From time to time, even the most belligerent warmongers get taken down: whether it’s bad weather, or other unseen forces, there are always bigger powers at work. For now, the helicopter accident that claimed the life of Iran’s president appears to have been an act of nature, the will of God, as we like to remind ourselves in Islam. Sometimes good things do happen in bad helicopters.
In the days before his death, Ebrahim Raisi was busy. Right before he left Azerbaijan for Iran, Raisi met with the country’s president at a ceremony to open a dam. Days earlier in Tehran, Raisi saw the president of the Kurdish regional government. Their talks, initiated by the Kurdish president, had been on building peace in the region and diminishing the intense conflict Iran had generated. The tone of the Tehran meeting, as recounted to me, had been conciliatory and friendly; the Kurds had appealed to Iran to lay off the regional conflict and instead build bridges with neighbours rather than exploit them in pursuit of Iran’s proxy wars. The meeting ended with the prospect of ongoing discussions.
Had Raisi lived, the destination of his next international trip was Erbil, the Kurdish capital in northern Iraq and home to the Kurdish regional government. The Peshmerga heartland is a refuge for the Yazidi and Kurdish survivors of the war against Isis and is home to a growing population of Christians. The president of Kurdistan, Nechirvan Idris Barzani, a pragmatic man of reason, is unusually well liked, not only by the Kurds but also by both Iraq and Iran – a rare feat. Rumour has it that he may even be considered a possible candidate for the Iraqi presidency.
But Raisi’s visit to Erbil was not God’s will. Official narratives around the world confirmed the death of Raisi and the Iranian foreign minister to be an accident. Raisi and the Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian were seated in the best of three aged Bell helicopters that may have been 50 years old. The aircraft is thought to have gone down in bad weather not long after it took off. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) units scoured the rugged wilderness where the helicopter crashed; they found the wreckage and their president and foreign minister dead at the scene.
Iran’s paranoia is such that, while the helicopter crash appears to have been an accident, it may suspect foul play. The crash comes at a difficult time for Tehran: Iran is still recovering from the global humiliation it suffered at attempting an ambitious and massive strike on Israel, only to be deterred, not only by the remarkable Israeli military, but by other military powers in the region.
Paranoia can be corrosive over time and make for more belligerence. Iran’s unspooling proxy wars continue to rage in Gaza between Hamas and Israel; the red-hot Israeli-Hezbollah northern front with Lebanon risks spilling over; the hinterlands in the Yemen with the difficult-to-control Houthis and their spillover conflict into the Red Sea continue: these conflicts are close to spinning out of control, even of Iran. Ever paranoid of internal conflict, it might not be unreasonable for Iran to fear its own proxies may have become too powerful to be directed, even by the Iranian regime itself.
The United States and Israel are also struggling to maintain control of both the Gaza war and the information/propaganda war surrounding it. Since October 2023, the US and Israel have both haemorrhaged massive international political legitimacy; Israel, in particular, has suffered catastrophic reputational damage which may takes decades to rebuild. The conflict is so devastating that the International Criminal Court (ICC) is mulling international arrest warrants against Hamas and the leaders of Israel on the basis of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity. Perversely, the victims of Hamas are now criminalised for the defense of their people from Hamas, which seems an extraordinarily unjust recommendation coming at a frighteningly critical moment in the Israel-Gaza conflict as the Rafah operation deepens.
Meanwhile, US president Joe Biden, facing the prospect of a resounding election defeat, escalating domestic protests, and the rise of open Jew hatred inside the United States, both verbal and physical, is flailing.
As well as being unable to get a grip on domestic matters, Biden is utterly failing to keep Iran in check. Nowhere has this failure been more apparent than in Iraq. US assets have faced numerous strikes by Iran or its proxies since the beginning of the Gaza war. Many attacks go unanswered.
US ambivalence at deterring Iran places American commanders in an impossible position: do nothing and remain a sitting duck to the IRGC or Iranian-backed militias; or protect the men and women under your command who have been placed in danger but rendered defenceless by order of their commander in chief. This is a daily dilemma across Iraq for American force leadership.
Inside Iraq, people are sickened by the US’s failure to crack down on the Islamist regime of Iran while neglecting the suffering of their own populations. Even the loyal and deeply pro American Kurds have lost all confidence in US foreign policy: they realise they are now effectively left to fend for themselves in a neighbourhood perhaps even more hostile than Israel’s.
Even the loyal and deeply pro American Kurds have lost all confidence in the US
As Iran emerges from mourning next weekend, Iran will train its crosshairs and fury on vulnerable US assets in Iraq and particularly the Kurdish region. If it fails to respond, the US will be showing all too clearly that it has forgotten the vast amounts of Kurdish blood that was shed to defend the world against Isis – a terrorist army that threatened not only Iraq and Syria but Europe and the United States.
‘We are not your mercenaries,’ one Kurdish commander emotionally told me, upon learning I was American, during my first visit to Duhok, Kurdistan in 2018.
The US doesn’t have long to act. We may be approaching the final moment to concentrate US forces in Kurdistan, guarantee Kurdish autonomy and support a true Kurdistan. This is not only our moral obligation. Guaranteeing a heavily-armed Kurdistan ensures the United States could restrain both Iran and Turkey while empowering a deeply pro-Israel ally. Deterrent has a wonderful way of making conflict less likely.
But under Biden, this is wishful thinking. Today, Kurds face an emboldened Iran and a salivating Turkey licking their chops as they trade plans to carve up control of Iraqi Kurdistan. If the US does not act now, we can anticipate Iranian and Turkish incursions in Kurdish territory. Overwhelmed and denied support, the noble Kurds will be deemed ‘unfit’ to secure their region, and Turkey and Iran will subjugate the Kurds ending decades of regional autonomy and the end of the Kurdish dream.
Israel knows America is ambivalent. Kurds know America has bailed. Iran knows the US is weak. Without assertive US engagement, these conflicts will rapidly deepen, become less and less ‘contained’ by those who launched them and those who must fight in them. There will come a time when no one will have full control.
Indeed, we may have already crossed that Rubicon, and perhaps, as Caesar once said, ‘The die is cast’.
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