Protests at the U.S. embassy in Iraq have died down, but it’s likely, albeit not definite, that new violence will follow.
The central issue here is what Iran does next.
Tehran will have been shocked by America’s ferocious response to Kataib Hezbollah’s rocket killing of an American contractor in Iraq last Friday. An Iranian directed proxy group led by an Iranian terrorist Kataib Hezbollah should be viewed as an extension of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. But where Iran has traditionally escaped major consequences for previous proxy attacks on America, things were different this time. Launching airstrikes against five Kataib Hezbollah targets in Iraq and Syria, the Trump administration has sent a necessarily clear signal of its mindset. Namely, that while President Trump is open to the pursuit of effective diplomacy, he will use robust force if necessary.
Losing dozens of fighters in those strikes, Kataib Hezbollah and the Guard Corps will want to respond. The nature of Iran’s Khomeinist ideology will motivate a theological desire for revenge here.
And yet, Iran must be cautious. While it could use Kataib Hezbollah or another proxy such as Asa’ib Ahl al Haq to launch a more aggressive attack on U.S. interests, doing so risks even more aggressive American reprisals. And the Iraqi political environment won’t be receptive to Iranian escalation.
In a telling statement, Iraq’s most revered Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali Sistani condemned both the U.S. airstrikes and the Iranian aggression that precipitated them. Political leaders must, he said, “ensure Iraq does not become a field for settling regional and international scores and that others do not interfere in its internal affairs.” Erstwhile Iraqi nationalist politician Muqtada al Sadr echoed Sistani on Twitter, arguing, “We need a serious stand by the senior officials to keep Iraq away from the ferocious war that will eat green and dry land.”
Though there has been a lot of focus in the past several days about Trump’s dilemma on whether to risk escalation, this rhetoric reflects Iran’s difficult position.
Tehran would love to be able to rely on the Shiite polity to support its effort to pressure America. But it cannot. Burned by years of Iranian enabled cronyism and sectarianism, many Iraqi Shiites are vigorously rejecting Iran’s proxies. With al Sadr hugely popular and increasingly supported by non-Shiite voters, and Sistani’s word regarded as law by most Iraqi Shiites, Iran risks a lot by endangering Iraq’s sovereignty.
At the same time, while America is far from popular in Iraq, the days of widespread hostility to Washington have given way to a more nuanced, if rarely uttered, tolerance. It’s worth noting here that the embassy protests were characterized by an outsize Iran-aligned militia footprint, not by Shiite populist anger. They looked bad, but they said little about Iraqi opinion.
The Trump administration should, therefore, proceed cautiously here.
As far as is possible, Washington should avoid new exchanges of violence with Iranian proxies. If that means tolerating limited rocket attacks that do not kill or wound Americans, so be it. The key here is to let Iran dig its own grave in Iraq by advertising to Iraqis its undermining of their national sovereignty. As in Lebanon, it’s a message Iran is all-too-casual about sending. The less America does, the more we appear to be the better of two evils. But if Iran kills another American, it must face another military response. Beyond the embassy protest headlines, Iraqis increasingly know who to blame here.
