“Considering that the Islamic Republic of Iran has the overriding influence in Baghdad, not the U.S., it begs the question as to why the U.S. won’t arm the peshmerga Kurdish forces directly..”
I’m really getting fed up with naive policy experts. The reason the “U.S.” won’t arm the Kurds is because the “U.S.” is now close allies with Iran and want Iran to crush the Kurds and take their oil. Oh, the “U.S.” should read: International Oligarchs.
Bush picked Maliki(a Shia) to be leader but the sunni boycotted the election and started a civil war. Bush entered the civil war on the side of the shia and put down the sunni uprising.
Maliki promised Bush that he would share power and the oil revenue with the sunni and kurds but eventually purged both sunni and kurds from the govt and cut off oil revenue to both. But because of the new pipeline thru turkey to the Med, the kurds were able to get their oil to market and keep all the proceeds. The Iraqi sunni welcomed ISIS into Iraq.
Obama forced Maliki out of office and in the new govt sunni and kurds have ministerial positions, but the shia are dominate.
Some say that since the US broke Iraq, the US is obligated to fix it. Congress says Obama has the authority to deal with Iraq and Congress voted to give Obama authority to arm and train the sunni insurgents in Syria, but only the good insurgents and not the bad insurgents. Congress appropriated the money.
BTW, the reason the kurds are not being given weapons is because the kurds would use some of those against the Turkish govt.