Cold war on Iraq’s frontier with Syria is hotting up

The last checkpoint before the border was different: the scale, the delay but most of all the flags. During our long drive across the Iraqi desert in a convoy of United Nations jeeps and army pick-up trucks we had been swiftly waved through. Not here. Instead, we were stopped by militiamen whose black, green and white banners gave the post away as belonging to the “Popular Mobilisation Units”, militias controlled by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. It took a call from the mayor of the border town, al-Qaim, to let us through.

The abrupt change of control over the road was not random. This border is the most sensitive 12-mile patch of territory in the world. On the Syrian side, a few miles away across the sand, lies a giant base controlled by Iran, unreachable to outsiders but spotted by satellites, thought to contain thousands of Afghan, Iraqi and other Shia fighters. It was bombed by unknown forces in June.

A hundred miles further into Syria is a large, remote and previously unwanted patch of desert now inhabited by 1,000 US, French and Norwegian special forces, alongside perhaps 2,000 allied Syrian Arab Sunni tribal fighters. This territory, previously largely uninhabited, is now a fixed western presence, described satirically by British and US officials as “the spherical emirate of al-Tanf” after the expanding military base at its core.

This border, straddled by the Iraqi town of al-Qaim and its Syrian twin, al-Bukamal, is a patchwork of Iraqi army, western, and militia control, and in the wreckage of Iraq and Syria has become the epicentre of the conflict between the US and Iran.

It is a cold war, but it is hotting up. President Trump originally called time on al-Tanf, which came into existence as part of US support for rebels in the Syrian civil war, saying in his election campaign he no longer wanted to waste resources trying to overthrow President Assad. Now he has done a volte-face, under pressure from his foreign policy advisers, particularly Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, and John Bolton, the national security adviser, to try to scupper Iran’s advance across the region. Both are long-term Iran hawks.

“Trump was opposed to staying put in Syria but it seems the ‘steady state’ has got its way at the moment,” a diplomat in the region said, referring to foreign policy greybeards around Mr Trump. “There doesn't seem any likelihood the troops are pulling out soon.”

The US establishment has become fixated on what they are calling the Iranian road to the Mediterranean and the Israeli border, expanding Tehran’s hold over the so-called Shia crescent. Iran’s support for President Assad has allowed it to set up bases across Syria manned by members of the Revolutionary Guard, officially, as “advisers”, and Shia militias recruited in Syria and across the region.Among them are the Lebanese Hezbollah, several Iraqi brigades and fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan’s Shia minorities. The Iranians already have Hezbollah in Lebanon, which leaves the only gap in the crescent as being the Iraqi territory between the Syrian and Iranian borders, which is why the road west from Baghdad has become so significant.

At Mr Trump’s new command, the US is fighting back. A US envoy, Brett McGurk, is fighting an open battle with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard al-Quds’ brigade head, General Qassem Soleimani, to shape the incoming Iraqi government.

It is a battle where neither side can win outright but Iran is gaining the upper hand. Hadi al-Ameri, who heads the biggest Iran-backed PMU militia, the Badr Corps, also leads the Fateh, or Liberation, party which came second in May’s elections and looks likely to be a key member of any ruling coalition. On the ground, the Badr Corps is establishing bases with its PMU allies from the Iranian border across Iraq. The 12-mile stretch of frontier they have secured west of al-Qaim is the key choke point, and the centre of Iranian-US rivalry. It is a volatile mix.

“The Iraqi army, which is close to the Americans, control the actual border crossing at al-Qaim,” said Hishem al-Hashimi, a prominent Iraqi security analyst. “On the other side in Syria there are 8,000 Shia militiamen.”

He has also been taken by American forces to visit al-Tanf, a rare outsider’s vew. “From there the road [into Syria] is monitored by the Americans, French and Norwegians,” he said. His experience of al-Tanf brought home its unique qualities. “A genie couldn’t live there,” he said. “But it’s an open landscape and they have vision over 45 miles. It’s a very good choice for them.” Al-Tanf’s original Free Syrian Army forces now number less than 400, compared with the 1,000 western troops and up to 2,000 tribal fighters, Mr Hashimi said.

The battle against Islamic State is now in its last stages. Mr Trump said in March troops would afterwards be withdrawn, but now his new envoy to the Syrian opposition says they will be staying, both as a brake on Iran and as a tool to undermine Assad himself. “We will make it our business to make life as miserable as possible for that flopping cadaver of a regime and let the Russians and Iranians, who made this mess, get out of it,” James Jeffrey, the envoy, said. This month Mr Bolton said US forces would stay so long as Iranian forces remained outside Iran.

The Iranian-backed forces are not backing down, however. General Soleimani has issued a direct warning to the US not to take on Iran, and American officials fear militias like the Badr Corps are preparing attacks on US forces. That threatens a return to the chaos following the 2003 invasion, when Iran-backed militias ravaged American and British troops, killing hundreds of them. “We are near you, where you can’t even imagine,” General Soleimani said this summer. “If you begin the war, we will end the war. You know that this war will destroy all that you possess.”..........