https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0186-7725
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ABSTRACT
This article seeks to determine the key instruments that both Barack Obama and Donald Trump adopted to undermine Iranian influence in Iraq, along with explaining their implications in practice. Since 2003, diminishing Iranian influence in Iraq was regarded to be vital U.S. interests. This is due to the fact that Iranian domination in Iraq would bolster its expansionist policy in the region. Both the Obama and Trump administrations, in varying ways, used common instruments to counter the Iranian influence in Iraq, including attempting to establish an anti-Iranian government in Baghdad, prioritizing stability through the use of strongmen over supporting democratic institutions and empowering meaningful power sharing. However, unlike the Obama administration, Trump exerted maximum political and economic pressure along with military threats against Iran and its allies in Iraq rather than pursuing dialogue with the nations. Yet these various instruments had a limited impact on diminishing Iran’s influence in Iraq.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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Notes on contributors
Nawzad Abdullah Shukri
Nawzad A Shukri holds a PhD in Politics and International Relations from the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, which was awarded in 2017. His PhD thesis focused on explaining U.S. Foreign Policy towards Iraqi Kurdistan from 2003 to 2015. He currently works as a Lecturer at the University of Salahaddin in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. He has published a variety of academic articles on U.S. foreign policy, Middle Eastern politics, and Kurdish issues. Dr Shukri has participated in and presented papers at many conferences and workshops. His research interests focus on U.S. Foreign Policy towards the Middle East, specifically regarding Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey, GCC, and the Kurdistan Region. He speaks Kurdish, Arabic, Persian, and English.