No 12, Issue 2       

IRAN’S FOREIGN POLICY STRATEGY TOWARDS POSTSADDAM IRAQ: AN ANALYSIS

Thowhidul ISLAM

Pages: 24-47

Abstract.

Iran and Iraq are the two neighbouring countries but with unfriendly relationships. They were engaged in several wars, including an eight-year-long war that ended in 1988, and this enmity continued throughout the following decades. Both countries followed hostile policy to each other and developed intimate relationships with each other’s dissident groups. Iran provided political support and financial assistance to the Shi’ite and Kurdish resistance organizations, which had been fighting against Saddam Hussein and the Ba’athists. Iraq’s resistance groups were also eager to receive Iranian aid. Ironically, the vacuum created in Iraq with the fall of Saddam in 2003 filled with the Shi’ites and Kurds and thus Iran’s Iraqi allies assumed the power of Iraq. As a result of the regime change, Iran’s policy towards Iraq has shifted into a new turn aimed at eliminating the traditional hostilities, and thus Iran-Iraq relations improved considerably. The two countries signed several cooperation agreements, including military cooperation agreements on new transportation and energy links and possibly future oil pipeline connections. While Saddam’s Iraq was considered a security threat to Iran, now it has gradually been developed as a potential ally. Iran seeks to ensure that Iraq can never again become a threat to Iran. Iran wants to shape post-Saddam Iraq’s political structure in Iran’s favour to establish a pro-Iranian government at least no emergence of an ‘anti-Tehran’ government in Baghdad. Iran sees Iraq as providing lucrative investment opportunities and a growing market for Iranian products. Iran wants to suppress Iranian dissident groups located over the border inside Iraq. Iran also tries to exert its influence on Iraqi internal affairs to prevent the US from changing Iran’s political system and threatening Iran’s national security. Historical experience, national-regional interests, and geopolitical factors motivated Iran to follow this new policy strategy toward Iraq. Thus, the fall of Saddam became a turning point in Iran-Iraq relations, which ultimately changed Iran’s foreign policy towards Iraq. This work exclusively aims at analysing the Iranian policy strategy towards post-Saddam Iraq.

Keywords:

Iraq-Iran relation, Saddam Hussein, Shi’ite, Kurdish, politico-regional interests, Iran’s policy strategy.

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