Iran’s Role in the Fight against Islamic State: Not a Help But a Hindrance

In line with current U.S. policy (see Michael Doran), Washington is quietly cooperating with Tehran in the war against Islamic State (IS). But, argue Michael Weiss and Michael Pregent, Iran bears much responsibility for the rise of IS, having worked for a decade to undermine stability in Iraq by attacking American troops and Sunni Muslims, thus driving the latter into IS’s arms. If Tehran is now interested in fighting Islamic State, it is only in order to turn both Iraq and Syria into a giant fiefdom, and the Iraqi military into a proxy like Hizballah: