Iraq crisis: Baghdad prepares for the worst as Islamist militants vow to capture the city

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iraq-crisis-islamist-mil
itants-warn-battle-will-rage-after-seizing-mosul-and-tikrit-9530899.html

Bottom Line: Foreign intervention is more likely to come from Iran than the
US.

Iraq is breaking up. The Kurds have taken the northern oil city of Kirkuk
that they have long claimed as their capital. Sunni fundamentalist fighters
vow to capture Baghdad and the Shia holy cities further south.

Government rule over the Sunni Arab heartlands of north and central Iraq is
evaporating as its 900,000-strong army disintegrates. Government aircraft
have fired missiles at insurgent targets in Mosul, captured by Isis on
Monday, but the Iraqi army has otherwise shown no sign of launching a
counter-attack.

The nine-year Shia dominance over Iraq, established after the US, Britain
and other allies overthrew Saddam Hussein, may be coming to an end. The Shia
may continue to hold the capital and the Shia-majority provinces further
south, but they will have great difficulty in re-establishing their
authority over Sunni provinces from which their army has fled.

It is unlikely that the Kurds will give up Kirkuk. "The whole of Kirkuk has
fallen into the hands of peshmerga [Kurdish soldiers]," said the peshmerga
spokesman Jabbar Yawar. "No Iraqi army remains in Kirkuk."

Foreign intervention is more likely to come from Iran than the US. The
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said that Iran would act to combat "the
violence and terrorism" of Isis". Iran emerged as the most influential
foreign power in Baghdad after 2003. As a fellow Shia-majority state, Iraq
matters even more to Iran than Syria.

Iran will be deeply alarmed by the appearance of a fanatically Sunni
proto-state hostile to all Shia in western Iraq and eastern Syria. Abu
Mohamed al-Adnani, the Isis spokesman, said today that the Shia, 60 per cent
of the Iraqi population, "are a disgraced people", accusing them of being
"polytheists".

Iraq's Shia may well conclude that their army has failed them and they must
once again rely on militias like the Mehdi Army which was responsible for
the slaughter of Sunni in 2005 and 2006. At that time, much of Baghdad was
cleansed of Sunni. The loss of Baghdad has never been forgotten or forgiven
by Sunni states such as Saudi Arabia, which has long hoped to reverse the
Shia dominance in Iraq.

By Epictetus