In a National Interest piece titled Sorry, America: Iran Won’t Defeat ISIS for You, Andrew J. Bowen and J. Matthew McInnis write that, especially with the Iran nuclear deal negotiated, “Iran has been touted in Washington in some policy circles as the best partner in fighting ISIS.”
Potential common interests between Washington and Tehran—as well as Iran’s military capabilities—could make Tehran an effective ally in rolling back ISIS at a time when the United States is wary to commit to another ground war in the Middle East.
But, caution Bowen and McInnis, don’t get your hopes up. Iran may not be as committed to rolling back the Islamic State as the United States (professes to be, anyway). They write:
… Tehran’s strategy in Syria and Iraq has been focused more on containing and managing ISIS than defeating it. … In Syria, ISIS is seen as an effective tool in both weakening the U.S.- and [Gulf Cooperation Council]-backed opposition militias and buttressing the argument that President Assad is a most amenable alternative in Syria. Iraq, on the other hand, presents a difficult balancing act.
That is, as far as “managing ISIS as a security threat to Iran’s heartland and Iraq’s Shi’a communities.” Also: “avoiding empowering Sunni communities to such a degree that they could later pose a credible challenge to Iran’s influence in the Iraqi state.” I’m not quite sure what they mean by this since the Islamic State is Sunnis and would, needless to say, be dis-empowered if defeated (not gonna happen). I guess they mean that other, less ostensibly jihadist Sunni groups would, were the Islamic State somehow defeated, fill the vacuum. In any event, they write, “Tehran will prefer to keep Iraq unstable until its dominant influence is assured.”
The problem is, the authors write, “Iran’s endgames in Iraq and Syria are in complete contrast to the United States’ objectives.”
While Washington and Tehran may share a few common interests in weakening ISIS … [a] political solution in Syria or Iraq, which gives the United States and the GCC a further foothold in these states, would be an outcome that Iran would vigorously oppose.
In lieu of Iran’s cooperation against the Islamic State, what then? Bowen and McInnis write that
… the best partners in defeating ISIS are Sunni Arab states and communities. … Without a sustained buy-in from leading Sunni states on both the governmental level and on the civil-society level to counter ISIS’s ideology, the Islamic State will continue to be a feature in the region’s body politic.
Don’t know how that’s gonna help because many Sunnis tend see their governments as more oppressive than the Islamic State.