Looming spring offensive forces US to partner with Iran

US army general, Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hosted Israel's army chief of staff Gen. Benjamin Gantz at the Pentagon last week, said that the Iranian presence and any Iraq partnership with Iran is not troubling at the moment, since it is not threatening US forces or the US mission in Iraq.

Dempsey who acknowledged Iran has been "interested in and sought to influence the future of Iraq since Iraq's

The Iranians are now… doing most of the fighting against [IS]. That cannot be in the US interest. – John McCain

sovereignty was restored in 2004" indicated that the US was not alarmed at such Iranian influence in Iraq.

"If it is a path that ties the two countries more closely together economically or even politically, as long as the Iraqi government remains committed to inclusivity of all the various groups inside the country, then I think Iranian influence will be positive," he said. “What really matters is where it all goes, and we're watching that very carefully."

Tackling the issue of the much talked about spring offensive to retake Mosul, Iraq's second largest city – which fell into the hands of Islamic State militants (IS, formerly ISIS) last June when legions of Iraqi forces stripped off their uniforms, laid down their arms and surrendered in their thousands – Dempsey said American military efforts are exerted on several fronts and are ultimately intended to enable Iraqi forces to launch a counteroffensive at a time of their choosing. He assured reporters that US forces were not sitting idly by in the key Iraqi cities of Baghdad or Erbil waiting until spring to launch an offensive but were, "actively working" to weaken ISIS simultaneously in several areas.

"When you ask me what the prospects for a spring offensive are, we're working with Iraqis, military and civilian leaders, to determine the pace at which we will encourage them and enable them to do a counteroffensive," Dempsey said.

"But I want to make sure I also highlight the fact that this isn't about... waiting till the spring to do anything… This is a drumbeat, a steady building pressure on ISIL (IS) along eight or nine lines of effort: counter-financing, counter-foreign fighters, counter-message as well as the military operations.”

Dempsey said Iraq would initiate a counteroffensive against the IS group when Baghdad felt it was ready to conduct the necessary military operations to recapture territory and follow it with humanitarian and reconstruction efforts. But a source tells this reporter that Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abbadi is pushing the Americans with Tehran's encouragement for an earlier offensive – perhaps in early February, which the US is opposed to.

The source told me that "the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) are preparing Mosul’s liberation plan, despite US warnings that there is a need to hold off until spring to ensure the 20,000 strong force the Iraqis are training for the task are properly trained to do the job."

He added: "The US prefers to wait until such time when the ISF is able to properly absorb Kurdish Peshmerga Forces, whom the US considers a more seasoned and a more adept fighting force."

Pentagon advisors believe that whatever offensive is undertaken, it should not be precipitous, as failure will only embolden IS militants and boost their numbers. On the other hand, a carefully integrated force that includes Kurdish militias (both Syrian and Iraqi), Shia militias aided by Iran and ISF, aided with American air-power can produce positive results as happened last month when such a combination forced IS militants to retreat from a number of positions in northern Iraq.

US plans to weave together such a coalition of Arabs, Sunni, Shia and Iranians suffered a setback when IS militants shot down a Jordanian F-16 fighter jet and captured its pilot. Iraq war watchers and analysts were alarmed that IS, who claim it shot down the Jordanian jet with a heat-seeking missile, possesses lethal ground to air shoulder-launch missiles that can conceivably bring down an American jet and capture an American pilot, something that is perceived as a nightmare scenario in Washington.

Further complicating the Obama administration's efforts in keeping together an effective coalition in Iraq, are claims by Congressional Republicans that US weapons intended for Iraqi military are winding up in the hands of the country’s Shia militias with strong ties to Iran. According to news reports, US lawmakers and senior administration officials say the Baghdad government, which was granted $1.2 billion in training and equipment aid in the omnibus spending bill passed last month, is turning these weapons over to Shia militias that are heavily influenced by Iran.

Senator John McCain, who became the new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, travelled to Baghdad and met with senior Americans and Iraqis, including Abbadi, told Bloomberg News that officials from both countries informed him that the Iraqi government was handing over American weapons to Shia militias connected to Iran. According to McCain, ''The Iraqi military is a long way from being prepared to act in an impactful fashion, meanwhile the vacuum is being filled by Shia militias that are Iranian backed." McCain added that "The Iranians are now, to a large degree, through the Shia militias, in the absence of a capable Iraqi military, doing most of the fighting against [IS]. That cannot be in the US interest."

The reports claim that while the Obama administration is aware of this, it is caught in a quandary because on the one hand, the ISF are unable to fight IS without the aid of the militias, who are often trained and sometimes commanded by officers from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, and on the other, if the US stopped shipment of these arms to the Iraqi military, things would only get worse, with IS capturing even larger swathes of territory and becoming harder to deal with.

Barack Obama, who more than anything, wanted to be the president who got the US out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and turned America’s diplomatic focus to Pacific Rim, finds himself at the start of 2015 more entangled in the Iraq mess, with increased and creeping American military involvement in sectarian torn country for remainder of his presidency. The collapse in Mosul in June of the Iraqi army, which the US spent "blood, treasure and time" in training, has ensured that.

Not only are US aircraft bombing areas in Iraq (and Syria) daily, but more than 3,000 US military personnel (all special forces) are in the country now, with plans to double them in the coming weeks in preparation for the spring offensive.