Trump’s Mideast strategy likely to rein in wayward Iraq from its drift toward Iran, China

Hezbollah. Hamas. The Houthis. The Mideast crisis unleashed by the Biden-Harris policy toward Iran has created so many hotspots that the world is both aghast and aflame.

But as Donald Trump eyes a potential return to the White House, his foreign policy team has zeroed in on another casualty that gets little media or political attention these days: Iraq.

After two decades of American bloodshed, tens of billions of taxpayer assistance and monstrous U.S. company investments, the country once ruled by Saddam Hussein has drifted toward two unlikely allies, neighboring Iran and energy-hungry China, under the stewardship of current Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani.

Most starkly, an anti-American drift accelerated this summer shortly after Sudani made a high-profile trip to Washington to meet with President Joe Biden in April. Just one month later, Iraq awarded its latest licenses for oil exploration, with the big prizes going to China and none going to American companies.

Around the same time, the Iraqi military paraded around Baghdad a newly acquired Chinese CH-5 military drone in an unmistakable slap at the Pentagon.

And this summer Iraq thumbed its nose at Congress by embracing controversial Judge Faiq Zidan, the president of Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council who in 2021 issued an arrest warrant for Trump, after Rep. Mike Walz introduced legislation to sanction him for his pro-Iranian antics.

While such developments seldom were covered beyond the regional Mideast press or the energy trades, they were unmistakably noted by Team Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

Retired Gen. Keith Kellogg, a longtime adviser to the GOP presidential nominee and a possible National Security Adviser in a second Trump term, told Just the News that the former president is acutely aware that Sudani, Zidan, and Iraqi Oil Minister Hayan Abdul-Ghani have played their cards with China and Iran to the detriment of the United States and American oil companies under Biden.

And unless they change course, Trump is likely to take immediate action during the transition to send a message to the three if he wins the Nov. 5 election, Kellogg said. “There's a lot of things you can do in transition. And what he [Trump] says, people are going to listen, assuming President Trump wins on the the 5th of November,” Kellogg told the "John Solomon Reports" podcast last week.

The Iraqis are “going to kind of write off the old administration and look at the new one. What's he saying? And I’d put Sudani on notice as Prime Minister, you know, Ghani, the oil minister, I’d put him on notice as well the entire military, the entire region (including the judge and other Iraqi officials) on notice. And I think he can do that,” the retired general added.

Trump players have carefully chronicled Iraq’s efforts to embrace Beijing and squeeze out U.S. companies like ExxonMobil even as U.S. troops provide security inside the country.

Trump is “going to basically say, ‘Wait a second. You know, when you talk about oil, we go there. We help your country out. We're still fighting there, and yet you're not giving us any help at all,’” Kellogg predicted. “…It's going to happen right away.”

Security experts said the rapid decline in US-Iraq relations under Biden has moved Baghdad closer to a proxy for Iran, which once fought bitterly with its neighbor in a decades-long religious war between Shias and Sunnis.

Biden has shown deference to Iraq despite the China and Iran flaunts, recently announcing he would pull U.S. troops from Iraq in 2025 (as Iran has wanted), allowing Ghani to come to the United States for life-saving emergency heart surgery last month and approving waivers for Iraq to buy electricity from sanctioned Iran. The Biden administration has extended by four months a sanctions waiver that will allow Iraq to continue to purchase electricity from Iran and gives Iran limited access to the proceeds to buy humanitarian goods, according to the Associated Press.

“It's a real problem, the growing Iranian influence in Iraq, and this administration has made it worse because it keeps giving sanctions waivers to Iraq to buy electricity and energy from Iran,” former National Security Council Chief of Staff Fred Fleitz said.

Fleitz said a recent $100 million electricity waiver for Iraq enriched Iran’s coffers for “spending on terrorism and its nuclear program and its missile program” that only eroded American security.

Trump, if he gets elected, should and likely will deliver a more stern message to both Iraq and China, experts said.

“China is not simply a threat in East Asia or in the South China Sea. It's a threat, really on a global basis, through Russia and Ukraine, with Iran in the Middle East right now. And as you say, Iraq,’ former UN Ambassador John Bolton said. “China is an energy poor country. It desperately needs external sources of energy, and especially oil from the Middle East and now, and now, increasingly, from Russia.

"So this is something that I think you know, the Biden administration has been so focused on climate change, they don't like to talk about oil and natural gas, but, but it's what China needs, and they are unhesitating in their determination to get it," he added. 

Fleitz, Bolton’s former chief of staff at the NSC, agreed Trump is likely to deliver a hard push to move Iraq away from Iran and China. “I think we should deal with whoever is there and see what we can do to get them to stop collaborating with Iran, to stop Iran from sending militias into the country that are promoting terrorism and attacking U.S. bases,” he said.

“The Iraqis should be our allies, But if they want to be our allies, if they want our support, you have to stop playing ball with the Iranians, and this administration has been just out to  lunch on that issue,” he added.