A New Year, a New Threat to Peace and Stability

Sheri Laizer | Exclusive to iKurd.net

US assassinations of Qassem Soleimani, Kata’Ib Hezbollah Leader, Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes and PMF media spokesman, Mohamed Ridha Jabri

The Iranian regime has gained control of a vast region stretching from Tehran through Baghdad to Damascus and Beirut right to the borders of Israel – largely owing to the poor judgement of the West.

Qassem Soleimani and PMF spokesman, Mohamed Ridha Jabri, had just landed at Baghdad International Airport on a return flight from Damascus this morning. Soleimani is reported to have been angered by the anti-Iran, anti-government corruption demonstrations ongoing in Iraq and planned to crush them. He was joined by pro-Iran, Kata’ib Hezbollah leader, Abu Ali al-Muhandis, and the chief mouthpiece of the Shi’a Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), who was also killed with two others still to be identified.

After US forces struck three bases of Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH) in Iraq and two in Syria on 30 December including the group’s HQ at al-Qaim killing at least four commanders and numerous combatants 1, pro-militia masses swarmed the US Embassy in Baghdad on New Year’s Day, waving PMF banners and the flags of Kata’ib Hezbollah, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, the Badr Organisation and Moqtada al-Sadr’s Saraya al-Salam, shouting the customary pro-Iranian anti-US slogans, burning the American flag (as has long been seen in Iran) and destroying any target in their path. These were not the same protesters that have been out in the streets since October seeking positive change and an end to corruption at gun point and blinded by tear gas and injured from the shrapnel emitted by exploding sound bombs.

The lethal force unleashed against those protestors since October by the Iraqi Security Forces, the militia, and Iranian snipers has left more than 500 people dead and more than 19,000 wounded as of December. 2 The highly inflamed outrage expressed has been met with the same kind of extreme and systematic force as Tehran deployed against the Green Movement at home. No clerical or Quds Force ear is likely to be prepared to listen or give any ground to the groundswell of rising opposition in Iraq any more than it is in Iran.

The US should have seen the writing on the wall when Kirkuk fell to Iraq and the militia in October 2017: Qassem Soleimani played an integral part in that operation. KH had also threatened to take control of the Kurdish region.

Kata’ib Hezbollah’s attack on the K1 base outside Kirkuk in fact triggered the US military response seen ever since. Its attack on the K1 base led to the deaths of a US civilian contractor, four US servicemen and two Iraqi Security Forces personnel. KH’s aggressive presence in Kirkuk was fresh evidence if any were needed of the Iran-backed militias’ sway in the north of Iraq – and not just the capital – since having wrested control of Kirkuk from the Kurdish administration on 16 October 2017 along with the bulk of Kirkuk’s oil production. 3

Iran’s aim of running Iraq has appeared ever closer to realization since the parliamentary elections of May 2018.

Iran’s armed proxies in Iraq, including those in KH, have followed in the well-tried steps of Iranian proxy, Hezbollah, in Lebanon. Moving from an armed group to key player in the Lebanese political scene, Hezbollah achieved increased power and ‘legitimacy’ through running for election. Pro-Iran leaders in Iraq’s PMF have similarly moved into centre stage in Baghdad through the period of the most recent elections after ISIS was unseated from its physical ‘caliphate’. Iraq has been pushed with increasing firmness into the clutches of the clerics and their armed proxies.

After Ibrahim al-Jaafari became Minister of Foreign Affairs and headed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), Sunnis in general were further disenfranchised from government and diplomatic positions and support for the militia was intensified on a formal level. 4

Iran controls Iraq’s Diplomatic Missions

Iraq’s diplomatic service was also increasingly infiltrated by pro-Iran personnel that insisted upon Embassy and Consulate staff giving up a portion of their salaries to finance the Shi’a militia as well as a portion of Consulate budgets – disagreement, complaint or expressing opposition to the legitimization of the militia would lead to dismissal. This demand was also imposed on other Iraqi state employees.

The word ‘militia’ was also prohibited from use in official terminology. Details of any Iraqi nationals attending Iraqi Embassies to obtain travel and identity documents or avail themselves of other consular services were to be relayed to the Iraqi Intelligence Service, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Interior. The attendees’ full family details would then be collated with family members still living in Iraq who were then subjected to scrutiny. The Iraqi Intelligence Service became dominated by Shi’a functionaries that largely ascribed to Iranian policy for Iraq.

Human rights organization personnel were also to be denied visas to visit and carry out monitoring in Iraq because they had published findings that were critical of the Shi’a militia and accused them jointly and severally of human rights abuses and war crimes.

Iranian Ambassadors to Iraq, Lebanon and Syria were also to be appointed from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard elite and not from the Iranian Foreign Ministry in an echo of the policy implemented in Iraqi Embassies. In both cases, pro-militia personnel were increasingly appointed to key posts, including in the UK.

The Case of the leaked Iranian Intelligence Documents: Iran to Control Iraq

As Baria Alamuddin opined in Arab News in November, more than 700 pages of sensitive documents written during the conflict against ISIS [5] leaked from the Iranian Intelligence Service (mainly written by spies from the Ministry of Intelligence of the Islamic Republic, MOIS) showed that almost every Iraqi leader is in “Tehran’s pocket” in one way or another, observing, “Iraqi leaders were effectively acting as Iranian intelligence sources, allowing Soleimani to be briefed in real time about thousands of meetings with US and Western officials.

Nechirvan Barzani, while prime minister of Kurdistan, immediately debriefed Iranian intelligence following meetings with foreign diplomats. Iranian agents were planted in former Parliament Speaker Salim Al-Jabouri’s office, reporting everything that happened…When American forces departed Iraq in 2011, they left former Iraqi intelligence sources unemployed and destitute. Iran bought off dozens of these sources, who provided sensitive information about US activities in the region, including details of safe houses and the names of other Iraqis who had spied for the Americans. This also allowed for the penetration of intelligence-gathering equipment that the US had provided to the Iraqi government; including a secret system for eavesdropping on mobile phones run out of the prime minister’s office…6

Iraq had become Iran’s client state. The NY Times also observed of the leaked Iranian Intelligence documents written by MOIS agents deployed inside Iraq during the war against ISIS: “The unprecedented leak exposes Tehran’s vast influence in Iraq, detailing years of painstaking work by Iranian spies to co-opt the country’s leaders, pay Iraqi agents working for the Americans to switch sides and infiltrate every aspect of Iraq’s political, economic and religious life.”7

The End of Qassem Soleimani

Qassem Soleimani has paid the price for his militancy in Iraq and many Iraqis are celebrating his demise – whatever may come next! All that can safely be said is that this architect of militant Islam can no longer dictate Iranian policy in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, travelling freely between them at first hand.

The writing is also on the wall for the Iraqi government and Adel Abu Mahdi, already relegated to caretaker PM by the anti-corruption movement – named in the leaked cables as having a “special relationship” with Iran while Saddam Hussein was still in power. Incidentally, Abu Mahdi was one of the few figures present at Saddam Hussein’s execution.

The US made a grave miscalculation in the planning of the occupation of Iraq, believing reliable ties were being formed with Shi’a opposition organisations like the Dawa Party and SCIRI, in taking down Saddam, only to replace him with the tentacles of the clerics in Tehran. Abu Ali al-Muhandis was formerly with Dawa and SCIRI before joining the Badr forces to fight against Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war and on into the 1990s. The US led war permitted his return to Iraq in 2003.

Iraqi PMs, Nouri al-Maliki, Haider al-Abadi and Abu-Mahdi have all successively served Iranian interests in Iraq. [8] These men have the blood of many hundreds of thousands of Sunnis, Yazidis, Kurds and Coalition forces on their hands and are directly responsible for the destruction of Sunni cities and Iraq’s ancient heritage in paving the way for the rise of ISIS.

After US forces destroyed the Ba’ath regime, Iraqi Army and Air Force, many of Iran’s most senior intelligence personnel were swiftly relocated to Baghdad – and there they have remained. They have also enjoyed a free pass to operate unchallenged in Kurdistan despite their clearly stated mandate to both challenge and obstruct Kurdistan’s independence – by force if necessary.

In Shi’a-majority southern Iraq and central Iraq, Iran’s interference in Iraq has proved increasingly unpopular, with the Iranian Consulate attacked by anti-government protesters in Najaf in November 9 and hundreds of anti-government protestors killed by Iraqi security forces there and in Karbala, Hilla, Babil, Wasit, Muthanna, Dhi Qar, Maysan, Samawa, Nasiriyah, Diwaniyah, and Basra.10 The fightback has begun.

Many Iraqis long to see the backs of both the Americans and the Iranians after almost seventeen years of internal strife since occupation and almost forty years of conditions of war, duplicitous sanctions and military destruction in the guise of bringing democracy.

But not so the Kurds of Iraq –if the US should abandon them – as it did their brothers in NW Syria (Rojava) in October – Turkey will further capitalize on administrative weaknesses and instability in the region – but that is another story.

For a stable Iraq, the Shi’a militia need to be dismantled – their purpose has ended – a professional army, and security services whose arms are not turned on the public should be responsible for enforcing the law based on a secular regime. To achieve that, the deeply- flawed Iraqi Constitution requires re-writing in a form that fully separates the state from religion.

Related posts:

Iraq in the Shadow of Khomeinism – Part I: Baghdad And Erbil Under Threat Iran’s Attack on Erbil and Its Multiple Messages to Iraqi and International Parties Iran’s Grip on Kirkuk Could Iran-US deal spell trouble for the Kurds? Iraq in the Shadow of Khomeinism – Part II: Iran’s Proxies Parade Their Power Over Iraq Iraq in the Shadow of Khomeinism – Part III: Iraq is NOT Iran! Iraq Under The ‘Resistance’ Muqawama Militias Iran-Loyal Terror Leaders Running Iraq