A ‘war within a war’ is brewing in Iraq – and the US is caught in the middle

Washington has again found itself in the middle of a fast-escalating conflict between two of its most important partners in the fight against ISIS.

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The back-and-forth makes it seem as though the agreement announced by Carter “is tenuous at best,” said Aykan Erdemir, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former member of Turkish parliament.

“Washington could succeed in lowering Iraqi-Turkish tension, but it might prove more challenging for the US to find a modus vivendi for Turkey's military involvement in the Mosul operation,” Erdemir said. “There is a clear sectarian angle to the ongoing Ankara-Baghdad polemic, and there is little that the US could do in the short run to alleviate that.”

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