Photo by DAVID HOLT | CC BY 2.0
“Fake facts!” exclaimed a senior Iraqi official in exasperation, as he pointed to photographs online allegedly showing the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in Kirkuk, orchestrating the Iraqi government retaking of the city last month. He said that in reality the picture, tweeted by a Kurdish leader as evidence of Iranian hegemony, dates from 2014.
The greatest threat to the growing stability of Iraq is the differences between the US and Iran being fought out politically – and even militarily – in Iraq. The Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in an interview with The Independent earlier this week that his greatest concern is a US-Iran crisis. He added that “it is not my job to solve their differences, but it is my job to prevent their confrontation inside Iraq”. He hoped that mutual denunciations by Washington and Tehran would turn out to be rhetorical.
Given US hostility to Iran, the Baghdad government is alarmed by what it sees as an attempt to portray it as an Iranian proxy manipulated by Mr Soleimani and reliant on the Shia paramilitary Hashd al-Shaabi or Popular Mobilisation Units (PMUs). “Today’s offensive by Iraq, PMU Shia militia commanded by Iranian IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] on Kirkuk have sadly started a new war in Iraq & Kurdistan,” reads a tweet from Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurdish leader and former Iraqi foreign minister, last month.
The senior Iraqi official said that Mr Soleimani never…