectarian government with Sunnis and Kurds in an effort to heal the rifts being exploited by the insurgents. But that goal could be frustrated if Iran decided to back hard-line Shiite leaders or sent Quds Force fighters into Iraq, aggravating the already inflamed tensions.

The Iraqi position, elegantly stated by the Iraqi ambassador to the United States in a story yesterday by Mark Landler and Michael Gordon, "Obama Pushes Iraqis to Mend Sectarian Rifts," is reasonable. They have a framework agreement with the U.S. Now is not the time for quid pro quo haggling. Let's act now:

The United States, a senior Iraqi official said, is “conditioning its actions on genuine reconciliation and cooperation among Iraqi leaders, leading to a new representative government.” 

Whether those leaders are prepared to take those kinds of steps, especially during a raging insurgency, is far from clear. Lukman Faily, Iraq’s ambassador to Washington, noted that the Strategic Framework Agreement between Iraq and the United States “talks about the importance of maintaining the territorial integrity of Iraq.” 

“The urgency on the ground should be enough reason to act,” Mr. Faily said in an interview. “We think that addressing the immediate threat to Iraq’s sovereignty should take priority over discussions regarding political reform.”

This is U.S.-Iraq face off appears again in a lede story this morning by Alissa Rubin and Rod Nordland, "Sunnis and Kurds on Sidelines of Iraqi Leader’s Military Plans":

“Now there’s a war, there’s not reconciliation,” said Amir al-Khuzai, a longtime friend of Mr. Maliki’s. 

“With whom do we reconcile?” he said.

President Obama has made it clear that the United States will not provide military support unless Mr. Maliki engineers a drastic change in policy, reaching out to Sunnis and Kurds in a show of national unity against the Sunni militants, whose shock troops are the extremist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Without that, analysts say, the country is at risk of a renewed sectarian war in which Baghdad could lose control over nearly a third of the country for the foreseeable future.

You have to read to the end of the article to learn that Maliki did in fact reach out to Iraq's Sunni leadership. The Sunni price for supporting the state they represent? They want their own military:

But Mr. Maliki has little faith in the Sunni political leaders, said Mr. Khuzai and other Shiite colleagues. 

As recently as last week in the wake of the fall of Mosul, Mr. Maliki appeared to have a chance to create a unified multisectarian, multiethnic block to fight ISIS and those who support it. In a long late-night meeting with Sunni and Kurdish leaders, it appeared they might emerge with a unified stand. Hours passed, and when they emerged there was no agreement. 

It turned out the Sunnis proposed raising in effect a Sunni army, a sort of new version of the tribal Awakening Councils that fought Al Qaeda in 2007 and 2008. But that idea was rejected by Mr. Maliki, even as the Shiite militias were beginning to organize. 

While the idea of separate Sunni and Shiite armies is an indication of the depths of the sectarian divide, Mr. Maliki’s inability to use the moment to try to build trust is telling, and his outright rejection left the Sunni leaders with nothing to deliver to their supporters. 

So the speaker of Parliament, Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni, delivered a scathing assessment of Mr. Maliki, further deepening the divide. 

“We don’t want this prime minister; we reject him,” Mr. Nujaifi said. “We tried to take him down on more than one occasion.”

What the quote above illuminates, besides the fact that there is no willing reconciliation partner, is that there is already multiethnic, multisectarian government in Iraq. You have Kurds and Sunni in major leadership positions already.

Obama's demand for Maliki to include Kurds and Sunnis in a "genuine" reconciliation government is just another way of saying regime change. It's Syria all over again. The rhetoric is not as cut and dried, but the message is still the same. Regime change and a fractured, weakened state.