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A decade after Saddam Hussein’s fall, Iraq still lacks a centralized foreign policy that advances its national interests. Internal divisions, such as those between the Shia-dominated regime in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government in Erbil, have given rise to alternative power centers with their own policy priorities. Iraqi foreign policy will remain disjointed and incoherent until Baghdad resolves the issues polarizing the country.

Key Themes

• Iraq’s national interests in building military capacity, reviving the energy sector, meeting domestic water and energy demand, and increasing trade and investment have prompted Baghdad to rebuild relations with regional and global partners.
   
• Iraq’s rapidly growing economy is emerging as an engine of growth in the Middle East and a key player in international energy markets.
   
• Counterterrorism cooperation with Washington and multibillion-dollar arms deals with Russia and the United States have become cornerstones of Iraq’s international security posture.
   
• Contracts with Western, Chinese, and Russian energy companies have revitalized its oil sector, and Baghdad has built relations with Iran, Turkey, several Gulf countries, Jordan, and Syria to help meet its energy-transport, water, and electricity needs.
   
• Erbil and many Sunni Arab opposition leaders have pursued their own foreign relations and international priorities that often conflict with Baghdad’s official foreign policies.
   
• Baghdad has moderately supported the Syrian regime while Erbil and Iraqi Sunnis have sided with the rebels in the ongoing civil war. This has exacerbated Iraq’s fragmentation by pushing Baghdad closer to Iran, another Damascus supporter, while driving Iraqi Kurds and Sunnis closer to Turkey and the Gulf countries backing the Syrian opposition.

Implications for Iraq’s Future 

• Despite its significant economic growth, Iraq will not regain significant political or strategic influence in the Middle East for some time.
   
• Until Iraq resolves domestic disagreements over energy, internal borders, and power sharing, Erbil and the Sunnis will continue advancing their own international agendas and Iraq will lack a coherent foreign policy.
   

• Developments in Damascus will affect Iraq’s foreign relations. A resurgent Syrian regime will strengthen Baghdad and its ties to Iran, while opposition victories will empower Iraq’s alternative power centers and force Baghdad to reconsider its regional alignments. 
   
• Any thaw in Iran’s relations with the West—like the recent nuclear deal between Tehran and several world powers—will reduce the tensions in Iraq’s foreign policy. 
   
• Iraq’s interests are best served by a centrist foreign policy, not a narrow regional alliance with Iran. Baghdad should continue pursuing strategic and economic relations with various Middle Eastern and international powers. 

A Splintered Foreign Policy

Iraq lies along many key fault lines—Kurdish-Arab, Sunni-Shia, Arab-Persian—and it also holds one of the world’s largest oil reserves. As a central country in the resource-rich and volatile heart of the Middle East, Iraq has the potential to be either a force for regional accommodation and stability and an engine for economic growth or a crucible for ethnic and sectarian conflict. As a result, its foreign policy matters for Iraqis, for countries of the region, and for the world. However, Iraq will not have a coherent foreign policy until it resolves deep and lingering internal differences over matters such as power sharing, territory, and energy.

Iraq has a complex set of foreign interests that relate to building military capacity; encouraging investment and economic growth, especially in the energy sector; and securing access to water and electricity. The incoherence in the country’s current foreign policy stems from the fractured, polarized nature of its domestic politics and the lingering influences of competing outside powers in both Iraq and its volatile regional neighborhood—especially with the war next door in Syria. Iraq’s national interests would best be served by pursuing a centrist foreign policy and building good relations with a wide array of regional and international partners, and there are some forces in the country that appear to be pursuing just such a policy. 

So far, these attempts have been unsuccessful. Iraqi foreign policy has been neither effectively centralized nor institutionalized. The central government in Baghdad, currently under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, holds the lion’s share of power. It receives large oil revenues, controls the budget, commands the national army, and enjoys the constitutional authority of setting foreign policy. Within the Baghdad government, the foreign ministry has been led by the Kurdish politician Hoshyar Zebari, but all important government foreign policy decisions have been effectively made by the prime minister’s office. This arrangement reflects Maliki’s efforts to concentrate power in his hands, a goal he has been pursuing since he first took office in 2006.¹ 

But Baghdad’s power has been challenged by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) based in Erbil, currently under President Massoud Barzani, which has enjoyed a high degree of autonomy since Saddam’s fall. It has effectively forged its own external relationships with international oil companies and regional powers such as Turkey and is pursuing its own policies with regard to the civil war in Syria. These policies are separate from and often in conflict with those pursued by Baghdad. 

And the Kurds are not the only domestic players contesting Baghdad’s foreign policy authority. Various factions and leaders within the Shia and Sunni political spectrum—such as Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the opposition Shia Sadrist Trend political party; Ahmed Chalabi, a prominent Shia politician; Ayad Allawi, leader of the opposition Iraqiyya bloc; and former vice president Tariq al-Hashimi, who was forced out of power by Maliki in late 2011—effectively have their own foreign relations, either with Iran or with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or Turkey. As a result, the foreign policy pursued by the Maliki government in Baghdad often does not reflect a national consensus nor does it always preempt Erbil or other politicians pursuing their own foreign relations. 

The internal struggle for political advantage among Iraq’s many competing factions also influences the country’s foreign relations. In theory, at least, foreign policy should advance national interests; however, in deeply divided societies like today’s Iraq—or indeed today’s Lebanon, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, and presecession Sudan—foreign relations and foreign policy are often pursued by state or nonstate actors to strengthen their political positions in domestic politics.²  Thus Maliki has moved closer to the government in Iran as the challenge from the KRG and other Iraqi Sunni groups has grown; the KRG has moved closer to Turkey as its differences with Baghdad have increased; and Sunni leaders have reached out to Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia in their competition with the Shia-dominated central Iraqi government. 

The influence of external forces in Iraq has further hindered Baghdad’s attempts to create a coherent foreign policy. Until its troops left in late 2011, the United States had considerable influence over both domestic and foreign policy in Iraq, although this influence has dramatically declined since the withdrawal. Iran, through extensive political, religious, and security networks, continues to have a major impact. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and previously Syria, also have (or in the case of Syria, had) influence with one faction or another within the country. And each of these external actors has unique—and often contradictory—interests it would like to see reflected in Iraq’s foreign policy. 

A Pattern of Centrism?

Despite these challenges, there is a general—one might even say positive—pattern to Iraq’s complex and often contradictory emerging foreign policy, especially when compared to that of the Saddam era. Successive governments in post-Saddam Baghdad have been trying to effect a transition from the isolationism that marked Iraqi foreign policy during the last years of Saddam’s rule to an openness to regional and international relations and partnerships. They have also attempted to move from a foreign policy based on military might, which led to the initiation of multiple wars, to one favoring economic development and the avoidance of major military conflict. Baghdad has shifted away from the heavily ideological Arab nationalist foreign policy that put Iraq in permanent tension with Kurdish, Turkish, and Iranian identities—and also “justified” Iraqi power grabs over Arab states such as Kuwait—and toward a less ideological, more pragmatic foreign policy based on more mundane and varied political and economic interests. 

Foreign Minister Zebari, in office for the full decade since Saddam’s ouster, has been the most consistent voice in expressing the national thread of Iraq’s post-Saddam foreign policy. He has emphasized the need to rebuild Iraq’s relations with the regional and international communities as well as the need to direct Iraq’s foreign policy to promote the country’s unity and stability and to fuel its reconstruction and economic growth. Until his stroke and incapacitation in December 2012, Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani—Iraq’s president since 2005—was also a prominent voice emphasizing this common, positive, and national thread of Iraq’s foreign policy. 

In its official statements, Maliki’s ruling Dawa Party has echoed these goals of pursuing a foreign policy built on peaceful, cooperative relations with neighbors and the international community and on the prioritization of socioeconomic development over military or geopolitical goals. For the first few years of his rule, Maliki maintained this line in most of his official positions and in his schedule of visits, which balanced out trips to Tehran or Moscow with visits to Turkey, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Europe, and the United States (although he has never been received in Saudi Arabia or Qatar). Indeed, this middle-of-the-road and economically driven foreign policy loosely describes much of Iraq’s complex foreign relations for years after the fall of Saddam. During this time, Iraq had good relations and growing economic ties with most of its neighbors, including Iran, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, and the UAE, as well as with global powers such as the United States, the European Union (EU), Russia, and China. 

But this centrist policy faced a major crisis with the uprising against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Although Maliki initially tried to maintain a neutral position in the conflict, this policy came under intense external and internal strain. Externally, Iran and Russia lined up solidly behind the Assad regime, while Turkey, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Europe, and the United States lined up behind the opposition, leaving no foreign policy middle ground to tread. Internally, KRG President Barzani backed the Syrian Kurdish rebellion against the Assad regime, and many of Iraq’s Sunnis sympathized with the Syrian rebels. They hoped that a Sunni-led toppling of the Alawi-dominated regime in Syria would strengthen their hand in weakening Maliki’s monopoly on power in Baghdad. These pressures pushed Maliki’s government to offer more support for the Assad regime, as Maliki feared that Assad’s fall would spell real trouble for his own rule. 

Indeed, the Syrian conflict has ruined Iraq’s attempts at maintaining a “good friends with everyone” policy. Whether it will force Iraq deeper and more permanently into closer alignment with the other supporters of Assad—such as Iran, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and Russia—or whether the crisis will pass and Baghdad can resume its preference for the middle remains to be seen.

Primary Foreign Policy Interests

The outlines of Iraq’s foreign policy are dictated in large part by its various interests. These include shifting from a Saddam-era policy of isolation and engagement in costly wars to one marked by cooperation with foreign powers; increasing military capacity; encouraging growth in the energy sector; ensuring the country’s resource needs; and boosting trade and foreign investment. 

Undoing the Legacy of Isolation 

Near-total trade and financial sanctions were imposed on Iraq by the United Nations (UN) Security Council in August 1990 after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and they devastated the Iraqi economy and society. The majority of these sanctions were removed after the fall of the Saddam regime in 2003, and a main objective of Iraq’s leaders since that time has been simply to regain international legitimacy and rebuild normal relations with the states of the region and the world. With a recent memory of the devastating costs and consequences of military adventures (against Iran and Kuwait) and confrontations (with the U.S.-led coalition), the post-Saddam consensus has been to avoid external military confrontation and the extreme external alignments that might bring them about. 

Since Saddam’s fall, Iraq has also been working to regain internal political sovereignty. The first formal step was handing authority over from the Coalition Provisional Authority set up by the occupying powers in 2003 to the interim Iraqi government in June 2004. This was followed by the drafting of a new constitution, the holding of parliamentary elections in 2005, and the setting up of the first duly constituted government in May 2006. But foreign troops remained until the last U.S. units left in December 2011. In June 2013, the UN Security Council moved Iraq largely out of Chapter VII, which allows UN-mandated external action, to Chapter VI, which requires cooperation between states. This move gave Iraq another element of its national sovereignty, although that sovereignty is still compromised by strong internal divisions, the state’s incomplete control of its borders and airspace, and the presence of external intelligence networks and externally backed militias. 

Building Military Capacity

Part of Baghdad’s foreign policy has been driven by its need to purchase arms and training for the national army. The Maliki-dominated central government has been trying to regain control over borders, territory, and airspace through further empowering the national army. Over the last year, it has also been scrambling to face down the challenges of a resurgent al-Qaeda. The Iraqi army, currently more than 350,000 strong, was built and trained under U.S. auspices, but it still does not have significant airpower or mechanized armor capacity and cannot defend against incursions (for example, Turkish or Iranian) if and when they occur. Its counterterrorism capacities are also low. 

In addition, the national army sits uneasily alongside the Kurdish peshmerga armed forces—currently over 300,000 strong and lightly armed—that protect and patrol the KRG. There are also three Kurdish brigades in the national army—totaling about 24,000 soldiers—that are deployed mainly in disputed territories in Saladin Province (specifically in the town of Tuz Khormato) and Diyala Province.

In foreign policy terms, strengthening the national army has meant building and maintaining relations with countries that can provide advanced and effective weaponry. The United States is, and will probably remain for the foreseeable future, Iraq’s main military supply partner. Washington and Baghdad have a set of active and proposed arms deals worth $18 billion. These include deals for 36 Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter jets, 25 Bell attack helicopters armed with Lockheed Martin laser-guided AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, six C-130 Hercules Transports, 140 upgraded Abrams main battle tanks built by General Dynamics Land Systems, and 160 Guardian armored security vehicles. Three of the six C-130s have been delivered, and delivery of the first F-16s is expected to occur later in 2013—Iraqi pilots are already training in the United States to fly these aircraft. The main deal was signed in 2008, but delivery of fighter jets and battle tanks continues to be delayed.³  

In addition, Iraq and the United States have been building cooperation on counterterrorism. In talks in Washington in August 2013, Foreign Minister Zebari asked for counterterrorism support that might include the deployment of U.S. drones to combat al-Qaeda. In an October 2013 visit to Washington, Maliki emphasized that Iraq and the United States must remain partners in fighting terrorism. 

Baghdad has recently sought to diversify its arms supplies. Maliki’s government announced in late 2012 a $4.2 billion arms deal with Russia and a $1 billion arms deal with the Czech Republic. The Russian deal involves deliveries of 30 Mi-28 attack helicopters and 42 Pantsir Zenit missile-launch systems to Iraq. The deal was frozen for several months but was renewed in April 2013, and Iraq began receiving the first deliveries in October 2013. Russian media also reports that Iraq is exploring the purchase of Mikoyan Mig-29 fighter jets.⁴  The Czech deal involves trainer/light attack aircraft.⁵  It was also initially put on hold—perhaps as a result of pressure from Washington—but Baghdad now says it is again on track and shipments will be received before the end of 2014. In December 2013, Iraq also announced a $1.1 billion deal with South Korea to purchase 24 light multipurpose fighters.⁶  It is clear that Maliki’s government is interested in using its oil wealth to diversify its arms partners while strengthening its military capacities, and Iraq’s oil revenues render it an increasingly lucrative market for international arms sales. 

The arms of the Kurdish peshmerga consist of Soviet-era light and heavy machine guns as well as around 2,000 armored vehicles and a small number of helicopters captured from the Iraqi army during the U.S.-led 2003 invasion. Erbil continues to jealously guard the autonomy of its armed forces, but while it has pursued independent deals with foreign countries in other areas, such as in the oil sector, it has accepted that arms deals will have to go through Baghdad.⁷ 

While Baghdad and Tehran have close relations and cooperate on security issues—indeed, they recently announced their intention to sign an agreement to deal with borders, smuggling, trade, and pilgrimage security—Iraq does not look to Iran in any major way for help in building its military capacity. Tehran does not have an arms industry that meets Baghdad’s needs, so Maliki will continue to depend on other international capitals for arms deals.

The Foreign Policy Imperatives of Oil and Gas

Iraq’s rapid economic growth depends largely on reviving its rich energy sector, which suffered during the years of Iraq’s isolation and during the U.S. invasion. Post-Saddam governments have focused on bringing national and international investment back into this sector and pursing foreign policies that provide external markets and exit routes for this energy. This has driven Iraqi foreign policy to seek good relations with all of its neighbors, whom it needs for energy export routes, and to maintain solid ties to both the United States and Asian giants like China and India, which are Iraq’s main energy clients.

With 143 billion barrels, Iraq has the fifth-largest proven oil reserves in the world,⁸  and further exploration could make it an even larger reserve holder. Oil production had declined during the years of Iraq’s isolation, and it collapsed during the U.S. invasion. But it has climbed back to around 3.5 million barrels per day (mbpd), which was the peak it had reached around 1980. Iraq has already surpassed Iran as an oil exporter and hopes to reach export levels of around 9 mbpd by 2020.⁹  The revival of the oil sector has been slow because of a dramatic brain drain during the post-2003 period and damage to infrastructure. 

Baghdad also has challenges getting its oil to market. The two major oil fields are in Kirkuk in the north and Rumaila in the south. Currently, most exports go south through the port of Basra to the Persian Gulf and out through the Straits of Hormuz. But Baghdad has a strategic interest in expanding and diversifying its oil export routes. It has plans to expand the Basra port to handle more output. This has brought some tension with Kuwait, which also has plans to expand its own nearby port. Additionally, Iraq would be the main loser from any closure of the Straits of Hormuz. 

Many of Iraq’s historical export routes have been shut down or badly damaged. Iraq had a pipeline that ran west to the ports of Banias in Syria and Tripoli in Lebanon, but that has been closed since the U.S. invasion. There were attempts to restart pumping during the previous decade, but any plan to pump oil west must now await the outcome of the war in Syria. Indeed, before the uprising, Assad’s Syria had been trying to position itself as an energy hub in the region, and part of the war for Syria by regional and international powers is a struggle for a strategic position on the energy map.

A pipeline that ran southeast to Saudi Arabia could have taken up to 1.5 mbpd of Iraqi oil to the Saudi Red Sea port of Yanbu, but it has been closed since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Relations between Riyadh and the Shia-led Baghdad government are poor, and there is little hope for that outlet being reopened unless they improve.

The Kirkuk–Ceyhan pipeline, which carries Iraqi oil north through Turkey to the Mediterranean, was delivering around 900,000 bpd in 2001, but sabotage and bombings, either in southeastern Turkey by militants from the separatist Turkish Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) or in northern Iraq by various Iraqi insurgent groups, have repeatedly interrupted that flow.¹⁰  A March 2013 deal between the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan promises a resumption of higher flows. This development would be especially welcomed by the Erbil government, which could then send most of its output north through Turkey by pipeline rather than transporting it by truck, a much more labor-intensive process it has used in previous years.¹¹  

In April 2013, Iraq and Jordan announced an $18 billion deal to establish a double pipeline running southwest to the Jordanian Red Sea port of Aqaba. This pipeline would transport both oil and natural gas, pumping 1 mbpd of oil and 258 million cubic feet of gas per day.¹²  

In addition to diversifying its export routes, Baghdad has sought to revitalize its energy sector by improving relations with major oil importers and corporations. One of the outcomes of the U.S. toppling of the Saddam regime was to open up the massive Iraqi oil market to private international (including American) oil companies for the first time since the nationalization of the Iraqi energy sector decades before. Oil giants, such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhilips, and energy service companies, including Halliburton, ended up with large contracts in post-Saddam Iraq. 

But the returns have not been as rewarding as these companies expected. The United States failed to get the Iraqi parliament to pass an energy law that it favored, and the contract conditions that have been offered by the Baghdad government—based not on profit sharing but on remuneration-per-barrel fees—have dampened enthusiasm. Many American and Western companies that had concluded large contracts with Baghdad found that the low payout being offered by the central government—of around $2 per barrel—did not justify the large investment and risk involved.

Erbil also disagreed with Baghdad’s post-Saddam management of the oil sector, and it has not abided by Baghdad’s decision that all oil contracts must be approved by the central government. As a result, the KRG has concluded dozens of contracts with international energy companies on its own.¹³  Many of these are the same companies disillusioned by Baghdad’s oil policies, including ExxonMobil, Total, and Statoil. They have sold or abandoned contracts with the central government and signed contracts under more lucrative terms with the KRG in the north. This strained Baghdad-Erbil relations over energy, but there appear to be signs of improvement. In December 2013, Iraqi Oil Minister Abdul Kareem al-Luaibi announced that the KRG had agreed to let the central government in Baghdad control the amount and quality of crude that Erbil exports through the Turkish pipeline and manage revenue from its sale.¹⁴ 

While major American and Western oil companies rushed into post-Saddam Iraq hoping to reap massive oil benefits, it is the Chinese who have ended up holding the lion’s share of plots and contracts. Chinese companies operate at much lower costs than their Western counterparts, and their entrance into Iraqi oil production is not so much driven by profit margins as by the necessity of securing China’s long-term energy needs. About 30 percent of Iraq’s production now comes from fields owned or operated by Chinese companies, and half of all exports go to Asia.¹⁵  Asian demand will only grow in the years ahead. 

In addition to oil, Iraq also has large natural gas reserves of around 6 trillion cubic meters, distributed fairly equally between the KRG and the rest of Iraq.¹⁶  This sector remains vastly underexploited. Iraq produces around 1,000 million cubic meters per day, but about 60 percent of gas from fields in the south is being burned off by flaring, while the KRG has a no-flaring policy. Furthermore, there are no pipelines or liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities to undertake major exports. Some of this gas is currently being used to meet a portion of the country’s electricity-generation needs. 

The main gas pipeline project is a planned one between Iran, Iraq, and Syria.¹⁷  This would enable Iraq to export gas west through Syria and would also bring online Iran’s rich South Pars gas field and open up access to European markets. The Iraq–Syria section of the project is on hold until the Syrian conflict comes to an end; Iran and Iraq have explored with Jordan the possibility of routing their section of this gas pipeline through Aqaba. 

The Iran–Iraq–Syria pipeline, in the long run, could also enable Iraq to pump gas east and hook up with proposed Iranian pipelines that would go from Iran to Pakistan and then to the vast markets of China and India directly. While the idea of a gas pipeline through Turkey has been broached, no concrete steps have been taken in that direction. The government in Baghdad has also commissioned feasibility studies for an LNG facility off its narrow southern shore for future consideration. 

Iraq’s present and future dependence on energy exports and its need for large and diversified export avenues, coupled with its largely landlocked geography, mean that a successful Iraqi foreign policy must seek diversified and good relations with multiple neighbors and international clients. 

The Geopolitics of Water

Iraq’s acute water needs also factor into its foreign policy. All of the country’s overland water flows into Iraq from its neighbors. Its main sources of water are the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, both of which originate in Turkey. The Euphrates flows through Syria before reaching Iraq, and some tributaries of the Tigris and other smaller rivers that irrigate parts of eastern Iraq originate in Iran. Unless Iraq maintains good relations with these neighbors, its already-low water levels could even go lower. 

Iraq has 1.9 million hectares of arable land. The birthplace of agriculture and once the breadbasket of the Middle East, the country is suffering from severely declining river inflows as well as several years of below-average rainfall. The declining river flows have several impacts: they dramatically reduce irrigation, increase the salinity of soil, and reduce hydropower input. Iraqi officials report that less than half of arable Iraqi land is under production—down from 100 percent in previous decades—and the land being used is producing inferior yields.¹⁸  Several towns in the south have been abandoned because water salinity has killed agriculture as well as farm animals. 

In the aftermath of the 2003 U.S. invasion, agricultural productivity decreased by 90 percent. Several factors—the workforce shifting toward state employment, a lack of government subsidization, and the lingering effects of long years of severe drought—took their toll on agriculture. From 2004 to 2010, Iraq witnessed its driest winters on record.¹⁹ 

Growing aridity and retreating plant cover have dramatically increased the frequency and intensity of sandstorms. The decline in agriculture has pushed hundreds of thousands of peasants, already ravaged by war and instability, into poverty or into the city slums, looking for work. The water decline has hit the southern marshlands particularly hard, drying them up and sending up to 300,000 marshland residents on the move to look for work or sustenance.²⁰  

Thus, as in other parts of the arid Middle East, tensions over scarce water resources remain one of Iraq’s main foreign policy concerns and flashpoints. The Maliki government has fail