As U.S.-Iran Conflict Builds Across Mideast, Iraq Is Caught in Middle

BAGHDAD — When Iraq’s prime minister traveled to Washington in the spring, he hoped to negotiate a much-needed economic development package and discuss shared strategic interests with the United States, one of his country’s most important international allies.

But the very day he arrived in mid-April, events unfolding at home served as a stark reminder of the competing influences that Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, is caught between: Iran was sending drones and missiles to attack Israel and at least one Iraqi militia backed by Iran participated in the attack.

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Both the United States and Iran have long held sway in Iraq. But since the war between U.S. ally Israel and Iran-backed Hamas broke out in the Gaza Strip almost 10 months ago, they are increasingly at odds.

With regards to Iraq, one of the most contentious issues is the continued presence of 2,500 U.S. troops on Iraqi soil. Over the past 20 months, Iran has used its considerable influence to try to persuade the Iraqis to push those forces out, and if it succeeds, it would give Iran even more say over Iraqi policies.

Last week, in the latest round of discussions in Washington on a reconfiguration of the military relationship, Iraq called for a drawdown of the U.S.-led multinational force within about a year, underscoring its determination to thin out the U.S. presence.

Iran’s clout in Iraq has grown in the past few years as Iraqi Shiite political factions close to Iran have come to dominate the national government. At the same time, the Iraqi militias that Iran has cultivated over the past 20 years have come to form a growing part of the national security forces since they were folded in a few years ago.

The militias form part of Iran’s network of proxy forces in the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. The war in Gaza has escalated tensions regionally, and the American, British and Israeli governments have all noted that Iraqi proxies of Iran joined in the April attack on Israel — in defiance of demands by al-Sudani to stay out of the conflict.

Most recently, a rocket from Lebanon on Saturday killed at least 12 children and teenagers in an Israeli-controlled town in the Golan Heights. The United States and Israel blamed Hezbollah, but the group denied responsibility.

Even before the Iraqi militias participated in the attack on Israel, a senior member of Iraq’s security forces, Abdulaziz al-Mohammadawi, made no attempt to hide his allegiance to Iran.

Israeli warplanes hit an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria in April, preceding the Iranian attack on Israel. After the Israeli strike, al-Mohammadawi said the forces he oversees were awaiting orders from Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while making no mention of Iraq’s prime minister.

Al-Mohammadawi is the chief of staff of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella organization for militias that now encompasses more than 170,000 fighters, including a number of brigades backed by Iran. His announcement suggested that at least some Iraqi forces were ready to attack Israel on Iran’s behalf — a startling proclamation from such a senior Iraqi security official.

Publicly, the Iraqi prime minister said nothing, perhaps suggesting his reluctance to openly confront those closest to Iran.

Iran’s goal is clear, said Sajad Jiyad, an Iraqi analyst and fellow at Century International, a research and policy nonprofit in New York.

“The Iranians always say: ‘This is our region. America doesn’t live here. America is on the other side of the world. What’s it doing here?’”

Still, Iraq is the last Middle Eastern country where there has been something of a balance between Iranian and U.S. interests for many years now. At times, those interests have even converged, for example when both powers supported Iraq’s military offensive to expel the Islamic State terror group.

As prime minister, al-Sudani has often managed to finesse competing U.S. and Iranian demands. But whether to allow U.S. troops to remain on Iraqi soil is one of the thorniest dilemmas he faces.

In addition to some 2,500 U.S. forces in Iraq, 900 more, most of them Special Operations forces fighting in Syria, are supported by the U.S. contingent in Iraq and pass through Iraq regularly for resupply and training. Those in Syria are fighting alongside Syrian Kurdish forces in an attempt to keep remnants of the Islamic State in check.

U.S. forces have been on the ground in Iraq off and on since the 2003 invasion that ousted longtime dictator Saddam Hussein. They withdrew completely in 2011. But after the Islamic State invaded Iraq in 2014 and took control of much of the country’s north, the Iraqi government asked the U.S. military to return.

A U.S. troop withdrawal would amplify Iran’s influence over Iraqi foreign policy — much in the way that Iran influences Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, the other Middle Eastern countries where it has cultivated powerful proxy forces — according to Urban Coningham, a Middle East research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

In some of these cases, the armed groups that Iran fostered in those countries are now so strong they effectively control the governments, making them important vessels for Iran to project its anti-Western agenda across the Middle East.

But Iraq is different.

For one, the United States has had a far greater stake in the country and still wields considerable leverage there, in part because many Iraqis — inside and outside the government — have welcomed it as a counterweight to Iran. But since Iraqi Shiite parties close to Iran gained the greatest share of power after the 2021 parliamentary elections, demands for a speedy drawdown of U.S. forces have moved front and center.

The prime minister and his advisers have tried to take a nuanced position. They are hoping for a reconfiguration that guarantees some continued U.S. military involvement, supplies of much-needed equipment and ongoing training. It would entail some troop withdrawals, which they could present as a drawdown to satisfy the demands of the pro-Iran political factions.

However, Iran is pressing hard for all U.S. troops to leave as soon as possible. Iraqi political leaders close to Iran are backing that position.

Mahmoud Al-Rubaie, a longtime strategist for Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, one of the most influential of the Iraqi political parties close to Iran, said the U.S. image in Iraq had worsened since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of the country.

“The generation of 2003 had hopes and dreams that the U.S. would change the reality of the country,” he said. But as the U.S. troop presence stretched out over the years, the Iraqi people did not see the transformation they had hoped for, he added.

Those views hardened — especially among the country’s Shiite Muslim majority — in 2020 after the U.S. assassination of a top Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani, in Baghdad, said Al-Rubaie.

Soleimani headed the Quds Force, the overseas arms of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard. He was the architect of Iran’s regional network of proxy forces, including some of the Shiite militias in Iraq, which he helped to recruit, train and initially finance.

Jiyad of Century International said one of Iraq’s major weaknesses “is that we do not have a cohesive government or cohesive policies and so that makes our country reactive to outside influence.”

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