Archive for the ‘Iraq’ Category

Total’s $27 billion Iraq project expected to begin in two weeks, oil … – Reuters

BAGHDAD, May 3 (Reuters) - Iraq and TotalEnergies (TTEF.PA) expect to kick-start a long-delayed $27 billion project within the next two weeks, Iraq's oil minister Hayan Abdel-Ghani said on Wednesday.

Abdel-Ghani said at a conference in Baghdad he expected five side agreements related to the deal to be signed in the next two weeks, paving the way for implementation to commence.

The deal was signed in 2021 for TotalEnergies to build four oil, gas and renewables projects with an initial investment of $10 billion in southern Iraq over 25 years, but it was delayed amid disputes between Iraqi politicians over terms.

Iraq said last month it had agreed to a smaller 30% stake in the project, reviving the deal that Baghdad hopes could lure foreign investment back into a country enjoying relative stability after years of conflict and tensions.

QatarEnergy will also have a share in the project.

"We confirm that discussions are advancing," a TotalEnergies spokesperson said.

Chief Executive Patrick Pouyanne said last week the two sides had reached an agreement on Iraq's stake in the project.

"I think (it) is a good setup with our finalising of all the paperwork," Pouyanne said on TotalEnergies' first-quarter results call last week.

"The government of Iraq confirmed the whole contract, no modification at all ... so that was for me more than a good news," Pouyanne said.

Reporting by Timour Azhari and Amina Ismail in Baghdad, and America Hernandez in ParisEditing by Mark Potter

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Total's $27 billion Iraq project expected to begin in two weeks, oil ... - Reuters

April 2023 Month in Review: The Defeat ISIS Mission in Iraq and Syria – US Central Command

May 5,2023

Release Number 20230505-01

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

TAMPA, Fla. - During the month of April 2023, U.S. Central Command, along with coalition and other partners, conducted a total of 35 D-ISIS operations, resulting in 13 ISIS operatives killed and 28 detained.

These operations showcase our enduring commitment to the lasting defeat of ISIS and the continued need for targeted military efforts to prevent ISIS members from conducting attacks and regaining a foothold. We remain focused on building local partner forces capabilities to prevent ISIS resurgence.

The following is a breakdown of D-ISIS operations for April 2023 by country:

In Iraq:

25 partnered operations

0 US-only operations

9 ISIS operatives killed

7 ISIS operatives detained

In Syria:

10 partnered operations

1 US-only operations

4 ISIS operatives killed

21 ISIS operatives detained

During Ramadan we observed a significant reduction in the number of ISIS attacks compared to previous years. We assess this is due to the increased operations by our partners.

In Iraq, CENTCOM troops continue to advise, assist, and enable Iraqi Security Forces, including the Kurdish Peshmerga, who lead the shared fight against ISIS in Iraq.

In Syria, CENTCOM relies heavily on our local partners, the Syrian Democratic Forces, in the fight with ISIS.

CENTCOM is committed to the enduring defeat of ISIS, said Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, CENTCOM commander.

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April 2023 Month in Review: The Defeat ISIS Mission in Iraq and Syria - US Central Command

Opinion: Three key things the Iraq War can teach the US about … – Chattanooga Times Free Press

Leaked Pentagon papers showed in early April 2023 that the U.S. is allegedly following the inner workings of Russia's intelligence operations and is also spying on Ukraine, adding a new dimension to the United States' involvement in the Ukraine war.

While the U.S. has not actually declared war against Russia, the documents show that it continues to support Ukraine with military intelligence as well as money and weapons against the Russian invasion.

There is no end in sight to the war between Ukraine and Russia nor to U.S. involvement. While it is far from the first time that the U.S. became a third party to war, this scenario brings the Iraq War, in particular, to mind.

A comparison with the Iraq War, I believe, offers a useful way to look at the case of Ukraine.

The Iraq and Ukraine wars have notable differences from a U.S. foreign policy perspective chiefly, thousands of American soldiers died fighting in Iraq, while the U.S. does not have any ground troops in Ukraine. But assessing the Iraq War, and its long aftermath, can still help articulate concerns about the United States' getting involved in intense violence in another faraway place.

Here are three key points to understand.

1. Intervention doesn't guarantee success

Around the time former President George W. Bush announced the U.S. would invade Iraq in 2003, Osama bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi Arabian Islamist who orchestrated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, remained at large. While not obviously connected, the fact that bin Laden continued to evade the U.S. contributed to a general sense of anger at hostile regimes. In particular, Saddam Hussein defied the U.S. and its allies.

The Iraqi dictator continued to evade inspections by the United Nations watchdog group the International Atomic Energy Agency, giving the impression that he had weapons of mass destruction. This proved maddening to the U.S. and its allies as the cat and mouse game dragged on.

Bush reportedly had intense concerns about whether Saddam could use alleged weapons of mass destruction to attack the U.S., causing even more harm than 9/11 did.

A U.S.-led coalition of countries that included the United Kingdom and Australia invaded Iraq in March 2003. The "coalition of the willing," as it became known, won a quick victory and toppled Saddam's regime.

Bush initially enjoyed a spike in public support immediately after the invasion, but his polls shortly after experienced a downward trajectory as the war dragged on.

However, the U.S. showed little understanding of the politics, society and other important aspects of the country that it had taken the lead in occupying and then trying to rebuild.

Many decisions, most notably disbanding of the Iraqi Army in May 2003, revealed poor judgment and even ignorance because, with the sudden removal of Iraqi security forces, intense civil disorder ensued.

Disbanding the army caused insurgent militant forces to come out into the open. The fighting intensified among different Iraqi groups and escalated into a civil war, which ended in 2017.

Today, Iraq continues to be politically unstable and is not any closer to becoming a democracy than it was before the invasion.

2. Personal vendettas cannot justify a war

During his 24-year regime, Saddam lived an extravagant lifestyle coupled with oppression of civilians and political opponents. He engaged in genocide of Kurdish people in Iraq. Saddam was finally executed by his own people in 2006, after U.S. forces captured him.

Putin is equally notorious and even more dangerous. He has a long track record of violent oppression against his people and has benefited from leading one of the world's most corrupt governments.

He also actually possesses weapons of mass destruction and has threatened multiple times to use them on foreign countries.Saddam and Putin have also both been the direct targets of U.S. political leaders, who displayed a fixation on toppling these foreign adversaries, which was evident long before the U.S. actually became involved in the Iraq and Ukraine wars.

The United States' support for Ukraine is understandable because that country is fighting a defensive war with horrific civilian casualties. Backing Ukraine also makes sense from the standpoint of U.S. national security it helps push back against an expansionist Russia that increasingly is aligned with China.

3. It can divide the country

The Iraq War resulted in a rise in intense partisanship in the U.S. over foreign policy. In addition, recent opinion polls about the Iraq War show that most Americans do not think that the invasion made the U.S. any safer.

Now, the U.S. faces rising public skepticism about getting involved in the Ukraine war, another expensive overseas commitment.

Polls released in January 2023 show that the percentage of Americans who think the U.S. is providing too much aid to Ukraine has grown in recent months. About 26% of American adults said in late 2022 that the U.S. is giving too much to the Ukraine war, according to Pew Research Group. But three-fourths of those polled still supported the U.S. engagement.

The average American knows little to nothing about Iraq or Ukraine. Patience obviously can grow thin when U.S. support for foreign wars becomes ever more expensive and the threat of retaliation, even by way of tactical nuclear weapons, remains in the realm of possibility. Aid to Ukraine is likely to become embroiled in the rapidly escalating conflict in Washington over the debt ceiling.

On the flip side, if the U.S. does not offer sufficient support for Ukraine to fend of Russian attacks and maintain its independence, adversaries such as Russia, China and Iran may feel encouraged to be aggressive in other places.

The comparison between the wars in Iraq and Ukraine makes it clear that U.S. leadership should clearly identify the underlying goals of its national security to the American public while determining the amount and type of support that it will give to Ukraine.

While many people believe that Ukraine deserves support against Russian aggression, current policy should not ignore past experience, and the Iraq War tells a cautionary tale.

Patrick James is the Dean's Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.

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Opinion: Three key things the Iraq War can teach the US about ... - Chattanooga Times Free Press

Belgium arrests suspected al Qaeda member over Iraq attacks – Reuters

BRUSSELS, May 5 (Reuters) - Belgian police have arrested a suspect of Iraqi nationality on suspicion of having taking part in a series of bombings in Baghdad as part of an al Qaeda cell, the federal prosecutor said in a statement on Friday.

A Belgian resident since 2015, the suspect is believed to be partly responsible for several bombings in the Green Zone of Baghdad in 2009 and 2010, which killed at least 376 people and injured more than 2,300.

The attacks were carried out using car bombs against several government buildings among others, the statement said.

The suspect, who was born in 1979, was placed under arrest on May 3 and was charged with several murders with terrorist intent, participation in the activities of a terrorist group, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

A judge will decide on Friday whether or not to keep him in detention.

Reporting by Marine Strauss; Editing by GV De Clercq and Conor Humphries

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Belgium arrests suspected al Qaeda member over Iraq attacks - Reuters

Iraq’s F-16 Fleet Surges In Importance Thanks In Part To War In … – The War Zone

Iraq's F-16IQ Viper fighter jets armed with laser-guided bombs have become the country's most reliable platforms for carrying out airstrikes against ISIS terrorists, according to the Pentagon. This is at least in part due to a shortage of spare parts for Iraq's Russian-made Mi-28 Havoc and Mi-35 Hind attack helicopters as a result of the war in Ukraine. U.S. and Iraqi authorities are now also looking into the possibility of modernizing the F-16IQ's notoriously limited air-to-air capabilities.

The new details about the Iraqi F-16IQ fleet, as well as its other fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, are contained in a routine report published yesterday jointly by the Inspectors General of the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The information about the Vipers is particularly significant given that there were real questions about whether this fleet was at risk of effectively ceasing to exist two years ago.

"Iraqs F-16s continue to be the most reliable shooting platform," according to the report. Iraq "did not use Russian produced Mi-28 or Mi-35 attack helicopters, its Chinese-produced CH-4 armed UAS, or its Czech-produced L-159 light fighters" for strikes, at least against ISIS, between January 1 and March 31, 2023, it adds.

The video below shows Mi-28s and Mi-35s in use circa 2017 during the Battle of Mosul.

Iraq's fleet of 34 F-16IQs a mix of single and two-seat versions are "66 percent mission capable" and "the Iraqi Air Force (IqAF) [can] adequately perform air-to-ground missions with current parts and personnel on hand," the report continues. "Russian-made aircraft in the ISF fleet remain in disrepair due to the inability to acquire parts because of the sanctions related to the war in Ukraine."

Another joint Inspectors General report released earlier this year revealed that Iraq was contending with a shortage of parts for its Mi-17 armed transport helicopters that were also linked to Russia's war in Ukraine. At that time, U.S. officials also disclosed that there were plans in the works to replace those and other helicopters in Iraqi service with new American-made types, as you can read more about here.

The report released yesterday does not elaborate on what issues might be impacting the use of the Chinese CH-4 drones or Czech L-159 light jets. There is no discussion at all about the status of Iraq's Soviet-era Su-25 Frogfoot ground attack jets. There have been reports since 2019 that Iraqi personnel have had trouble operating and maintaining the CH-4s, and that various customers around the world have been less than pleased with the performance of these uncrewed aircraft.

When it comes to the F-16IQs, a 66-percent mission-capable rate is impressive. The U.S. Air Force's publicly disclosed mission capable rate percentages for its F-16C/D Vipers typically hover between the high 60s and the low 70s. However, it is important to note that private contractors continue to be essential for maintaining Iraq's Vipers. Disruption in that support in 2021, when Lockheed Martin withdrew maintenance contractors due to a spike in violence, was a key contributor to fears that the jets would quickly become completely unflyable.

The Inspectors General report also makes clear that Iraqi F-16IQ pilots remain heavily dependent on help from the U.S.-led coalition, officially known as Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR), to actually execute strikes on ISIS targets.

"CJTF-OIR reported that the JOC-I [Joint Operations Command-Iraq in Baghdad] conducted an independent strike on February 12 with no support from Coalition resources, using an F-16 to target a suspected ISIS fighter in Salah ad Din province with six precision guided bombs," the report says. "This was the fourth airstrike that the ISF [Iraqi Security Forces] conducted entirely without Coalition support; the first occurred in September 2022. CJTF-OIR said that Coalition advisors enabled all other Iraqi strikes through ISR observation, verbal direction to targets, and terminal guidance of guided munitions."

The report adds that all of the Iraqi F-16IQ strikes were carried out using either 2,000-pound GBU-10/B or 500-pound GBU-12/B Paveway II series laser-guided bombs. Iraq's Cessna AC-208 aircraft and Eurocopter EC635 helicopters also conducted a number of strikes during the reporting period using AGM-114 Hellfire laser-guided missiles and 7.62x51mm machine gun pods, respectively.

The current significance of Iraq's F-16IQs, at least according to the U.S. government, is notable for a number of reasons. The most immediate of course is the dramatic turnaround for the Iraqi Vipers, the fate of which seemed somewhat uncertain in recent years.

"On February 5, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in Baghdad for a series of talks with Iraqi officials on energy, stability, and food security in view of the Ukraine conflict," the newly released joint Inspectors General report notes. "Lavrov discussed Iraqi debts owed to Russian oil companies, which Iraq is withholding due to U.S. sanctions placed on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. ... On February 23, Iraq voted in favor of a UN resolution calling for a comprehensive, just, and lasting peace in Ukraine."

Other foreign operators of Russian fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters now look to be moving toward acquiring Western types in light of the state of Russia's defense industry as a result of the conflict in Ukraine. In response, Western companies, such as Bell in the United States, have been reorienting their product lines to be better positioned to meet this new market demand.

The new Inspectors General report also, if indirectly, highlights how Iraq's F-16IQs are the country's main tool for policing its own airspace at present. This reality is perhaps newly relevant given a series of Turkish airstrikes targeting Kurdish groups in Iraq last year, including one that killed eight civilians in July 2022, according to local officials.

The U.S. government's decision to supply F-16s of any kind to Iraq was controversial from the beginning and ultimately went ahead in the early 2010s with the understanding that the capabilities of those aircraft would be significantly limited. This was particularly pronounced when it came to the jets' air-to-air capabilities, with only older AIM-9L/M Sidewinder and AIM-7M Sparrow missiles being provided along with them.

"The AIM-7 air-to-air missiles for use on Iraqs F-16s are at a point of concern because of the lack of replacements or repair vendors for their Continuous Wave Illuminators, which guide the munition to its target," according to the Inspectors General report published yesterday. Now, the U.S. Office of Security Coooperation-Iraq (OSC-I) "is exploring a way to fill this potential capability gap."

While the newer AIM-9X variant of the Sidewinder is still in production, there do not appear to be any producers left of new AIM-7s. The RIM-7 Sea Sparrow surface-to-air version is still in production, but there may be different pressures on that particular supply chain due to plans to send those missiles to Ukraine. European missile conglomerate MBDA also still produces versions of Aspide, a Sparrow derivative, but again primarily for ground-launched and sea-based use.

Altogether, the most readily available replacement for the AIM-7 on the F-16 could be a variant of the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM). This was, of course, one of the newer missiles the U.S. government explicitly decided against supplying to the Iraqis with the F-16IQs more than a decade ago. There were concerns at the time that arming Iraq's Vipers with AIM-120s, as well as AIM-9Xs, could upset regional power balances and might present technical security risks, especially because of the country's close ties to Iran.

Whether the current global geopolitical climate leads U.S. officials to change their views on all of this regard remains to be seen, as well as what other alternatives to the AIM-7 for the F-16IQs they might explore.

Whatever might be in store for Iraq's F-16IQs in the coming years, the aircraft seem to have found new significance thanks in part to the fallout from Russia's war on Ukraine. On top of that, there are signs that the jets' newfound importance to Iraq's overall national security posture may now grow further still in the future.

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Iraq's F-16 Fleet Surges In Importance Thanks In Part To War In ... - The War Zone