The country condemned to ‘financial execution’ in Trump’s war |
Surprisingly, the outside world has yet to take on board that the fragile stabilisation achieved by Iraq in the wake of the 15 years of devastating wars following the US-led invasion of 2003 is unravelling fast under multiple pressures.
Indeed, Iraq is the country most seriously damaged by the US and Israeli war on Iran because its economy and political stability are both more vulnerable than elsewhere in the Gulf.
It is once again becoming a war zone as drones or missiles fired by Iran or local pro-Iranian paramilitaries hit Baghdad International Airport, the US embassy and US bases. The US and Israel carry out air strikes on paramilitary targets while Saudi Arabia and Kuwait say they are being targeted by drones fired from inside Iraq. Two tankers in Iraqi waters were set on fire in the northern Gulf by a boat-borne unit from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who filmed the vessels exploding into flame.
Similar military actions take place every day in other Arab Gulf states, but Iraq is weaker than the rest because its large population of 46 million were wholly reliant on revenue from its oil exports of 3.3 million barrels a day – now abruptly halted by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Unlike Saudi Arabia and other vastly wealthy Gulf oil producers, Iraq has limited financial reserves to fall back on. “The government was already living hand to mouth,” a former Iraqi financial official told me.
Its monthly earnings from oil were less than expenditure, mostly spent on the nine million Iraqis receiving government salaries,........