EASTORA REPORT | After 23 years of American involvement in Iraq, one of Washington’s own envoys offered a blunt assessment: the United States had behaved like a guest who thought he owned the house.
“We were bad guests. We thought we were the hosts,” Tom Barrack said Wednesday, November 11, at Chatham House’s Iraq Initiative conference in London. The U.S. ambassador to Türkiye and special envoy for Iraq and Syria urged Americans to examine what they had done wrong. “Let Iraq be Iraq,” he said. “It sounds simple. We’ve never abided by it.”
Barrack portrayed the next phase of U.S. engagement as something different from control. “No longer do we want to control, no longer do we want to own,” he said. “We want to tend, we want to help.” Washington, he added, could not remain the Middle East’s sole security guarantor as regional governments formed new alignments.
The war with Iran has made that transition more urgent. Barrack described the Strait of Hormuz as an instrument of “hostage-taking” and said governments were searching for an “insurance policy” against disruptions to vital oil shipments. He identified Iraq, Türkiye and Syria as central to developing alternative transport and energy routes.
He also urged Baghdad to think bigger about its own oil industry, suggesting a production goal of 10 million barrels a day and new pipelines backed by foreign investors. But he argued that Iraq’s own bureaucracy and uncertain rule of law were obstacles to attracting that investment.
The envoy briefly turned to American politics, welcoming the Democrats’ midterm gains. A “blue wave” under a Republican president was “not a bad thing,” he said. “That’s a good thing”—a message from voters that Washington should hear.
His most striking proposal concerned Iran. Iraq, he argued, should keep its trade and religious ties with Tehran rather than become its enemy, even as Washington maintains sanctions and a naval blockade. Baghdad could use those relationships to open a door the United States cannot easily open itself. “You don’t have to be an adversary to Iran,” Barrack said. “You can be the magic key that open