American officials are seething at the Iraqi government’s willingness to rebuke them while giving a free hand to Iranian-backed groups
FOR MONTHS young Iraqi protesters trying to reach the Green Zone, the government enclave in Baghdad, were met with bullets and tear-gas canisters, the latter often fired at their heads. But on December 31st hundreds of militiamen were allowed to enter unmolested. The men, affiliated to Kataib Hizbullah, an Iranian-backed Shia paramilitary group, tried to storm the American embassy.
Mr Abdul-Mahdi had a point. America killed Iraqi nationals on Iraqi soil, in an attack carried out without the blessing of the Iraqi government. But America was not the only actor to make a mockery of Iraqi sovereignty. Though Kataib Hizbullah is backed by Iran, it is nominally under the control of Iraq’s government, like other paramilitary groups created to fight the jihadists of Islamic State . If it fired rockets at an Iraqi military base, one branch of the Iraqi state bombed another.
But economic pain has not compelled Iran to negotiate a new agreement, let alone moderate its regional policies. Quite the opposite. America blames it for the sabotage of oil tankers in the Persian Gulf last summer and the attack on two oil facilities in Saudi Arabia in September. In a conference call on December 30th, hours before the embassy riot, American officials tried to portray such belligerence as a sign of progress.
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