Iran verliert den Irak: Bagdad geht seinen eigenen Weg

[Excerpt from essay by Kamaran Palani, Senior Fellow and Head of the UK and EU Policy Unit at the Middle East Peace and Security Forum at the American University of Kurdistan.]

At least in one area, the war has left Iran notably weaker: Iraq. Ever since the toppling of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iran has been able to exercise a great deal of influence over its western neighbor. It has embedded itself within Iraq’s Shiite political establishment, mediating between rival factions, shaping successive governments, and using Iraq to gain hard cash through smuggling and currency exchange networks. Iran supported many of the Iraqi paramilitary groups that helped defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, in 2017. Iraqis still grew to resent Iran’s overweening influence in their country, not least because of the involvement of Iranian-backed militias in a brutal crackdown on anticorruption protesters in 2019 and 2020. Now, the tumult of recent months has further tilted Iraqis against Iran’s desire to make their country a staging ground of resistance to the United States and Israel. Leaders of political parties and militia groups that once hewed close to Tehran are pulling away.

Pictures and headlines don’t always match up, but the disconnect here is telling. Uniformed fighters, an Iranian cleric’s portrait looming over the scene, and Iraqi flags on the coffins all mixed together at once. That synthesis isn’t going to vanish overnight just because politicians in Baghdad start hedging their bets.

The militias themselves might end up being the last redoubt of real Iranian influence. PMF commanders have their own patronage networks and religious legitimacy tied to Tehran that runs deeper than any parliamentary coalition. Formal Iraqi foreign policy could drift toward the Gulf and Washington while these armed groups stay ideologically anchored to Iran and keep operating on their own terms.

Smuggling and currency flows are probably the underrated piece the article hints at. Whoever controls the actual money moving across that border holds leverage regardless of what politicians say at podiums.