WAR WITHIN A WAR: With the Islamic State on its last legs in Iraq, the central government in Baghdad wants to restore the pre-ISIS status quo around the oil-rich region of Kirkuk, an area where Kurdish Peshmerga forces pushed ISIS out in 2014 and extended its control to the south. Now the government of Haider al-Abadi wants the territory back, in particular Kurdish-held oil fields. That puts the U.S. squarely in the middle of its two allies in the war against ISIS, which is not over yet. Over the weekend U.S. troops straddling both sides of the battlelines were working to defuse the situation, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Friday. “The Americans around Kirkuk, in other words – on the Kurdish side and on the Iraqi military side – they’re all working to defuse this to calm it down.”
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But this morning the AP quotes a Kurdish commander as saying Iraqi government troops have seized an oil and gas company and other industrial areas south of Kirkuk and the Kurdistan Region Security Council issued a statement claiming to have destroyed at least five U.S.-supplied Humvees following what it called the “unprovoked attack” south of the city. Mattis blamed the tension in part on last month’s referendum in which 93 percent of Kurdish voters expressed a desire for independence from Iraq. “We thought the referendum was an ill-timed political event, and that it could distract from the combined effort against ISIS,” Mattis told reporters traveling with him Friday. “We’re trying to tone everything down. Let’s figure out how we go forward without losing our sight on the enemy, at the same time recognizing that we’ve got to find a way to move forward.”
FINAL PUSH IN RAQQA: American-backed forces began a final assault against the Islamic State in Syria’s Raqqa on Sunday, as the terrorist group continues to lose its grip on its self-declared capital city. The Syrian Democratic Forces, an American-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters, allowed a convoy of ISIS fighters to surrender and leave the city, leaving around 100 militants left inside a small part of Raqqa. “The battle will continue until the whole city is clean,” the Syrian Democratic Forces said in a statement.
U.S. WELCOME TO ISIS SURRENDER: Despite the stated goal of the anti-ISIS strategy to “annihilate” the enemy, Mattis says now they know they’re lost, they still have the option to give up and live. “If they surrender, we of course accept their surrender. They’re the ones who murder people. We’re the good guys, Mattis said. It’s not the U.S. that’s foreclosing that option. “Some are trying to surrender, and some amongst them — more fanatical ones aren’t allowing them to.”
‘VERY NEAR THE GOAL LINE’: Our magazine features an interview with Air Force Brig. Gen. Andrew Croft, the deputy commanding general of the Air, Combined Joint Forces Land Component Command for Operation Inherent Resolve in Baghdad. From his vantage point, he argues the fatal blow was dealt to ISIS in the months-long Mosul campaign, and the outcome has been a foregone conclusion since then. “It’s one step closer to the defeat of ISIS. It’s taken us very near the goal line,” Croft said. “The defeat of ISIS in Hawija was accomplished more quickly than we had anticipated, which I think tells you that the capability and capacity of the Iraqi Security Forces continues to increase, as does their momentum and confidence in the fight against ISIS.”
MOGADISHU’s DEADLY REMINDER: This morning’s reports of out Somalia are another grim reminder that even as terrorists are crushed in one part of the world, they strike in others. The back-to-back truck bombings on a crowded street in the Somali capital of Mogadishu Saturday has reportedly killed more than 300 people, the deadliest attack since the the height of the war in the early 1990s. There’s been no claim of responsibility but Mogadishu is a favorite target of the al-Shabab extremist group.
Somalia, like Niger, is another area where the U.S. has been quietly aiding local forces in fighting extremists, often linked to al Qaeda or ISIS. Talking to reporters at the Pentagon late Friday, Mattis said as terrorists are defeated in Iraq and Syria, they move to other places. “If you’ve ever taken a snowball and shattered it in your fingers and you watch the snow spread out, I would liken it to something like that,” Mattis said. “You can compact them and compact them, and eventually it shatters.” Mattis was talking specifically about Niger, where U.S. troops were ambushed by fighters believed to be affiliated with ISIS.
THE DEAL WITH THE DEAL: Both Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson insisted that President Trump’s Friday announcement was not tantamount to killing the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. “I am directing my administration to work closely with Congress and our allies to address the deal’s many serious flaws,” Trump said, citing sunset clauses and “insufficient enforcement.” Trump has charged Congress with fixing the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, which is separate from the agreement, and requires the president to recertify the deal every 90 days. “In the event we are not able to reach a solution, working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated. It is under continuous review, and our participation can be canceled by me, as president, at any time.”
In speaking with reporters, Mattis brushed aside Iranian protests that the U.S. was reneging on an international agreement. “We didn’t walk away from the JCPOA. We are working on a U.S. law that’s an internal sovereign issue,” Mattis said. “I think they would come out against us if we breath today.” Asked about his previous statements that Iran was in compliance and that the president should consider sticking with the deal, Mattis said he gives his advice in private to Trump, and that he stands by the Iran strategy as announced by the president Friday.
Tillerson, who admitted Friday the U.S. does “not dispute that they’re under technical compliance,” also argued the ultimate goal is to improve the deal, not get out of it. “The president has said, look, we’re going to decertify under the Iranian Review Act — this is a domestic law. It’s not a decertification under the nuclear agreement that involves the multilateral parties,” Tillerson said on CBS yesterday. “Everyone acknowledges there are serious flaws. And so he would like to get the Congress to give us their sense of this issue, so we have a strong voice, a strong, unified voice once and for all, representing the American position, which then allows us to engage with friends and allies and other signatories around, how do we address these gaps and these flaws in this nuclear agreement.”
Mattis said his next move is to talk to those allies about their perception of Iran’s misbehavior. “Just think of nuclear on one hand, and think of everything else on the other,” Mattis said. “I want to go talk about the everything else.” Meanwhile, the Pentagon put out statement Friday saying it is developing new ways to contain Iran and pressure it to stop supporting terrorism as part of the new Iran strategy. “We are identifying new areas where we will work with allies to put pressure on the Iranian regime, neutralize its destabilizing influences, and constrain its aggressive power projection, particularly its support for terrorist groups and militants,” Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway said in an email statement.
READ MY LIPS: IT DIDN’T HAPPEN: Back at the Pentagon after a three-day trip to CENTCOM, SOCOM and SOUTHCOM, and admitting he was a little sleep-deprived, Mattis did another one of his impromptu drop-ins on the Pentagon press corps late Friday afternoon. With some freshly pressed dress shirts from the Pentagon dry cleaners slung over his shoulder, and carrying a bag of energy drinks, Mattis spent about 20 minutes chatting on the record, but off camera, with reporters.
He tried to say in every way he could that the NBC report he disputed in a statement last week, was dead wrong. And that when he first saw the report, which alleged Trump expressed a desire for a tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during a Pentagon meeting in July, he thought his staff had slipped him a joke news item to inject a little “light-heartedness in a rather grim job.”
“There was no discussion with that tone or that content that I recall in the Pentagon or at any other time,” Mattis said. “I will even remove that I recall. I think I would recall a conversation about doubling or ten times the nukes, OK. I’ve never had that discussion.” When one reporter suggested he was not being “emphatic,” Mattis bristled. “Let me say it again. I have never had a discussion of that tone or content, with the president of the United States in the tank or anywhere else. Now how much more clear do I have to be?”
And as for the report that Tillerson called the president a “moron” after the meeting in the secure Pentagon briefing room known as the Tank, Mattis was equally as emphatic. “I was right there. And so anyone who said that he said, that he called someone a ‘moron,” I was there with him the whole way. So that never happened.”
On a lighter note, when CNN’s Barbara Starr politely suggested Mattis lighten his load by putting down his energy drinks, Mattis demurred. “This is not a problem. I can actually walk and chew gum at the same time,” he said. “I’m high quality.”