هذا التقرير متاح أيضًا بـ العربية
“And I had no authority over you except that your call was answered to me, so do not blame me, and blame yourselves.” — Surah Ibrahim, verse 22.
In May 1972, returning from a summit in Moscow, President Richard Nixon and his adviser Henry Kissinger stayed with the Shah of Iran. During the visit, the shah made a request that would shape the Kurdish insurgency over the next four years.
Feeling threatened by neighbouring Iraq, he asked Nixon to finance and arm a Kurdish insurgency there. Nixon agreed, and within weeks the White House and CIA had prepared an operation.
The intelligence community initially earmarked $16 million, chiefly to supply the Kurds with Soviet weapons provided by Israel, a covert partner in the operation. The shah could have financed it himself, but the Kurds insisted on a US guarantee because they did not trust him. Mustafa Barzani once said, “I don’t trust any other great power,” and declared that, if his cause succeeded, he was ready for “Kurdistan to become the 51st state.”
Barzani admired Kissinger personally. As a wedding gift, he sent him three rugs and a gold and pearl necklace. Kissinger asked his assistant Brent Scowcroft to keep the gift quiet, saying the relationship with the Kurds was highly sensitive.
Barzani’s faith in Kissinger, set against Kissinger’s caution, introduces a recurring tension in US intervention in the Middle East.
In an article published in Foreign Policy titled “The Long Trail of Treason: Why Does Washington Encourage Uprisings and Then Run Away?”, Seva Gunitsky describes US foreign policy as operating on two tracks that rarely meet. One is rhetorical: it invokes freedom, self-determination and solidarity with those resisting tyranny. This language serves domestic purposes but also reflects an ideological commitment rooted in US national identity. The other track is strategic, shaped by interests, risks and the limits of US power.
According to Gunitsky, those who take Washington’s rhetoric seriously — sometimes more seriously than Americans themselves — risk falling into the gap between the two. In this reading, the abandonment of allies appears to be a recurring feature of US policy rather than a succession of isolated tactical mistakes.
“We are eagerly waiting for your response and your swift action”
After the CIA began its programme, Kurdish insurgents fought Iraqi forces for three years and suffered thousands of casualties. Rather than strengthening their resolve, US plans ultimately undermined it.
In 1976, Otis Pike, a Democratic congressman from New York, led an investigation into CIA abuses and misconduct. His report, whose publication had long been blocked under pressure from President Gerald Ford, exposed much of what had happened behind the scenes in the operation to support the Kurdish insurgency in Iraq.
The Pike report said the policy was to keep the insurgents fighting at a level sufficient to drain Iraq’s resources, to the benefit of the shah’s Iran.
In an October 1973 memorandum from the White House to CIA director William Colby, Kissinger wrote that Nixon “agrees that we do not, and will not see, that it is advisable for the Kurds to take offensive military action, along the lines of the initiative proposed by Israel. Israel has a different desire to distract and occupy Iraqi forces in light of its ongoing war with the Arabs.”
The Kurds were already serving the shah’s and Washington’s purposes without knowing it. As early as October 1972, the CIA had learned of efforts to settle the Iran–Iraq border dispute, suggesting that the shah might change course. Yet the agency was instructed not to tell the Kurdish leadership and to keep the insurgents fighting, leaving the shah with leverage in his negotiations with Saddam Hussein.
“Even in the context of covert operations, this was a frivolous and unprincipled endeavor,” Pike wrote in his report.
In March 1975, without advance notice to the Kurds or the US government, the shah and Saddam Hussein concluded the Algiers Agreement during an OPEC meeting. Iran then withdrew its support for the Kurdish uprising.
The news shook the insurgents. Before they could regroup, the Iraqi army launched a sweeping campaign against their bid for autonomy.
In Oil Kings, historian Andrew Scott Cooper recounts Barzani’s appeal to the CIA: “There is turmoil and panic among our people and our forces. The fate of our people is in unprecedented danger. There is total destruction hanging over our heads, and there is no explanation for all this. We appeal to you and the U.S. government to intervene according to your promises, not to let down your ally, to save Barzani’s life and the dignity of our people, and to find an honorable solution to our problem.”
When that appeal failed to bring the response he sought, Barzani wrote to Kissinger. He did not know that Kissinger had been aware of the shah’s intentions for two weeks and had not warned him. “Our hearts are bleeding as we see that one of the direct consequences of their agreement is the unprecedented destruction of our unarmed people… Mr. Secretary, we are eagerly awaiting your response and swift action, confident that the United States will not stand idly by during these difficult times.”
Barzani received no reply from Kissinger. Despite repeated messages from Barzani and the CIA, the Ford administration did nothing as 200,000 refugees reached Iran’s closed border.
The shah forced 40,000 Kurdish women and children back to Iraq, where they faced torture, arrest or mass killing. The US government refused to admit a single refugee. Kissinger later defended the decision in testimony cited in the Pike report: “Covert operations should never be confused with missions.”
A Kurdish proverb says the Kurds have no friends but the mountains. In the author’s view, this would not be the last time a US administration failed Kurds in Turkey, Syria, Iran or Iraq.
Bombs and promises of freedom
On 15 February 1991, as Operation Desert Storm continued, President George HW Bush addressed the Iraqi people: “Another way to stop the bloodshed is for the Iraqi army and people to take matters into their own hands, forcing dictator Saddam Hussein to step down.” US aircraft also dropped leaflets urging Iraqis to rise against Saddam and his government.
Weeks later, Iraqis did rise up, although not necessarily because of Bush’s appeal. Conditions for an uprising were already in place. Shia insurgents led the revolt in the south and Kurdish fighters in the north. At one point, 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces had slipped from the Baath government’s central control. Saddam nevertheless remained in power until the US invasion reached Baghdad in 2003.
Accounts of the period have described the 1991 uprising and the US reluctance to support it as part of an “unfinished war”. Bush’s appeal had raised hopes that the subsequent response would dash.
Rocky González, an officer involved in Operation Desert Storm, said he was ordered not to help the rebels. He was also instructed to block their escape and threaten to kill them if they did not turn back towards Saddam’s forces.
Recalling the encounter, he said: “The insurgents were asking for help and medical care, and some of us wanted to provide them with weapons and ammunition so they could fight. One refugee was waving a leaflet shot down by U.S. planes over Iraq, urging them to rise up against the regime and liberate themselves.
They weren’t asking us to fight, they felt they could do it themselves. The gist of their words was: We rose up as you asked us to do, and now give us some weapons and equipment to fight. My heart was torn by that situation; here we are sitting by the Euphrates River, and we have been ordered to stop. I refused it as a human being, but as a soldier I had no choice but to obey orders.”
General Norman Schwarzkopf then permitted the Iraqi army to use helicopters despite the no-fly zone imposed over large parts of the country. Iraqi generals, surprised and pleased by the decision, used the aircraft to attack Kurdish and Shia insurgents.
US forces also refuelled Iraqi Republican Guard units and allowed an Iraqi tank division through their checkpoints. Bush said nothing when Saddam authorised the use of chemical weapons against the insurgents.
In The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet, journalist James Mann describes discussions among US officials about ending the war. Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Paul Wolfowitz were in one room when an official told Cheney, “For your information, we can dislodge the regime and establish democracy there.” Cheney replied, “I don’t think that will appeal to the Saudis very much.”
The uprising and its suppression left an estimated 30,000 to 60,000 Shia and 20,000 Kurds dead, while more than 1.5 million Kurds were displaced. The article argues that strategic calculations took precedence over these human costs, despite Bush’s earlier appeals to humanitarian principles.
At a later press conference, Bush rejected the suggestion that his words had promised US military support: “Do I think the United States should take the blame for what happened just because it suggested that the Iraqi people take matters into their own hands, with the implication that the United States would be there to support them militarily? That was not true; we never hinted at that.”
In his 1996 memoir, Powell acknowledged that Bush’s rhetoric might have emboldened the rebels. He also said the administration had preserved enough power in Baghdad for Iraq to remain a threat to Iran, which was hostile to the US.
The US subsequently benefited from arrangements that followed the uprising. No-fly zones imposed over northern and southern Iraq to protect the remaining Kurds and Shia helped pave the way for the 2003 invasion.
In Dirty Wars: The World Is the Battlefield, Jeremy Scahill writes that US intelligence established a force known as the 20th Division. It operated in Iraqi Kurdistan for a decade and grew to 20,000 members.
During the invasion, it set up secret bunkers and listening posts, placed acoustic and seismic sensors along Iraqi roads to track troop movements, and penetrated Iraq’s fibre-optic network to intercept communications. It had extensive powers to pursue high-value targets, beginning with Saddam Hussein.
“Either with us. Either with them”
In mid-June 2009, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of a second term in an election widely suspected of fraud. The ensuing protests, later known as the Green Movement, were the country’s largest since the 1979 revolution.
Washington’s response brought a different kind of disillusionment. The Green Movement had not arisen from US encouragement or an intelligence operation in Tehran. But when protesters faced repression, the White House held back, even though Iran was a principal US adversary.
In the uprising’s early days, the Obama administration responded cautiously while seeking a new phase in relations with Tehran. President Barack Obama called on the Iranian authorities to respect the rule of law and human rights. He did not endorse allegations that the election itself had been fraudulent or threaten consequences for the authorities’ abuses.
Republican senator John McCain, Obama’s rival in the 2008 election, pushed a resolution condemning Tehran’s crackdown on protesters. Congress approved it by 405 votes to one, despite the Democrats’ majority.
Obama, meanwhile, directed the CIA not to conduct covert operations in support of the Green Movement inside or outside Iran. In Iran’s Wars, journalist Jay Solomon describes another decision: the administration ordered a halt to the programme documenting Iran’s human rights abuses.
In Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy, Trita Parsi examines the cost of Obama’s approach to the Green Movement. The White House was pursuing diplomacy with Iran while facing allegations of electoral fraud and human rights abuses. Although the administration did not want to abandon the pro-democracy movement, it increasingly doubted that the protesters could overthrow Ahmadinejad’s government.
As Congress pressed for sanctions against Iran, Tehran sent a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency with a request that appeared to offer an opening for diplomacy. Parsi writes: “Whether the election was rigged or not, it was clear that Obama did not want that unexpected opportunity to slip through his fingers.”
The administration argued that public US support could give the Iranian authorities grounds to portray the Green Movement as a Western conspiracy and weaken its standing inside Iran. Mir Hossein Mousavi, a leader of the movement, reiterated that concern in an interview with Parsi. Some protesters nevertheless chanted: “Obama… Obama… either with us or with them.”
In a 2022 podcast interview, Obama expressed regret for failing to take a stand on the Green Movement. His comments recalled the gap between rhetoric and strategy described at the start of this article: he spoke of ethical and humanitarian considerations that should have counted even at the expense of geopolitical interests.
The author considers Obama’s regret sincere but argues that his pragmatic approach to Iran served US political interests. Obama secured the 2015 nuclear deal, one of his administration’s major achievements.
Yet that regret does not establish that Obama would have chosen differently at the time. A few years after the Green Movement, he again declined to follow a public warning with the action many expected — this time over Syria, where the human cost was much higher.
Red line or color blindness?
On 20 August 2012, Obama said the Syrian regime’s use or transfer of chemical weapons would cross a “red line” and change his calculations about US intervention in Syria.
In 2013, allegations of chemical weapons use accompanied a series of brutal attacks by the regime. Researcher Shadi Hamed argued that Obama’s red line had become flexible enough to lose its force and meaning.
The decisive test came in August 2013, when the Syrian regime was accused of using sarin in an attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta that killed hundreds of civilians. The administration appeared ready to respond militarily. Obama said both his credibility and that of the international community were at stake.
In late August and early September, Washington and Moscow reached an agreement to dismantle the Syrian regime’s chemical arsenal under UN supervision, avoiding a US military strike. Securing its removal through negotiations could appear preferable to going to war.
Assad, however, remained in power and avoided a direct US strike. His forces later continued to use chemical weapons, this time chlorine, according to the White House in August 2016. A UN panel subsequently confirmed that Assad’s forces had again used poison gases that summer.
Before becoming secretary of state in 2017, Rex Tillerson characterised Washington’s record in Syria this way: “Washington has reneged on pledges it made to its allies, sent weak or contradictory signals, and turned its red lines into green lights.”
Obama has not expressed regret for drawing the red line, although he acknowledged that his administration had failed to address what he called the “Syrian tragedy.” His explanation for not carrying out a strike resembled Bush’s later defence of his 1991 appeal to Iraqis.
In his final television interview as president, Obama responded to criticism that he had drawn a meaningless red line: “I think I would have made a bigger mistake if I had said, instead of the red line, ‘Ah… chemical weapons… That doesn’t change my calculus on Syria.’”
Whatever Obama’s intentions, the author argues that the chemical weapons agreement had serious strategic consequences for the US. Washington’s role as guarantor of the deal helped Russia regain a prominent position in the Middle East four decades after it had been pushed out of the region.
The Iranian nuclear negotiations also influenced Obama’s priorities in Syria. According to Parsi, Iranian negotiators warned that they would withdraw from the talks if the US struck Assad’s government.
The four cases examined here differ in their circumstances, events and participants. The author nevertheless sees a common pattern of pragmatic calculation: Washington may treat an ally or protest movement as a means of pressuring or draining a regional adversary without committing itself to that ally’s or movement’s fate.
That pattern leads to the question taken up in the concluding article: why do Washington and its allies remain caught in a cycle that keeps the US involved in the region even when it wants to leave?