Among the forces now fighting to drive Islamic State (IS) from Mosul are the Popular Mobilization Unites (PMUs), Iranian-backed Shiite militias just recently legalized by the Iraqi parliament over the strenuous objections of Sunni legislators. Last week, the PMUs seized the Tal Afar airport—an important objective in the battle for Mosul but also, as Hanin Ghaddar writes, an important objective in Iran’s quest for regional hegemony:
Although the PMUs have not announced any specific plans for moving onward, the town just north of the airport could be their next target. Iran does not have a border crossing with Syria, but Tal Afar—located some 40 miles west of Mosul on the main road to Syria—could provide one. If its proxies do in fact capture the town, Iran would likely be able to establish a corridor from the Iraqi border province of Diyala, up through the Hamrin Mountains northeast of Tikrit, and all the way up to Tal Afar en route to Sinjar on the Syrian border. On the other side of Syria, Iranian-backed forces already have multiple routes to Lebanon via al-Qusayr and other towns in the Qalamoun region.
Although a land bridge might not be of major significance to Tehran in terms of transferring weapons, [which it is already doing by air and sea], it would provide a larger platform for projecting power and establishing a contiguous Iranian presence in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. . . .
If Iran succeeds, the three countries caught in the midst of this strategy could lose whatever is left of their sovereignty. Yet an even more pressing problem is that intensifying Shiite rhetoric and power will only bolster Islamic State’s sectarian narrative and help mobilize local Sunnis around it and other radical groups that feed on such sentiment. Winning the war against IS requires seeing all brands of extremism and terrorism in the Middle East for what they are and understanding how they feed off of one another. . . .
Thus, even if completing a land bridge takes years to accomplish or proves to be an impossible or fleeting goal, the various processes that have been set in motion toward that end require continual sectarian violence and ever-widening efforts to turn Arab Shiites into armed adherents of Iran’s revolutionary ideology. Meanwhile, IS and whatever radical groups follow in its wake will take advantage of this situation to mobilize Sunnis for similarly violent ends.
Read more on Washington Institute: http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/iran-may-be-using-iraq-and-syria-as-a-bridge-to-lebanon