Tillerson achieves diplomatic breakthrough

The visit by Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Al-Abadi to Saudi Arabia on Sunday to inaugurate the Saudi-Iraq Coordination Council was not only a breakthrough in the historically fraught relationship between the two neighbors, but also a diplomatic victory for the United States.
During his meeting with King Salman — the second this year — Al-Abadi stressed the importance of focusing on combating terrorism. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also attended the inauguration of the SICC, where he emphasized the importance of enhanced Saudi-Iraqi collaboration to thwart Iran’s regional agenda.
Tillerson also held preliminary meetings with his Saudi counterpart, Adel Al-Jubeir, before holding bilateral talks with King Salman, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, deputy premier and minister of defense, and Al-Abadi.
The timing of the historic meeting, which took place at Riyadh’s Al-Yamamah Palace, was also significant, as it came only days after the US-led coalition to defeat Daesh had liberated the Syrian city of Raqqa, the terrorist group’s self-proclaimed capital, from its final batch of extremists.
That the Kingdom may play a larger role in the reconstruction of territory liberated from Daesh in Iraq and Syria was evident when Saudi Gulf Affairs Minister Thamer Al-Sabhan accompanied US Presidential Envoy Brett McGurk, who is responsible for overseeing the international coalition, on a visit to Raqqa on Tuesday last week to survey the damage and meet with local leaders.
But, in conjunction with defeating Daesh, Washington is executing what appears to be a two-pronged strategy that focuses on the reconstruction of territory liberated from the terrorist group, while at the same time seeking to ensure Iraq does not evolve into an Iranian vassal state built on Lebanon’s Hezbollah model. Towards that end, Washington’s first priority is to preserve the gains achieved against Daesh by ensuring that hostilities between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the central government in Baghdad do not break out.
A potential civil war could erupt over the failure to reach a political settlement on contentious issues ranging from how to manage dwindling Iraqi energy resources to whether the Kurds should withdraw from territory captured during the war against Daesh. But the inauguration of the SICC could potentially be a game-changer for regional security. This is because it provides Riyadh with a bilateral forum where it can apply pressure on both Irbil and Baghdad to work out internal differences.
By helping to narrow Irbil-Baghdad differences, it is strengthening Iraq’s independence at the expense of Tehran.

US secretary of state's visit ensures Saudi-Iraqi collaboration will help thwart Iran’s regional agenda in light of significant defeat of Daesh in Raqqa.

Sigurd Neubauer

However, Washington too must have realistic expectations on how to deal with Tehran’s influence over Iraqi politics. In order to achieve the strategic objective of preserving Iraq’s sovereignty and independence, a natural first step would likely require establishing a donor conference, possibly somewhere in the Gulf, to raise funds for United Nations agencies to help provide funding for reconstruction efforts in Iraq and for humanitarian relief for the millions of internally displaced Iraqis.
The immediate priority, however, is to ensure that tensions between Irbil and Baghdad have been reduced to a minimum.
Towards that end, the inauguration of the SICC was not only about establishing a mechanism for strengthening the Saudi-Iraqi relationship but also about how to provide Baghdad with an alternative to balance its fragile relationship with Tehran. 
Given that the SICC summit was about the high stakes for Iraq’s future, it was not surprising that no breakthrough in the Gulf Cooperation Council crisis was achieved during Tillerson’s visit to Riyadh.
It is clear from US President Donald Trump’s meeting with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September, that Washington considers the Gulf crisis harmful to its regional agenda. It was also clear from Tillerson’s meetings that the primary focus this time was to strengthen the trilateral US-Saudi-Iraqi relationship as part of a strategy to roll back Tehran’s regional agenda, with discussions on how to resolve the GCC crisis only secondary.
From a US perspective, Iran is the only entity to benefit from the GCC crisis. But Washington remains optimistic that the dispute will ultimately be resolved, given the strategic opportunity to strengthen the Iraqi-Saudi relationship along with a unified regional bloc consisting of the GCC, Egypt and Jordan to counter Iran’s quest for regional domination.
All considered, Tillerson’s visit to Riyadh was a clear US foreign policy success, even if a breakthrough of the Gulf dispute was not achieved this time.
• Sigurd Neubauer is a Middle East analyst and columnist based in Washington. Twitter: @SigiMideast