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Iran’s Master of Iraq Chaos Still Vexes U.S.: An Account from The Endgame in the New York Times

On October 3, 2012, in News, by Staff


Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, right, consulting with Mayor Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf of Tehran in 2006. (Mehdi Ghasemi/ISNA, via Associated Press)

Wednesday’s New York Times features an article adapted from The Endgame:

Iran’s Master of Iraq Chaos Still Vexes U.S

By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON — When a senior Iraqi intelligence official traveled to Tehran in the summer of 2007 to meet with the Iranian leadership, he quickly figured out who was in charge of Iran’s policy toward its neighbor to the west.

It was not the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It was Qassim Suleimani, the shadowy commander of Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force, who calmly explained that he was the “sole authority for Iranian actions in Iraq,” according to an account the Iraqi official later provided to American officials in Baghdad.

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Wary of Israel, Iran is Said to Err in Strikes: An Account from The Endgame in the New York Times

On October 3, 2012, in News, by Staff

Wednesday’s New York Times features an article adapted from The Endgame:

Wary of Israel, Iran Is Said to Err in Strikes

By MICHAEL R. GORDON

The Iranian military was so apprehensive about the threat of an Israeli airstrike on its nuclear installations in 2007 and 2008 that it mistakenly fired on civilian airliners and, in one instance, on one of its own military aircraft, according to classified American intelligence reports.

The civilian planes were fired on by surface-to-air missiles and antiaircraft batteries and intercepted by Iranian fighter jets.

“Iranian air defense units have taken inappropriate actions dozens of times, including firing antiaircraft artillery and scrambling aircraft against unidentified or misidentified targets,” noted a heavily classified Pentagon intelligence report, which added that the Iranian military’s communications were so inadequate and its training deficiencies so significant that  “misidentification of aircraft will continue.”

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The General’s Gambit: An Account from The Endgame in Foreign Policy

On October 2, 2012, in News, by Staff

Foreign Policy has published another exclusive account based on The Endgame.  The FP article describes General Petraeus’s plan to fly to Damascus and confront Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with evidence that Arab fighters were traveling through Syria to join Al Qaeda’s suicide bombing campaign in Iraq. But the Bush administration blocked the trip. Now some of these same terrorists have turned on the Syrian leader.

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The Red Team Report: An Account From The Endgame in Foreign Policy

On September 24, 2012, in News, by Staff

Foreign Policy has an exclusive account from The Endgame, Gordon’s latest book on the war in Iraq, now in stores. The FP article describes the “Red Team Report,” a 2005 review that concluded the Bush Administration’s strategy in Iraq was off-course but which was largely ignored at the time.  It also features PDF copies of the still-classified document.

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“Failed Efforts and Challenges of America’s Last Months in Iraq”: An Account from The Endgame in the New York Times

On September 23, 2012, in News, by Staff

President Barack Obama talks on the phone with President Jalal Talabani of Iraq while Vice President Joe Biden, his National Security Advisor Tony Blinken, and Puneet Talwar, Senior Director for Iraq, Iran and the Gulf States wait nearby in the Oval Office, Nov. 4, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza).

Sunday’s NYT features an article adapted from the final chapters of The Endgame, which hits stores Tuesday.

Failed Efforts and Challenges of America’s Last Months in Iraq

By Michael R. Gordon

The request was an unusual one, and President Obama himself made the confidential phone call to Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president.

Marshaling his best skills at persuasion, Mr. Obama asked Mr. Talabani, a consummate political survivor, to give up his post. It was Nov. 4, 2010, and the plan was for Ayad Allawi to take Mr. Talabani’s place.

With Mr. Allawi, a secular Shiite and the leader of a bloc with broad Sunni support, the Obama administration calculated, Iraq would have a more inclusive government and would check the worrisome drift toward authoritarianism under Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

But Mr. Obama did not make the sale.

“They were afraid what would happen if the different groups of Iraq did not reach an agreement,” recalled Mr. Talabani, who turned down the request.

Mr. Obama has pointed to the American troop withdrawal last year as proof that he has fulfilled his promise to end the Iraq war. Winding down a conflict, however, entails far more than extracting troops.

In the case of Iraq, the American goal has been to leave a stable and representative government, avoid a power vacuum that neighboring states and terrorists could exploit and maintain sufficient influence so that Iraq would be a partner or, at a minimum, not an opponent in the Middle East.

But the Obama administration has fallen frustratingly short of some of those objectives.

The attempt by Mr. Obama and his senior aides to fashion an extraordinary power-sharing arrangement between Mr. Maliki and Mr. Allawi never materialized. Neither did an agreement that would have kept a small American force in Iraq to train the Iraqi military and patrol the country’s skies. A plan to use American civilians to train the Iraqi police has been severely cut back. The result is an Iraq that is less stable domestically and less reliable internationally than the United States had envisioned.

The story of these efforts has received little attention in a nation weary of the conflict in Iraq, and administration officials have rarely talked about them. This account is based on interviews with many of the principals, in Washington and Baghdad.

White House officials portray their exit strategy as a success, asserting that the number of civilian fatalities in Iraq is low compared with 2006, when the war was at its height. Politics, not violence, has become the principal means for Iraqis to resolve their differences, they say. “Recent news coverage of Iraq would suggest that as our troops departed, American influence went with them and our administration shifted its focus away from Iraq,” Antony Blinken, the national security adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said in a speech in March. “The fact is, our engagements have increased.”

To many Iraqis, the United States’ influence is greatly diminished. “American policy is very weak,” observed Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff to Massoud Barzani, the president of the semiautonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. “It is not clear to us how they have defined their interests in Iraq,” Mr. Hussein said. “They are picking events and reacting on the basis of events. That is the policy.”

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Tagged with: Michael R. Gordon • New York Times • The Endgame
 
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  • Iran’s Master of Iraq Chaos Still Vexes U.S.: An Account from The Endgame in the New York Times
  • Wary of Israel, Iran is Said to Err in Strikes: An Account from The Endgame in the New York Times
  • The General’s Gambit: An Account from The Endgame in Foreign Policy
  • The Red Team Report: An Account From The Endgame in Foreign Policy
  • “Failed Efforts and Challenges of America’s Last Months in Iraq”: An Account from The Endgame in the New York Times
 

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