Low-Profile US-Iraq Pact Sparks Big Worries

The US is pressuring Iraq to sign off on a long-term security agreement that looks unfortunately similar to a disastrous 1930 pact between Iraq and Britain, and the new pact "could haunt Washington’s relations with Baghdad for years to come," historian and journalist Karl E. Meyer writes in the New York Times.

Details of the undisclosed pact—"not formally a treaty (having been carefully crafted to avoid the requirement of Senate ratification)"—have leaked, and are causing deja vu in some circles. The 1930 deal led to a deal with the Nazis and a pogrom and "was followed by Iraqi independence," Meyer cautions, "and then more than a score of coups, countercoups, massacres, and rebellions." (More Iraq stories.)