Iraq In Transition

A Political, Economic, And Strategic Perspective

Frederick W Axelgard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429709647
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

After twenty-five years of thinly veiled hostility, U.S. relations with post-monarchial Iraq have warmed dramatically. Simultaneously, Iraq's sovereignty has become the keystone of Gulf stability, due to Iraq's military and economic resilience and to the rise of Khomeini's Iran and the waning of Saudi influence. In this book, five leading analysts

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War and Oil: Implications for Iraq’s Postwar Role in Gulf Security

Frederick W. Axelgard

Iraq in Transition is an attempt to present insights into Iraq's response—in political, economic, and foreign policy terms—to the trauma of its ongoing war with Iran. Its main justification is neither the war nor the apparent evolution in Iraq's political and economic outlook. Rather its justification is Iraq's unchanging status as a major regional power and the belief that continuing U.S. interest in the Middle East, particularly in the Persian/Arab Gulf, in coming years will require more serious consideration of Iraq's role in the U.S. approach to the region. Although the precise nature of this role is yet to be determined, it will almost certainly include moving U.S.-Iraqi interaction toward a more open dialogue, and possibly discussion of limited U.S.-Iraqi cooperation to maintain a strategic balance in the Gulf between Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq itself.

A growing dialogue with Iraq must be founded on an expanding understanding of the country, its leaders, and their response to the burden of the war. Consequently, the Middle East Program of the Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies invited four distinguished scholars and analysts to address a seminar on the topic of "Iraq: Political, Economic, and Strategic Perspectives of a Country in Transition," which was held in May of 1985. At that seminar Jonathan Crusoe, Adeed Dawisha, Edmund Ghareeb, and Mark Katz presented the papers that are published here to contribute to the understanding needed for constructive U.S. policy choices vis-à-vis Iraq.

Although the United States did not have an independent policy toward Iraq until well into the 1950s (in deference to the prevalent British influence in the country), U.S. decision makers were conscious of Iraq's significance for regional policy early in the postwar era. In 1946, the State Department concluded,

It will be increasingly necessary for us to maintain closer relations with Iraq, since our standing in the entire area will to a considerable degree be dependent on the attitude of Iraq toward the United States.¹

But U.S. efforts to ground a portion of its regional strategy in Iraq, following the collapse of British prestige at Suez, were cut short by the 1958 revolution in Baghdad. The advent of revolutionary rule in Iraq inaugurated a prolonged period of tension with the United States, and mutual understanding dimmed even further when Baghdad severed its diplomatic relations with the United States during the 1967 war. Thus, throughout the 1960s and 1970s Iraq was considered beyond the pale of constructive involvement in any bilateral or regional aspect of U.S. Middle East policy. Not until the 1981 visit to Baghdad of then-Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Morris Draper, who was promoting the strategic consensus policy of Secretary of State Haig, was there a serious indication that Iraq might have a place in the thinking of U.S. policymakers regarding regional stability.

From 1981 to 1984 the scope and frequency of interaction between Baghdad and Washington expanded quickly, mostly because of the common threat posed to U.S. and Iraqi interests by the Iranian revolution. This rapprochement was formalized in November 1984 by the restoration of full diplomatic relations between the United States and Iraq. Since that time, other practical steps toward improving commercial relations and upgrading technological exchange have been taken, including the drafting of a general U.S.-Iraqi trade agreement and approval for the sale of advanced computer technology.

The time is ripe, therefore, to step back and examine the major factors determining Iraq's regional and international standing, particularly as they might affect the country's role in the future stability of the Gulf. In this essay a context will be set for the ensuing discussions of Iraq's domestic political and economic framework and key elements of its foreign policy, by focusing on two fundamental realities that affect all aspects of Iraqi national life. The first reality, the war with Iran, has probably become the most important single event in Iraq's modern history, not only because of the devastating loss of life and the billions of dollars in damages, but also because new contours in its domestic and international affairs have been forged. The second reality is Iraq's determined effort to expand its oil exports and reinstate the country as a major petroleum exporter within the next two or three years, whether the war with Iran ends or not.

The Gulf War

After five years, the Iran-Iraq war remains a stalemate because neither party is capable of imposing its will by military means, and Iran explicitly rejects a negotiated approach to resolving the dispute. If Iran's demand for the removal of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi Ba'th Party persists, activity on all the war fronts—the tanker war in the Gulf, the ground war along the entire 1,200 kilometer border, the raids on nonmilitary targets in the cities, and international diplomacy—will continue unabated, but with little chance of eroding the underlying standoff in the foreseeable future.

The Oil War

After years of suspense over the war's potential impact on oil traffic, the tanker war in the Gulf began in earnest in March 1984. The confirmed toll in damages to shipping climbed quickly, although less quickly than Iraqi claims. According to a study published by Lloyd's List in March 1985, 55 oil tankers had been attacked in the Gulf since May 1981, 49 of them since late March 1984. The report also indicated that Iraq (which had been reponsible for almost two-thirds of such attacks) had shifted its focus from strikes in the northernmost sector of the Gulf to attacks further south, nearer the Iranian ports at Kharg Island and Bushehr.²

This modification in strategy suggested some of the difficulty Iraq had in damaging Iran's war machine by sharply reducing its oil exports. Notwithstanding Iraq's attacks, Iran produced an average of nearly 2.2 million barrels per day (b/d) of oil in 1984, while exports of 1.7 million b/d resulted in revenues of almost $17 billion.³ Although this constituted a 23 percent reduction in revenues from 1983, part of this decline was due to market forces rather than Iraqi attacks, and the resultant impact on Iran's war effort in 1984 was negligible in any case.

January 1985 was the first month in which Iran's oil output dropped dramatically, to 1.4 million b/d, apparently as a result of intensive Iraqi bombing throughout the month of December. Iran's response was to begin shuttling oil on its own or Iranian-chartered tankers from Kharg to Sirri Island, an off-loading point lower in the Gulf, thus reducing the exposure of commercial tankers in the northern Gulf war zone. Iranian production and export levels rebounded immediately in February 1985, a setback for Iraq which certainly spurred its decision to escalate its air attacks against on-shore civilian targets in March.

The tanker war that began in early 1984 was preceded by an international crisis of nerves caused by France's sale of sophisticated aircraft and missiles to Iraq in late 1983. This sale, and the exchange of threats against Gulf shipping and the Strait of Hormuz that attended it, visibly increased the level of U.S. concern about the conflict. The Reagan administration reportedly sought to discourage the French sale and simultaneously asserted its intent to maintain unhindered passage through the Strait of Hormuz. In addition, when Iran responded to Iraq's attacks by hitting ships using Kuwaiti and Saudi ports, U.S. President Ronald Reagan outspokenly criticized Iran's attacks on the ships of "neutral nations" and expressed understanding for Iraq's attacks as an effort to undermine Iranian commerce.⁴ Nevertheless, neither Iran's attacks on neutral shipping nor the Saudi air force's shooting down of invading Iranian aircraft in June 1984 changed Washington's underlying attitude that the threat posed by the tanker war was "not unmanageable".⁵

In August 1985, however, Iraq launched its first sustained and (apparently) effective series of attacks on Iran's main export terminal at Kharg Island. Extensive damage was reportedly inflicted on the loading jetties on either side of the island and on pumping and storage facilities on Kharg itself. Weeks after the attacks began, however, there were still seriously contradictory reports as to how much oil Iran was able to export: estimates varied from 100-200 thousand b/d to 1.2 million b/d.⁶ Nevertheless, Iraq's success in penetrating Kharg's defenses loomed as a potential turning point in the war, in technical if not yet political terms. Thus, as the war entered its sixth year, the Gulf sector remained its major flashpoint and the arena most capable of changing the overall course of the conflict.

The Onshore War

In comparison with the exchange of attacks on oil targets, the recent ground war between Iran and Iraq has been far more bloody and less creative. Following Iran's human wave offensives in February 1984, Iraq waited for months for what Tehran announced would be its "final offensive." It never came. Minor skirmishes in the northern border areas at the end of the year provided a distraction from the protracted face-off between scores of thousands of troops in the southern sector, but only served to emphasize the absence of sustained advances anywhere on the ground.

Iraq appeared to anticipate another major Iranian buildup when it carried out small-scale offensive maneuvers against the Iranian lines at the end of January 1985. These operations seemed designed to keep Iran's strategic planners offguard by reminding them that Iraq retained a ground-offensive capability even if it had not been used in over two years. Just weeks later, after Iran successfully evaded Iraq's "blockade" of Kharg Island with the help of its shuttle service to Sirri Island, and after a United Nations study criticized Iraq and Iran equally for mistreatment of prisoners of war, Iraq's restraint disappeared. It began a large-scale aerial bombing campaign which focussed on industrial targets in important Iranian cities. Iran quickly retaliated with bombings and artillery barrages against Iraqi cities. This cycle dissolved a U.N.-sponsored cease-fire against civilian targets that had been concluded in June 1984.

The reasons for Iraq's aggressiveness were several. First was the need to disrupt a suspected Iranian military buildup. In addition, new tactics were in order once it became clear that the flow of Iran's oil had not been seriously curtailed by the tanker war. Third, and perhaps most fundamental, was Iraq's clear disappointment over the continued failure of international pressure to affect Iranian intransigence in any way. Thus Baghdad adopted what was termed "a defensive offense," and yet another phase in the war began.⁷

The significance of this new development was temporarily overshadowed by Iran's launching of yet another offensive in southern Iraq, In a week-long battle (March 12-18), which saw some of the heaviest ground fighting of the war thus far, Iran is believed to have sent over 100 thousand troops through the Hawizah marshes, where for the first time they penetrated to the Tigris River and temporarily seized a portion of the strategic Baghdad-Basrah highway. Iran's logistical inability to back up these penetrations quickly negated their immediate military significance, and Iraqi counterattacks succeeded in pushing the Iranian forces back into the marshes, although reportedly not back to their original starting point.

Casualties throughout the course of the war have been notoriously difficult to estimate, and the spring 1985 operations were no exception. U.S. officials were quoted as approximating "tens of thousands" of Iranian casualties,⁸ while other independent estimates suggested casualties of 20 thousand for Iran and 10 thousand for Iraq.⁹ Nor is it precisely clear what kind of forces the Iranians used in this fighting. Some reports suggested that regular military troops combined with volunteers played a larger part in planning and implementing this year's offensive than had been the case in 1984.¹⁰ Other reports, however, stressed that Iranian tactics in 1985 had changed little, if at all, from 1984, recalling the image of human waves of untrained, often unarmed, and thoroughly unprepared Iranian men and boys rushing headlong into well-orchestrated Iraqi defenses.¹¹

Introducing a disturbing new facet to its mode of assault, Iran and/or its supporters inside Iraq carried out fou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• About the Book and Editor
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Map of the Middle East
• 1 War and Oil: Implications for Iraq's Postwar Role in Gulf Security
• 2 The Politics of War: Presidential Centrality, Party Power, Political Opposition
• 3 Economic Outlook: Guns and Butter, Phase Two?
• 4 Iraq in the Gulf
• 5 Iraq and the Superpowers
• Selected Bibliography
• About the Editor and Authors
• Index