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.”

The baby in Gaza who was recently paralyzed by polio was infected with a mutated strain of the virus that vaccinated people shed in their waste, according to scientists who say the case is the result of “an unqualified failure” of public health policy.
The infection, which marked the first detection of polio in the war-torn Palestinian territory in more than 25 years, paralyzed the lower part of one leg in the unvaccinated 10-month-old child. The baby boy was one of hundreds of thousands of children who missed vaccinations because of the fighting between Israel and Hamas.
Scientists who have been monitoring polio outbreaks said the baby's illness showed the failures of a global effort by the World Health Organization and its partners to fix serious problems in their otherwise largely successful eradication campaign, which has nearly wiped out the highly infectious disease. Separately, a draft report by experts deemed the WHO effort a failure and “a severe setback.”
The polio strain in question evolved from a weakened virus that was originally part of an oral vaccine credited with preventing millions of children worldwide from being paralyzed. But that virus was removed from the vaccine in 2016 in hopes of preventing vaccine-derived outbreaks.
Public health authorities knew that decision would leave people unprotected against that particular strain, but they thought they had a plan to ward off and quickly contain any outbreaks. Instead, the move resulted in a surge of thousands of cases, The Associated Press reported.
“It was a really horrible strategy,” said Columbia University virologist Vincent Racaniello, who was not involved with the report or the WHO. “The decision to switch vaccines was based on an incorrect assumption, and the result is now we have more polio and more paralyzed children.”
A draft copy of the report commissioned by the WHO and independent experts said the plan underestimated the amount of the strain in the environment and overestimated how well officials would be able to squash outbreaks.
The plan led to vaccine-linked polio outbreaks in 43 countries that paralyzed more than 3,300 children, the report concluded.
Even before the Gaza case was detected, officials reviewing the initiative to tinker with the vaccine concluded that “the worst-case scenario has materialized,” the report said.
The report has not yet been published, and some changes will likely be made before the final version is released next month, the WHO said.
The strain that infected the baby in Gaza had lingered in the environment and mutated into a version capable of starting outbreaks. It was traced to polio viruses spreading last year in Egypt, according to genetic sequencing, the WHO said.
In 2022, vaccine-linked polio viruses were found to be spreading in Britain, Israel and the US, where an unvaccinated man was paralyzed in upstate New York.
Scientists now worry that the emergence of polio in a war zone with an under-immunized population could fuel further spread.
Racaniello said the failure to track polio carefully and to sufficiently protect children against the strain removed from the vaccine has had devastating consequences.
“Only about 1% of polio cases are symptomatic, so 99% of infections are silently spreading the disease,” he said.
The oral polio vaccine, which contains a weakened live virus, was withdrawn in the US in 2000. Doctors continued to vaccinate children and eventually moved to an injected vaccine, which uses a dead virus and does not come with the risk that polio will be present in human waste. Such waste-borne virus could mutate into a form that triggers outbreaks in unvaccinated people.
The report's authors faulted leaders at the WHO and its partners, saying they were unable or unwilling “to recognize the seriousness of the evolving problem and take corrective action.”
WHO spokesman Oliver Rosenbauer acknowledged that the vaccine strategy “exacerbated” the risk of epidemics linked to the vaccine.
He said in an email that immunization “was not implemented in such a way to rapidly stop outbreaks or to prevent new strains from emerging.” Rosenbauer said not hitting vaccination targets was the biggest risk for allowing vaccine-linked viruses to emerge.
“You need to reach the children with the vaccines ... regardless of which vaccines are used,” he said.
The WHO estimates that 95% of the population needs to be immunized against polio to stop outbreaks. The UN health agency said only about 90% of Gaza’s population was vaccinated earlier this year.
To try to stop polio in Gaza and the wider region, the WHO and its partners plan two rounds of vaccination campaigns later this week and next month, aiming to cover 640,000 children. Authorities will use a newer version of the oral polio vaccine that targets the problematic strain. The weakened live virus in the new vaccine is less likely to cause vaccine-derived outbreaks, but they are still possible.
Racaniello said it was “unethical” that the WHO and its partners were using a vaccine that is unlicensed in rich countries precisely because it can increase the risk of polio in unvaccinated children.
The oral polio vaccine, which has reduced infections globally by more than 99%, is easy to make and distribute. Children require just two drops per dose that can be administered by volunteers. The oral vaccine is better at stopping transmission than the injected version, and it is cheaper and easier to administer.
But as the number of polio cases caused by the wild virus have plummeted in recent years, health officials have been struggling to contain the increasing spread of vaccine-linked cases, which now comprise the majority of polio infections in more than a dozen countries, in addition to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where transmission of the wild virus has never been stopped.
“This is the result of the Faustian bargain we made when we decided to use" the oral polio vaccine, said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the University of Philadelphia. “If we really want to eradicate polio, then we need to stop using the vaccine with live (weakened) virus.”

Iran Gives Türkiye Green Light in Iraq without Guarantees

Asharq Al-Awsat details plan to eliminate the Kurdistan Workers' Party in Iraq