„The White House says it is fighting ISIS, but its Iranian and Iranian-backed partners say the war is about killing Sunnis. ‚There are no patriots, no real religious people in Fallujah,‘ said the leader of one Iranian-backed Shiite militia. ‚It’s our chance to clear Iraq by eradicating the cancer of Fallujah.‘ That doesn’t sound like the kind of ally the United States should be embracing. That sounds like the United States taking sides in a sectarian war, against the Sunni Arab regional majority.
There is no way to defeat ISIS unless the administration can get Sunni Arab leaders, especially tribal sheikhs, to join the fight. Only they have the local forces and knowledge to root out ISIS. But obviously no tribal leaders will enjoin their brothers to open up a Sunni civil war so that the Shiites and Iranians may profit from them spilling each other’s blood. To destroy ISIS, the United States will have to move against the Shiite groups that are terrorizing Sunnis. That’s precisely how the surge worked. But that hasn’t happened with this White House for the same reason that the administration never moved to topple Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad – Obama doesn’t want to get their Iranian patrons mad. (…)
Obama is not a bystander, an impartial observer who just decided to let American allies – or in his words ‚free riders‘ – twist in the wind while America turned to its domestic issues. He switched sides. The president has been playing for the opposing team for several years now, and has enlisted the government of the United States, including its armed forces, intelligence community, and diplomatic corps, on the side of Iran.
The evidence of realignment has been out there for half a decade. The White House leaked news of Israeli strikes on Iranian arms convoys transiting Syria and destined for Hezbollah. Jerusalem was furious since it feared that publicity would embarrass their adversaries and drive them to make war. But what mattered to the Obama administration was keeping the Israelis off balance and proving to the Iranians that Washington had Benjamin Netanyahu on a short leash.
The administration shared intelligence with a Hezbollah-controlled unit of the Lebanese Armed Forces. When the White House finally decided to support Syrian rebels, it was on the condition that they fight only ISIS, and not Assad and his allies. And of course the key piece of evidence that Obama switched sides is that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action not only cost Iran nothing but showered Tehran with a windfall of hundreds of billions of dollars, money it can use to wage its war against Sunnis in Syria and Iraq.“
(Lee Smith: „Our Iranian Allies“)
