The latest U.S. airstrikes on Iranian-backed Iraqi militias highlight Iran’s growing influence on its Arab neighbor.
While Prime Minister Mustafa al Kadhimi was long an American ally, even he seems to be pivoting toward Tehran. The Defense Ministry, over which Kadhimi wields a tight grip, took the unprecedented step of condemning the U.S. action, even as Iraqis remain increasingly silent about drone and rocket attacks on their territory. That is to say, attacks launched by militias operating under the command and control or supervision of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Last year, Kadhimi moved to arrest Shi’ite militiamen targeting Americans. Today, Kadhimi attends a parade honoring some of the more problematic groups.
In Iraq, politicians are more barometers of power politics than men of principle. Kadhimi has long complained about U.S. failure to have his back. But the prime minister has ambition and, against the backdrop of the U.S. withdrawal under fire from Afghanistan and a likely Taliban victory, he realizes his political future, however delusional his assessment might be, requires making amends with Iran.
While politicians cynically might cut their deals with Tehran, it would be wrong to believe that Iran will ever win Iraqi hearts and minds. Put aside centuries-old historic and ethnic baggage, and consider only recent history. The Iran-Iraq War is a relatively fresh memory, with scars rubbed raw by Iran’s post-2003 assassination campaign against Iraqi Air Force veterans. While Iraqi Shi’ites might have despised Saddam Hussein, many also dislike the Iranian regime for its efforts to monopolize and dictate Shi’ite practice. The bulk of Saddam’s conscript army was Shi’ite, and these Iraqis fought for patriotic reasons rather than love of their dictator; they did not defect en masse out of sectarian solidarity.
While many of Iraq’s Iran-backed militias (as distinct from militias that arose upon Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani’s call to defeat the Islamic State) embrace religious imagery, this does not absolve them in Iraqi eyes for their criminality. When protests erupted 20 months ago against government corruption and incompetence, it was Iranian-backed groups who fired on gathered crowds. Among the chief complaints Iraqis have toward Kadhimi is that he has failed in his duty to hold those murderers to account.
The reasons Iraqis have to resent Iran go well beyond religion. While many Iraqis are devout, for others, the effect of Shi’ism in their daily lives is primarily cultural: They might fastidiously commemorate Ashura (which recalls the execution of a Shia martyr), but that will not stop them from having a whiskey or watching bootlegged Hollywood film in the confines of their own home. Americans who fought in Karbala 15 years ago would not recognize the city today: Outside the pious atmosphere of the central shrines are fancy coffee shops and restaurants alongside virtual reality arcades. Rather, many Iraqis resent Iran for its arrogance and its predatory stance toward the Iraqi economy: Iranian firms, many owned by the Revolutionary Guards, flood Iraq with cheap, substandard goods, thereby undercutting Iraqi manufacturing.
The last few days have reminded any Iraqi forgetful about Iranian disdain toward them about the true character of the neighboring regime. The summer might be young, but it is already brutal. Temperatures in Basra already top 120 degrees. But against the backdrop of Iran’s own hydroelectric generating shortfall and out-of-control cryptocurrency mining, Iran has cut electricity exports to Iraq. Iran’s rhetoric about fighting the American enemy ring hollow as Iraqi Shi’ites broil. With such Iranian arrogance, it should come as no surprise that Iraqis regularly set fire to Iranian Consulates.
President Joe Biden entered office promising diplomacy. His administration scrambled military transport to bring emergency medical supplies to India as a devastating COVID-19 crisis struck the world’s largest democracy. Perhaps it is time to recognize that the key to delegitimizing and defeating Iran’s militias in Iraq is through not only symbolic airstrikes but also providing what Tehran cannot. It is time to transfer to Basra the emergency generators Iraq’s second-largest city needs to survive, each one emblazoned with the American flag. It is time to remind Iraqis in their hours of need that Washington will stand by them and that, all its rhetoric and sectarian posturing aside, Tehran will not.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
