Iran Gives Türkiye Green Light in Iraq without Guarantees

The pro-Iran Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq has become a partner in a crucial deal between Baghdad and Ankara - with Iran’s blessing - to eliminate the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Iraqi and Turkish sources said the recent deal goes beyond military operations against the PKK to cover comprehensive arrangements related to the shape of the Middle East after the war in Gaza is over.

A Turkish official told Asharq Al-Awsat that part of “Ankara’s plan” was to prepare for changes that will happen after the war and its determination to have “zero security problems in the region, especially in Iraq.” The “blood fraternity” between the PKK and Shiite factions in the town of Sinjar may however prove to be an obstacle in Türkiye's new plan.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan spoke last week of an understanding reached between his country and “an official institution funded by the Iraqi state” over Sinjar.

It seems Türkiye is throwing its major political and military weight in Iraq and is seeking broader relations to end the chronic tensions along its southern border. Internal balances in Baghdad and the PKK’s rising power in Sinjar could undermine the plan.

Iraqi sources agreed that the “comprehensive Turkish activity” is part of the post-war arrangements for the region, and this demands the “elimination of sources of tension.”

What happened?

On March 13, Turkish FM Fidan met with his Iraqi counterpart Fuad Hussein in Baghdad. Security officials, including PMF leader Faleh al-Fayyad and National Security Adviser Qasim al-Araji were present at the meeting.

A government statement said Iraq deems the presence of the PKK on its territory as a “violation of the constitution.” Türkiye praised the statement, speaking of forming a 40-km deep buffer zone to eliminate the PKK, which it deems as terrorist. The zone would stretch from the Sulaymaniyah region, pass through Sinjar and reach the Syrian border.

That night, Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler did not return to Ankara with Fidan. He stayed behind and spent the night at the Iraqi border at the headquarters of Turkish forces deployed in Hakkari.

Türkiye’s zero hour

According to two sources in Baghdad and Erbil, Ankara has for years been receiving Iraqi complaints that it has been “too patient” in its fight against the PKK that ultimately has not been successful. It has repeatedly been asked what is holding it back from launching a “final military operation to rid everyone of this headache.” It seems it has finally been convinced to take decisive action.

Iraqi sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that before Fidan traveled to Baghdad, Iraq was informed of the Turkish plan, including Iran’s blessing of the new situation regarding the PKK.

“Everything, including zero hour, was ready” when the official consultations began, revealed another Iraqi source. He described the plan as “unprecedented” between the countries, adding that the PMF will be involved in some regions to provide support.

It remains unclear why Iran has agreed to eliminating the PKK in Iraq, especially since the party’s activity has since 2016 been connected to pro-Iran factions along Tehran’s strategic route that stretches to Damascus and Beirut.

The Iraqi sources said the agreement includes Turkish mediation with the Americans on easing tensions with Tehran in Iraq and securing a greater Iranian role in regional trade with Turkish guarantees. It also includes securing Iran’s assistance to Baghdad in overcoming crises, such as the export of oil and the “flawed” situation in the Kurdistan Region and Kirkuk.

Comprehensive changes

An Iraqi diplomat said the political aspects of the deal prepare for the “comprehensive changes that are expected to happen after the war in Gaza is over.” A Turkish aide had confirmed to Asharq Al-Awsat that Ankara had prepared a file about the post-war situation that covers countries in the region.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the Turkish official said the Turkish foreign ministry and security agencies had drafted a plan some five months ago, covering Ankara’s options in the post-war phase and how to deal with the expected changes. “Iraq and Syria are part of this picture,” he revealed.

Former Nineveh Governor, Sunni politician Atheel al-Nujayfi told Asharq Al-Awsat: “All countries in the region are aware that the battle in Gaza has a post-war phase. Changes will be made to the strategies of major powers in the region.”

These changes demand preemptive steps that either prepare for a greater role in the future or prevent any plans that could affect the national security of these countries. He said Türkiye is very active in making strategic calculations to develop its interests.

However, a Turkish diplomatic source denied that the Turkish military operations in Iraq are directly tied to the situation in Gaza. He predicted that the operations may kick off in June.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to travel to Baghdad in April. He is set to sign an agreement for the establishment of a joint operations command center and a buffer zone, “which will effectively mean we have reached zero hour,” said Turkish sources.

An Iraqi official from the pro-Iran Coordination Framework said Ankara wants to turn the PKK’s zones of influence into a “zone of secure partnership” with Iraq and Iran. The Turks have shown “clear keenness for the concerned regional players in this file to reach the post-war phase with zero tensions.”

This may explain why Türkiye is throwing such weight in Iraq. “Türkiye needs to prevent the ball of fire from rolling towards it amid such instability in the region,” said al-Nujayfi. This is why it is urging Iraq and Syria to “carry out direct and strong measures with it to prevent the PKK from turning into a greater crisis.”

Meanwhile, Iraqi sources said Tehran has given its blessing to the Turks to act in Iraq. An Iraqi politician said this was reflected with the notable presence of the PMF at the official consultations that took place between the two countries. The possibility of an armed confrontation taking place against the PKK in Sinjar remains unresolved, revealed the sources.

Türkiye’s military plan calls for a broad military operation in mountainous regions in the Kurdistan Region, while Baghdad provides intelligence support, maps and information and monitors the border.

Sulaymaniyah and Sinjar, however, lie on the outskirts of the Turkish buffer zone and intersect with Iranian interests, demanding that Ankara take different political and security arrangements over them.

A Kurdish source told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Turks were trying to neutralize the PKK in Sulaymaniyah by forging a new relationship with Bafel Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), including exploring opportunities for partnership with him and resolving differences with the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Erbil.

Al-Nujayfi said it would be difficult for the leaderships of the PUK, including Talabani, to put themselves in a confrontation with agreements reached between major countries in the region. So, there can be no doubt that the agreements were blessed by Iran and approved by Iraq, Türkiye and the official authority in Kurdistan.

Sinjar hurdle

The situation in Sinjar, however, remains an obstacle in the regional plans. The situation there will be handled by the PMF, according to the Turkish agreement.

Al-Nujayfi told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Shiite factions’ influence is limited to Sinjar and doesn’t extend to the rest of the Kurdish regions.

The situation in Sinjar is different, however. Located on the Turkish-Syrian border, its population is predominantly Yazidi and it boasts several armed groups. Even the Iraqi army acts like one of the factions there, said a local official in the town.

He compared Sinjar to Beirut during the Lebanese civil war where frontlines are at a close distance from one another and armed groups that represent regional and local interests are always on alert.

An alliance has grown over the years between the PMF and PKK and they formed a “blood fraternity” during the battles against the ISIS extremist group, said a member of a Shiite faction.

It remains unclear how the PMF will neutralize PKK fighters after the recent years of partnership on the ground.

Information about the nature of this alliance has varied. Two leading members of Shiite factions told Asharq Al-Awsat that the PMF provides safe locations for PKK leaderships in Sinjar, Nineveh and other regions in return for logistic and military services.

Three sources on the ground, including the leader of a powerful faction in Baghdad, said the situation goes “much more beyond this because the decision to form an alliance between the PMF and PKK was taken by Iran.”

“The PKK is very powerful. All the Iraqi security agencies don’t have an accurate imagining of the power of the party and its weapons,” they revealed, adding that the Iraqi military, during the term of former Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, twice confronted the PKK in Sinjar and it came out defeated both times.

Moreover, they claimed that the PKK had set up a network of tunnels in Sinjar, especially the mountainous regions. Local journalists told Asharq Al-Awsat that they had previously spotted trucks transporting diggers from Sinjar to the areas where the tunnels are located.

Locals in Sinjar and members of Shiite factions did not answer question from Asharq Al-Awsat about the tunnels.

Expert force

A prominent politician from Nineveh described the PKK as an “expert force in deployment, mobilization and consolidating control, so it would be difficult to predict how the PMF can eliminate the party or help Türkiye neutralize it.”

Al-Nujayfi said the PKK will become a problem for Iraq that will weigh on local affairs so it will need Türkiye’s help in tackling this “internal crisis.” The PKK will eventually realize that “it is nothing more than a pawn and negotiations card. When it no longer serves a role, everyone will cooperate to eliminate it,” he added.

The question remains: How will the PMF neutralize the PKK fighters?

Former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said in a recent television interview that there was a need to “confront the PKK gunmen as long as they were harming the people of Sinjar.” He added, however, that he doesn’t know how the cooperation with Türkiye against this party will take place, referring to whether the fighters will be expelled or contained.

A Shiite politician said: “The Iranian green light is not decisive.” Speaking on condition of anonymity, he added that Tehran stands before a “good deal with Türkiye, but it won’t sign a blank check and jeopardize its armed influence in Iraq.”

“Iran is observing and everything may change according to how developments unfold. All we know now is that a limited settlement is in place in Sinjar,” he remarked.

Other sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that the PMF would deploy local PKK members among Shiite factions, ending the visible presence of the party. Such a move would guarantee total control over Sinjar at the expense of Kurdish forces that are loyal to the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

What does this mean? The PMF will view the Turkish agreement as a way to strengthen its influence in a strategic area to Iraq, Iran and Türkiye. In theory, the military operation will lead to the expulsion of the PKK fighters to the mountainous regions of Kurdistan. It will also merge the Turkish buffer zone with the Iranian zone where Iranian factions are deployed near Syria. Political and diplomatic aides in Baghdad said everything should go according to plan “unless Tehran comes up with an unexpected card at a decisive moment.”

It was their most challenging mission.
US Army soldiers in the 7th Transportation Brigade had previously set up a pier during training and in exercises overseas but never had dealt with the wild combination of turbulent weather, security threats and sweeping personnel restrictions that surrounded the Gaza humanitarian aid project.
Designed as a temporary solution to get badly needed food and supplies to desperate Palestinians, the so-called Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore system, or JLOTS, faced a series of setbacks over the spring and summer. It managed to send more than 20 million tons of aid ashore for people in Gaza facing famine during the Israel-Hamas war.
Service members struggled with what Col. Sam Miller, who was commander during the project, called the biggest “organizational leadership challenge” he had ever experienced.
Speaking to The Associated Press after much of the unit returned home, Miller said the Army learned a number of lessons during the four-month mission. It began when President Joe Biden announced in his State of the Union speech in March that the pier would be built and lasted through July 17, when the Pentagon formally declared that the mission was over and the pier was being permanently dismantled.
The Army is reviewing the $230 million pier operation and what it learned from the experience. One of the takeaways, according to a senior Army official, is that the unit needs to train under more challenging conditions to be better prepared for bad weather and other security issues it faced. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because assessments of the pier project have not been publicly released.
In a report released this week, the inspector general for the US Agency for International Development said Biden ordered the pier's construction even as USAID staffers expressed concerns that it would be difficult and undercut a push to persuade Israel to open “more efficient” land crossings to get food into Gaza.
The Defense Department said the pier “achieved its goal of providing an additive means of delivering high volumes of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza to help address the acute humanitarian crisis.” The US military knew from the outset “there would be challenges as part of this in this complex emergency,” the statement added.
The Biden administration had set a goal of the US sea route and pier providing food to feed 1.5 million people for 90 days. It fell short, bringing in enough to feed about 450,000 people for a month before shutting down, the USAID inspector general's report said.
The Defense Department’s watchdog also is doing an evaluation of the project.
Beefing up training Army soldiers often must conduct their exercises under difficult conditions designed to replicate war. Learning from the Gaza project — which was the first time the Army set up a pier in actual combat conditions — leaders say they need to find ways to make the training even more challenging.
One of the biggest difficulties of the Gaza pier mission was that no US troops could step ashore — a requirement set by Biden. Instead, US service members were scattered across a floating city of more than 20 ships and platforms miles offshore that had to have food, water, beds, medical care and communications.
Every day, said Miller, there were as many as 1,000 trips that troops and other personnel made from ship to boat to pier to port and back.
“We were moving personnel around the sea and up to the Trident pier on a constant basis,” Miller said. “And every day, there was probably about a thousand movements taking place, which is quite challenging, especially when you have sea conditions that you have to manage.”
Military leaders, he said, had to plan three or four days ahead to ensure they had everything they needed because the trip from the pier to their “safe haven” at Israel's port of Ashdod was about 30 nautical miles.
The trip over and back could take up to 12 hours, in part because the Army had to sail about 5 miles out to sea between Ashdod and the pier to stay a safe distance from shore as they passed Gaza City, Miller said.
Normally, Miller said, when the Army establishes a pier, the unit sets up a command onshore, making it much easier to store and access supplies and equipment or gather troops to lay out orders for the day.
Communication difficulties While his command headquarters was on the US military ship Roy P. Benavidez, Miller said he was constantly moving with his key aides to the various ships and the pier.
“I slept and ate on every platform out there,” he said.
The US Army official concurred that a lot of unexpected logistical issues came up that a pier operation may not usually include.
Because the ships had to use the Ashdod port and a number of civilian workers under terms of the mission, contracts had to be negotiated and written. Agreements had to be worked out so vessels could dock, and workers needed to be hired for tasks that troops couldn't do, including moving aid onto the shore.
Communications were a struggle.
“Some of our systems on the watercraft can be somewhat slower with bandwidth, and you’re not able to get up to the classified level,” Miller said.
He said he used a huge spreadsheet to keep track of all the ships and floating platforms, hundreds of personnel and the movement of millions of tons of aid from Cyprus to the Gaza shore.
When bad weather broke the pier apart, they had to set up ways to get the pieces moved to Ashdod and repaired. Over time, he said, they were able to hire more tugs to help move sections of the pier more quickly.
Some of the pier's biggest problems — including the initial reluctance of aid agencies to distribute supplies throughout Gaza and later safety concerns from the violence — may not apply in other operations where troops may be quickly setting up a pier to get military forces ashore for an assault or disaster response.
“There’s tons of training value and experience that every one of the soldiers, sailors and others got out of this,” Miller said. "There’s going to be other places in the world that may have similar things, but they won’t be as tough as the things that we just went through.”
When the time comes, he said, “we’re going to be much better at doing this type of thing.”
One bit of information could have given the military a better heads-up about the heavy seas that would routinely hammer the pier. Turns out, said the Army official, there was a Gaza surf club, and its headquarters was near where they built the pier.
That "may be an indicator that the waves there were big,” the official said.

Iran Gives Türkiye Green Light in Iraq without Guarantees

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