Once again, Iran has overplayed its hand in Iraq.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s Quds Force commander was in Baghdad on Wednesday on a special mission. Qassem Soleimani, five Reuters sources say, met with Iran’s top proxy in Iraq, Hadi al-Amiri, and warned him not to abandon Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi. The prime minister is under heavy pressure to resign following weeks of protests over poor services and government corruption. Hundreds have been killed in clashes between protesters and overzealous Iraqi security forces. And Iran bears outsized responsibility for this governing failure.