In my post titled, “COLD WAR RENEWED: Israel and Kurdish SDF are Now Trump’s Weapons Against Iran” that was published on January 15th I wrote the following:
“President Trump, campaigning against direct US involvement in the Middle East has had his team draft a strategic plan that will help a weakened US military confront these strategic threats head on. Two partners are emerging to help the US push back on the strength Russian-Shiite grip over the Middle East.”
I detailed that both the Kurdish SDF and Israel were these partners. Lots of things have occured in the following two weeks. The most important is Turkey’s decision to invade the Kurdish held canton of Afrin in North Syria. Suffice to say the Turkish military operation is not going as well as Erdogan would have hoped. This is due to the US backing the SDF up with American weapons and of course serious training.
In continuation of this policy the US has now come to realize that it must support the KRG in Iraq as well.
Speaking on Sunday to Abu Dhabi’s Sky News Arabia, while he was visiting Kuwait, Brett McGurk, Special Presidential Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat the Islamic State (IS), said that “the airports in the Kurdistan Region needed to be reopened.”
McGurk also stated that Baghdad needed to pay the salaries of government employees in the Kurdistan Region and the dispute over control of land borders needed to be resolved as well.
Kurdistan 24 says that a well placed source has indicated that the US has changed positions on its public support of the KRG as opposed to remaining silent due to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s partnership with Iranian para military groups and political parties in Iraq.
This is clearly one of the reasons, but in the broader sense, it is in fact the coalescing of the Turkey-Iran axis with Russia that has made Washington realize that the Kurds need to be suported across the board. Turkey’s invasion of Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava, Western Kurdistan) with its operation in Afrin has sped up this change of policy.
