Iraq/Kurdistan: Kurdish Oil and US Leverage in Iraq

Sep 9, 2014 | Jim Krane and Ted Loch-Temzelides, Forbes
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HOUSTON _ As the Obama Administration ratchets up its confrontation with radical Islamists in Iraq, an idled tanker loaded with Kurdish oil off the Texas coast may provide a bargaining chip for enhancing US influence in Iraq.

The US has been seeking to persuade Iraq’s Shia Muslim-dominated government to open itself to more inclusion, especially by the minority Sunni Arab population. Bringing beleaguered Iraqi Sunnis into the Baghdad power structure is seen as a way to diminish the appeal of the Sunni extremist group known as Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, which is bent on establishing an Islamic state.