Iraq’s efforts to broker a reconciliation agreement between Syria and Turkey could bring Iran closer to its long-term goal of expelling US troops from northeast Syria, but with the Middle East on fire from the war in Gaza, senior US officials are shrugging off the prospect, said a report by the Middle East Eye (MEE) English website.
According to the British website, US officials paid lip service to the topic during their meetings with Iraq’s Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein in Washington earlier this month, two former US officials and one current Arab official told MEE.
“Iraq told the US before it started this process that it was working on a reconciliation agreement,” the Arab official told MEE. “The US has been indifferent”.
While Washington continues to officially oppose its partners normalizing with Damascus, it has all but given up actively enforcing the policy.
In May, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was in Bahrain to attend his second Arab League summit since his debut reappearance at the summit in Saudi Arabia in 2023. Last week, Syria and Saudi Arabia resumed direct flights, expanding connections Damascus already has in the Gulf beyond the UAE.
If successful, Baghdad’s bid to achieve a reconciliation deal between Turkey and Syria could be more impactful for the US, analysts say, because of the US military presence in northeast Syria.
Syria's decade-long foreign-backed war ended with the legitimate Syrian government controlling about two-thirds of Syria. The occupied region of northeast Syria which is controlled by the US-backed Syrian Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) led by the Kurdish militia group known as the YPG constitutes the other roughly one-third.
Driving the US out of the northeast is a long-term goal of President Bashar Assad's government, Russia and Iran, the MEE report concluded.
MNA