E68: ISW Analysts Discuss Iraq’s Security and Stability
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This is Overwatch, a podcast presented by the Institute for the Study of War. I'm Jacob Taylor. This episode of Overwatch is a recorded discussion between ISW analysts reflecting on a paper ISW published in June 2021 entitled Iraq 2021-2022, a Forecast.

The discussion will cover what we got right and wrong in forecasting Iraq's political and security trajectories, the risk of civil war in Iraq, how foreign interference and regional competitions are continuing to destabilize the Iraqi state, and where Iraq and the region may be headed in the months to come.

Hi, I'm Kat Lawler. I am an analyst here at the Institute for the Study of War, where my work focuses on disinformation and proxy warfare. I'm Matt McGinnis. I'm senior fellow here at ISW and formerly research director, working with Kat and Zach on Middle East security. Hi, I'm Zach Coles, and I'm the Middle East researcher at the Institute for the Study of War. I focus on the actions of resistance in the Levant and Iraq.

Okay, thank you both so much for joining us. I'm really excited to talk about this. We're going to be going over a paper that I published with ISW in June of 2021, Forecasting the Trajectory of the Iraqi State. And I wrote this paper when I was working closely with Matt

leveraging his expertise on Iranian foreign policy and Iraq. And Zach actually joined the organization after the paper came out, so has a more objective viewpoint, I think, on its wins and its foibles.

The way that I structured the argument in the paper was essentially identifying the internal drivers of change, political and security drivers, and then the external drivers of change, foreign interference and engagement with the Iraqi space. And

Of course, a few months into the period in which I would be judging the efficacy of my forecasts, Russia decided to get a little frisky and invade Ukraine. So since February, I've been looking at a very different problem set, and I'm not as up to date as I would like to be on the Iraqi political system, on changes in the Middle East, which is why I'm really excited to have both of you here to keep me honest.

To get us started, I want to look at the domestic political situation in Iraq, which has changed a lot since last June. So we're 12 months into my 18-month forecast, and I forecasted that the elections, which were scheduled at the time for October 2021, it was not clear that those would take place on time.

I forecasted that those were going to take place in October with a very low voter turnout and that they would basically just entrench pre-existing power brokers in Iraq, that you wouldn't see a huge change to the system, even though there had been a new electoral law, and that you would basically reinforce these pre-existing power structures and leaders.

Zach, what have you seen since the election? What actually happened there? Well, Kat, looking back at it now, it looks like you were pretty much spot on with this one. Election turnout was 43%, which is on par with the 2018 elections.

The low turnout demonstrates the same level of broad disillusionment with the system that you predicted and we were expecting. We did see a decent amount of intimidation of reformists, activists, and independent candidates without political or religious or tribal connections. That being said, there were some independent gains

And I want to emphasize here that there were more actual independents that gained seats than before, rather than independents who just were not formally associated with an entrenched political party. That makes sense. So I think all of that's true. And I think.

One thing I got wrong, though, with my assessment of how the political system was going to shape up was I expected relatively equal numbers of seats to be gained by the Sadrist movement and by Iran's proxy political parties and their domestic political partners.

That was definitely not the case, right? So we have this new electoral system and it really empowered the Sadrist movement and did not empower Iran's proxies because they really weren't organized enough to get it together and manipulate the system the way they previously had. So they had very little coordination and the Sadrist movement ended up winning big. They got 73 seats, I think, in the first round and

It seems like their win was even bigger because of Turkish involvement in Iraqi politics, which is something that I think I really missed.

In the paper, I discussed that Turkey was increasing its involvement not just in Iraqi Kurdistan, which it traditionally was involved with, but also in other parts of northern Iraq like Nineveh province, which Iran considered part of its traditional sphere of influence. And I forecasted that that might lead to additional clashes. We'd already seen one attack at that time on a Turkish base that was likely carried out by Iranian proxies in northern Iraq. And

That was all accurate, but I think I dramatically underestimated the extent that Turkey would involve itself in domestic politics. So, Sadr won big on his own, but he also won big in that he managed to create a coalition with a unified Sunni bloc that seems like Turkey worked to help solidify. And then also with the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which has been a longtime ally of Ankara.

But all of that being said, Sauter had this huge win. He had this large political coalition on his side. He was close to half of parliament. And I expected that it would take a while to get through government formation. It usually takes about six months. And I went with the safe forecast that it would again take about six months to form a government. I was super wrong about that. We are eight months in now, and I don't think there's a government in sight yet.

What's going on right now with government formation and with our friend Sauter? A lot's going on with government formation in Iraq right now, Kat. You were right that it was going to take six months, but it's also taken a substantial more time than that. And I'm not sure we're going to see the end anytime soon. Recently, Sauter instructed his MPs to withdraw from the Iraqi parliament.

essentially destabilizing the government formation process, not that it was going very much, going anywhere quickly at that point. He instructed his ministers in 2007 and 2016 to withdraw.

But this is a significant inflection. Right, and it seems like from what I've been reading of your work, he could be taking this a couple different ways. I think there's a tendency when analyzing Iraqi politics to assume that Sadr is just totally mercurial and unpredictable and he doesn't even know what he's gonna do. I don't think that's entirely the case. He usually does have a plan, whether or not it's a good plan, I can't tell you. But he couldn't form a government because the Iranian proxies and their partners within parliament

blockaded the government formation process. They refused to reach quorum and they wouldn't let the president be chosen, let alone the next prime minister or his cabinet. So it seems like he could be calling their bluff to try to get

major concessions. I think it would be really dangerous for Iran to ask its proxies to form an Iraqi government without Sadrist participation, right? He has so much support from the grassroots level, from the street. He can mobilize huge protests on very short notice. And

I think he's sort of flirting with the idea of a larger protest movement or revolution right now, or at least threatening that. And he's certainly threatening the specter of a civil war implicitly with this resignation. So he could be trying to get concessions like a, you know, a Sodrist prime minister, for example, which is something he couldn't get before. Or he could actually decide to break away from the system and sort of

bring it down from the outside via protests. But that does quickly start to sound like the civil war scenario. And I think the uncertainty there is a big part of his gambit. And in your work, I've already seen that some of the proxies are already discussing a Sadr-esque prime minister to keep the peace. I think, Matt, you were looking at Iraq in 2007, one of the last times that Sadr decided to

divorce himself from the system. And it seems like the uncertainty that he's introducing here has to alter Iranian decision making, right? Because they don't want a totally destabilized Iraq. They don't want a civil war on their border. And I'm wondering how much of this deviation from the political norm, because this is, I mean, it's unprecedented at this point, is being driven by the lack of

Qasem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis being in the system and sort of the impact that they had on the political cohesion of the proxies. Yeah, thanks Kat. And again, real kudos for taking the time to look back at your work. It's always a challenging effort for any analyst or author to look backwards and critique. And it's really great that we're able to do this today. I have to say on, you know, Sauter, I think, is at a point where, you know,

where he needed to do something more dramatic than has been done in the past. I think because there is a certain amount of, you know, people understand Sauter's approach

oftentimes even as mercurial as he is, there's a certain kind of pattern to Sauter's behavior. And I think in this situation, we are, you know, he was on the cusp of unprecedented power and may still be. And I think he's looking at the situation is going to require, if he's not able to succeed the way he thought, it's going to require more dramatic moves.

And I think that's part of what's motivating the situation right now, at least in my opinion. And I do think that we're continuing to try to understand the impact of the killing of Gossam Soleimani and of Mahandas

Back in January of 2020, which we all suspected was going to cause significant challenges for the Iranian-backed groups, both political and the military and militia groups, to be able to function effectively. Always the question was how much it was going to affect. And I do think we're still seeing some of those impacts.

still assessing those. But I do think that the cohesion certainly was not there during the lead up to the election campaign in October. I think we saw some definite impacts

from the lack of someone like Mohandas being able to help coordinate and strategize with the various groups. But certainly in the government formation period, they have been moderately successful in blocking Sauter, but I think they don't really have a plan of their own as far as I can tell. So I think this is where we're in a very interesting space where no one really quite has an idea about how this is going to end.

But for those of us also that watch Lebanese politics, this is also a very familiar situation to be in.

where you have a lot of people that don't really have a plan, but they're pretty entrenched in what they're trying to do. Right, and they're pretty entrenched in figuring out or in ensuring that no one else can have a plan either. In some ways, I think Sauter might be one step ahead of the proxies in this scenario because he does have a plan here. I think they are very reactive and he is trying to be more proactive. What his plan is, I'm not entirely sure. But yeah, the...

The lack of political cohesion going into the elections lost them dozens of seats in parliament and lost their allies dozens of seats in parliament and handed those over to Sauter. Sauter telling his MPs to resign means that about half of Sauter's seats are now going to become Iranian proxy seats. So this re-empowers them in parliament because the second winningest candidate

gets the seat if the initial winningest candidate resigns. And proxies came in second place in 40-something districts. It brings Khatib Hezbollah's political party, which I don't think gained any seats, maybe one. They now have six, including one of their prominent leaders is now going to be in parliament. That's a huge change. So again, I think he might kind of be calling their bluff because if he gives them all this power and they still can't do anything with it,

then what, right? And that's where his grassroots influence, I think, can come into play. He could also challenge his own resignations in the courts and try to get them restored now that he's shown a willingness to walk away from the system and to destabilize it in that manner. But it'll be really interesting to watch in the next few months. And I think that is one thing I got wrong in the paper.

I did discuss the possible impact of losing Mohandas and Soleimani on the operational cohesion of Iran's proxies. I think I underestimated the magnitude of that, but I also underestimated the importance of the political disunity that would come from that. I think Soleimani was really good at herding cats and making all of these very disparate groups work together and without conflict.

that oversight, they very much went in different directions and often ran against each other and undermined one another in the elections. But because of that disunity among Iran's Iraqi proxies, I think that's also probably changing

Iran's view and the regional view of Iraq, like the external security drivers that we talked about. And one of the things that I forecasted there was attacks from Iraq by Iran's proxies against Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Israel, Turkey. And actually, all of that has proven true, although some of those were intercepted. We have seen drone attacks into Saudi Arabia. We've seen some attacks by Iran's proxies against the Emirates.

There was a drone that was shot down over Iraq that was allegedly heading for Israel. So I think a lot of that happened. And actually, the discussion in the paper of how increasing access to drone technology would alter proxy attacks and decision making, I think, is largely borne out.

But I dramatically misread the anti-US campaign in Iraq, which I forecasted was going to escalate pretty dramatically in the months following June 2021. I expected that it might remain dampened in the lead up to elections to avoid destabilizing the situation before elections could take place, but in October, November, I did expect

to see a big shift and to see a dramatic increase in attacks on US forces in Iraq and in eastern Syria. We saw some in Syria, but we didn't see very many attacks on US forces in Iraq in that time period until the January anniversary of the killing of Soleimani Mohandas. And we still haven't seen a return to those sort of high tempo of attacks that we've seen in the past.

So I'm wondering what other reasons for that beyond keeping things stable into the elections might there be that I overlooked and didn't wait sufficiently in my forecast? That's a really good question, Kat, and one that we've been grappling with for a long time. There's a series of dynamics at play that could have

brought about this continued pause to the campaign to expel u.s forces from iraq one thing being that immediately after the election when it didn't turn out so well for the uh for iran's iraqi proxies the proxies conducted an attack tried to assassinate the prime minister of iraq

likely against Iranian instruction. Iran seems to have a negative control issue with its proxies right now. That's probably one of the factors that at least kept it from resuming this campaign for a while. And then after elections, as government formation dragged on, the proxies in Iran probably realized that they should focus on one thing at a time.

The last possible factor that I think may be playing into this decision to hold on the U.S. campaign or the anti-U.S. campaign is realizing that Turkish influence in Iraq is growing to be a larger threat to Iranian influence, at least in the eyes of the Iranians. So that's something I think they were thinking about as well.

I agree with Zach, and I, of course, have to also add in the very interesting and still not fully understood aspect of the strategic dialogue that occurred in July of 2021 with US representatives, Iraqi representatives.

about the status of US forces long term. And of course, you know, some of the demands that the proxies and other leaders were making of the US forces, combat forces needed to leave. And of course, you know, most of our combat had already ended. So technically, we weren't involved in combat in Iraq, but we were still having our significant training and advising mission. And I think

what was kind of some clever diplomacy was conducted to frame that the end of 2021 would see the end of any combat missions for the US. And again, largely we had already ended, so it was not a huge concession on our part, but I did think it provided some degree of cover

or incentivizing for the Iran's back proxies to pull back on their attacks to the US at least through the end of 2021. I think in some ways we worried that as soon as they understood that no US forces are still there after 2021, that we would see that campaign re-energize. But then we found ourselves in the middle of this struggle for government formation.

And I suspect the proxies were very concerned about deterring their efforts to ensure some role or to be able to shape the political negotiations at that time. I'm sure there's a lot of other factors that kept re-upping or reinforcing this desire to ceasefire on the US. And it's just been really interesting watching those reasons or those motivations continue to add up over time.

And that it's just not in their, you know, to their advantage right now, I think, to escalate with the U.S., at least in Iraq. We know the Iranians, as you mentioned, are still coming after us in Syria and elsewhere in the region. But Iraq right now, despite all of its problems, has been much safer for the U.S. than for quite some time. Yeah, the thing I think is really interesting here is that it's

quite possible the decision to halt the campaign or put the campaign on pause was made last summer under the assumption that it would be resumed immediately. So what we're talking about here is a series of decisions to continue a pause rather than a decision backed last summer to hold indefinitely. And I think that's one problem with long term forecasts, right? Is they're going to fray increasingly the further out you get in your timeframe.

So I would be pretty embarrassed if my first six months were totally out of step with reality. But as we are now on the, I guess, the 12-month mark, I think things are starting to be different enough from the trajectories that I outlined that, you know, given unlimited resources, it would be time to do another forecast. I think what you're describing, Matt, is really interesting vis-a-vis pausing the attacks in Iraq, but continuing them elsewhere in the region. And I think that that has been the trend as a

you know, a more casual observer over the last few months that I've found the most interesting and engaging is I think Iran might be starting to recognize or perhaps should be starting to recognize the risk that even if U.S. forces largely withdraw from the region or largely deprioritize the Middle East,

That Iran doesn't have any other friends in the neighborhood and has made a series of enemies that until this point have also disliked one another. And so haven't been able to form some kind of anti-Iran coalition or anything like that. But I think that between the Abraham Accords and more recent normalization efforts, many of them led by the U.S., to get the Gulf states to maybe cooperate a little better with Israel or with one another to bring Turkey into that fold a little bit.

I think Iran has individual issues with Turkey, with Saudi Arabia, with the Emirates, with Israel. But if those issues start to coalesce into a more cohesive threat,

I think that could eventually become existential for Iran. I don't think Iran is seeing that yet. And I think right now they're kind of taking it maybe one step at a time. Zach, I read your excellent piece recently on Iranian-Turkish competition in Iraq and how that's playing out with Iranian proxy attacks on Turkish bases, probable Iranian cooperation with the PKK in northern Iraq and possibly northern Syria.

I think that's sort of an attempt to make Turkey go back to its corner. But what are they going to do when there's, you know, increasing defense cooperation between Israel and the Gulf states or Israel and Turkey, which we're actually seeing, I think, this week, the Iranian reaction to that. The other thing that I think is really interesting is that we did see a big uptick in attacks on U.S. forces and on U.S. allies in January, right around that anniversary of Soleimani and Mohandas' deaths.

And I don't think anniversary attacks, I mean, that's pretty normal for the Iranians. But the thing that I found most interesting about those is how diverse they were. We saw attacks into the Emirates. We saw attacks into Saudi Arabia. We saw attacks in eastern Syria. We saw, I can't remember if we had any in Kurdistan at the time, but all over the map, threats against Israel. And right after that flurry, which was carried out by Iranian proxies throughout the region, and I think might have been some kind of

show of force in a way by the Iranians. We then saw some pretty interesting defense cooperation agreements with Israel giving defense equipment to the Emirates, for example. And I wonder how much those kinds of large scale regional threats are going to actually cause pretty substantial backlash for Iran.

Especially as we see the current US administration becoming more interested in creating a more stable and balanced Middle East. So we've got President Biden visiting Israel and Saudi Arabia in the next couple months. If he can get them to work together, he's some kind of diplomatic genius. But I think that would pose a pretty substantial threat to Iran's influence in the region and its long-term plans to become a regional hegemon.

Kat, I think these are all really fascinating points and it's something that we've been looking at over the past few months in particular about how Iran is going to approach this increasing cooperation among states. I think you're absolutely right that Iran probably still, you know, maybe to its own detriment, underestimates the potential power that this increased cooperation could represent.

But I do think that the Iranians are trying to find whatever they can to block, at least at the bilateral level, block these increasing levels of cooperation or involvement, particularly in Iraq.

Because Iraq really still remains the fulcrum here in the region where everybody is playing. And I think that Iran is worried that whether it's the increasing power of a nationalist like Sadr or increasing play of Turkey or the Gulf states more directly into Iraqi politics, that it's no longer the main external power operating there inside Iraq. And it has, frankly, a lot to lose.

in its position. I think they're not really in a great position to expand their influence, but they are in a somewhat defensive position right now, which I think obviously from the U.S. perspective is actually a very good thing. And it's something that we should be

including as a key part of our policy of supporting efforts not only within Iraqi politics, supporting Iraqi politicians to help, you know, grow Iraq's sovereignty, but also, you know, to encourage that investment, both political and economic and security-wise by the Gulf states, by Turkey and by other regional players, Europe, elsewhere, that all of that helps

in strengthening Iraqi political institutions and overall stability. So I think there's just a lot of opportunities here for the U.S. and our allies and partners in the region, because I think Iran is a bit on its heels, at least in Iraq. And I think that this is something that we will, is a trend that I think is encouraging

but it's also very fragile. I think that's something that if it's not handled well from a policy standpoint, we could see a lot of these gains fall away and Iran be able to, again, regain momentum in exploiting Iraq's vulnerabilities and challenges to its advantage. Right. Thank you, Matt. I think that's a fantastic overview, and I think there's going to be some complex

decisions to be made and negotiations to be had in the coming months as President Biden approaches this problem set. One thing I'd like to end with, if you both don't mind, is a more general discussion of forecasting methodology or tradecraft and sort of some of the things I learned from this process.

The methodology for this paper included some intelligence community style tradecraft. I used decision trees, I mapped out actor objectives. But one of the things that I found most useful was some internal workshops that we hosted with external experts. Those were a huge help.

I'm particularly grateful to experts like Marcin Alshamary, Mike Knights, Renaud Mansour, doctors all for taking the time to poke holes in my assumptions and to help play out some of the trajectories that I posited.

Matt, you and our colleagues at the Critical Threats Project at AEI were a huge help with my thinking on Iranian decision-making. And that kind of external assumptions check was really critical for my ability to build this out without falling into the truisms that I think pervade Iraqi analysis and especially Iraqi political analysis.

I do think one thing that was missing from my external assumptions checks, though, was a conversation with an external Turkey expert about how far Turkey was willing to go in challenging Iran. I looked at that section of the forecast through a more Iraqi lens and somewhat through an Iranian lens.

but not from a more regional perspective or from Turkey's vantage point. And I think if I'd done that more effectively and consulted people who look at Turkey full time, I

might have been able to more accurately identify the interests and risks that had led Turkey to involve itself more directly in Iraqi politics over the last year, and more directly in northern Iraq. I think there's some critical security interests for Turkey that informed that decision making, and also possibly the recognition of Iran's vulnerability.

Because as Matt said, they have a lot to lose and I don't think they're in a position to be making offensive gains in this arena. I think if I'd understood how Turkey would approach this to a greater extent beyond just responding to the Iranian proxy attacks on Turkish forces in the north, that might have led me to actually more accurately forecast Iran's reprioritization as well.

So if I were to approach this again, that would be a big shift is ensuring that I'm looking at it from all of those lenses and not getting caught up in the Iraq lens, which should of course be the priority and the US policy lens and the Iranian lens, which I think is the default for me when I'm thinking about Iraqi security, but also to think about Iraq's other neighbors, which are increasingly willing to assert themselves and which can help the United States to accomplish its policy objectives.

Now, it's great to have this kind of discussion, Kat, and I really appreciate your self-reflection and candor about the process that we went through both in drafting the paper itself and then obviously looking backwards and evaluating how successful we were in creating forecasts. One of the things that I always try to emphasize

when doing this type of predictive analysis is that you're not doing a crystal ball here. We're not trying to say X, Y, or Z is going to happen. But the real value of this type of work, it helps you think through what's driving the events and the dynamics that you're seeing,

So that when you're communicating with policymakers or other military leaders, whoever our audience is, that it helps them think through what they are seeing on a day-to-day basis. And even if you're not able to provide that crystal clear picture of what's going to happen in 12 months, which theoretically probably no one can,

our audiences are addressing these types of policy challenges in the region. This type of analysis can help them think through the problem, help them anticipate what may be around the corner. Oftentimes give them indicators that, oh, if I'm seeing this, that could mean this other thing may happen. It really is by helping by providing a map

or a map of thinking that is useful for policymakers, for other analysts, other experts engaging in the problem set. And so that's really the value, I think, in these types of projects is that it forced us to really take apart all the things that are driving the current political and security situation inside Iraq, and then really work backwards from there to think about

What could it mean if Iran does this? Or what could it mean if Saudi Arabia does that? A lot of those what-if statements and the ability to game through that intellectually is really the real great value of this type of work, even if we get the final assessment a little off. Yeah, and I think my goal for this piece was very much to provide the ability for policymakers

to develop proactive plans rather than simply reacting to unexpected events. Being able to identify what events could be in the realm of the possible and then develop plans and redundancies if needed for how to respond to those. So that was a really satisfying component of this and one that I think ISW as a whole is very good at in our industry.

forecasting, I certainly would do some things differently if I were doing the same project over again, but I hope that it was able to be useful and also that this type of reflection is useful in helping our audiences to understand our approaches to these sorts of problem sets, because we're always trying to

do our after-action reviews and improve on our previous work. Yeah, and Kat, if I can add one other great contribution this made, this helped provide a real intellectual foundation for the work that was done afterwards by both you and Zach and others looking at Iran's proxy and partner network, the Axis of Resistance.

which I know we were all very enthusiastically diving into shortly after your paper came out. And so I think the work that you did here really helped inform some great analysis that ISW, with our partners at Critical Threats, were able to do over the past year. It helped us better anticipate and look at the impacts of the Ukraine war in the Middle East

There's a whole separate discussion we can have about how Iran is repositioning in Syria in addition to repositioning in Iraq in different ways, that the region is changing a lot. And this type of analysis was very helpful, I certainly know for Zach and for others to be able to understand and anticipate things that we're seeing from Iran and its proxies in the region.

And I know there's much more to come from ISW and from critical threats on these issues. And I guess, again, kudos, Cat, for your work here that really helped provide a great launching pad for those efforts. Well, shucks. Thanks, Matt. Thank you both actually so much for joining us on Overwatch. I really appreciate you taking the time to reengage with this content and to

help the full ISW team continue to learn from our work and to continue building on our prior projects as we move forward with the revamped Middle East program and our partnership with Critical Threats. I'm really excited to see the Iraq work that the Institute will continue to do and to read the ongoing incredible analysis from analysts like Zach.

I'd like to plug the most recent piece that came out on that, which was on the Iran-Turkey competition in Iraq. And I'm sure there's much more to come. Thank you for listening to this episode of Overwatch. You can read Catherine's report, Iraq 2021 to 2022, a forecast by visiting isw.pub slash Iraq forecast.