Akram al Kaabi (left), co-founder of Asaib Ahl al Haq, with now-deceased Iranian Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani (middle).

BY EDMUND FITTON-BROWN

Long War Journal

Iran’s 45-year trajectory from the Khomeini revolution to its current challenge to Israel, the West, and the Rules-Based International System (RBIS) led to developing and solidifying its “Axis of Resistance.” Tehran supports and coordinates this group of regional proxies, including Yemen’s Houthis, Hamas, and Lebanese Hezbollah, to challenge its enemies in various theaters. A key Iranian proxy is found among the Iraqi Shia, who have a history with Iran that goes back to the Saddam Hussein era but whose full value to Tehran only started to be realized after the 2003 US invasion made Iraq’s largest community dominant in that nation’s politics.

Iraq’s Shia militias present a challenge to the United States and Israel that is subtly different from those posed by Lebanese Hezbollah and the Houthis. They have a comparatively long history of focusing on Americans as their main enemy since 2003, seeking in various ways and over several phases to drive US forces out of Iraq. Subsequently, Iraqi militias have become increasingly enthusiastic co-belligerents against Israel along with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran.

Thus, the profile the Iraqi militias have adopted since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, invites conflict not just with the US but also with Israel. The dynamic of kinetic engagement with Israel, if it happens in the context of the increasing risk of a war between Israel and Iran, will present a unique challenge. It could affect the orientation of the Iraqi state and its ability to balance its relationships with Iran and the US.

One of the most vivid pieces of evidence of the Islamic Republic’s hatred of the West is seen in the speed at which it exploited the US invasion of Iraq. Saddam Hussein had been Iran’s deadliest enemy, and a shared hostility toward him could have brought the US and Iran together for a common cause. The US took military action in 2003 partly to bring democracy to Iraq, effectively giving power to the Shia community after decades of Baathist oppression. Yet it was no more than a matter of weeks before Iran started using its Iraqi Shia proxies to kill US, UK, and other allied troops who were there to liberate them.

Iran used Iraq as a testing ground for asymmetric warfare techniques, such as explosively formed penetrators (EFPs), a form of improvised explosive device (IED) expressly designed to defeat American armored vehicles. Tehran also exploited Iraqi Shia relationships from the Saddam era to intimidate the new Iraqi authorities and develop a stifling influence over them.

Among the first wave of Iraqi Shia militias was the Mahdi Army, led by influential cleric Muqtada al Sadr and based mainly in the Shia-majority areas of Baghdad and southern Iraq. In the early years after 2003, the Mahdi Army fought against US and Coalition forces, as well as participated in the sectarian violence that plagued Iraq during this period. However, from Iran’s point of view, Sadr was too independent to be a reliable proxy; the Mahdi Army accepted Iranian support but resisted taking instructions from Tehran. Instead, Sadr was mainly focused on Iraqi nationalism and asserting Shia political power within Iraq. Internal divisions emerged within the group as the Mahdi Army came under external pressure from both US forces and the Iraqi government.

Qassem Soleimani was head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF) at the time. Soleimani encouraged a breakaway from the Mahdi Army by joint Iraqi-Iranian national Abu Mahdi al Muhandis (born Jamal Jaafar al Ibrahimi), who formed Kataib Hezbollah (KH) in 2007. KH was entirely loyal to Tehran and controlled by IRGC-QF, with whose support (including advanced weaponry and specialized training) it was able to establish itself as Iran’s premier Iraqi proxy militia. From 2007 to 2011, KH became notorious for its sophisticated attacks on US and Coalition forces in Iraq, making extensive use of armor-penetrating EFPs and improvised rocket-assisted mortars (IRAMs), aka “lob bombs.”

Both Muhandis and KH were designated by the US as terrorist entities in 2009. Following the US withdrawal from Iraq, Muhandis was a key figure in integrating KH with Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) and the wider network of Iranian-backed militias across the Middle East. Then, as the Islamic State (IS) became a rising challenge in Iraq from 2014 to 2017, Muhandis shifted from heavy involvement in KH’s operations toward a more strategic-level relationship for the IRGC-QF in Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). He was killed, along with Soleimani, by a US strike at Baghdad International Airport in January 2020.

Nevertheless, KH remains an influential force in Iraq to this day. The group’s leader since 2020 has been Ahmad Mohsen Faraj al Hamidawi, who was previously a commander of KH special operations and maintains strong ties to IRGC-QF. Hamidawi had to overcome an internal move to depose him in 2021 but has consolidated his position and built a stronger relationship between KH and the Iraqi government. Another key figure in KH is Abdul Aziz al Mohammadawi, the chief of staff of the PMF.

In the context of the current proxy war between Israel and the Axis of Resistance, KH was the Iraqi militia responsible for killing three US military personnel in Jordan in January 2024. The group was then forced to announce its suspension of all attacks on US forces in the region, ostensibly to avoid embarrassing the Iraqi government, but more likely because the IRGC feared direct US retaliation against Iran.   

Another key Iranian proxy is Asaib Ahl al Haq (AAH), formed by the notorious militants Qais al Khazali and Akram al Kaabi in another split from the Mahdi Army in 2006 (pre-dating the formation of KH). Militants who would merge into AAH fought alongside Lebanese Hezbollah during the 2006 Lebanon-Israel war. AAH was second only to KH in attacking US and allied forces in Iraq during 2007-2011, after which Khazali accelerated AAH’s political engagement in Iraq while maintaining the group’s kinetic capabilities and close association with IRGC-QF.

Since securing its first parliamentary seat in 2014 through its political arm (Al Sadiqun — “the honest ones”), AAH has expanded its influence in Iraqi politics and now controls Babil Province as well as a television channel (Al Ahad). Within Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, it commands the 41st, 42nd, and 43rd Brigades. Khazali still serves as the group’s secretary general, while Kaabi has gone to Syria to lead Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba.

A number of Iraqi militias have been established more recently, most notably Kataib Sayyid al Shuhada (KSS). KSS was founded in 2013 under the leadership of Abu Mustafa al Sheibani, who was formerly associated with KH. At this time, Iran and its allies perceived the main threat to their interests as coming from the Syrian revolt against Bashar al Assad. Assad was an ally of Iran, Lebanese Hezbollah, and the Iraqi Shia, many of whom went to Syria to fight to preserve his regime. KSS emerged in this context but then shifted its focus to Iraq in response to the rise of the Islamic State. Sheibani was replaced as leader by the group’s current secretary general, Hashim Finyan Rahim al Siraji (aka Abu Alaa al Walai), another former member of KH.

KSS operates in parallel as the 14th Brigade of the PMF, under the military command of Siraji’s deputy, Ahmed al Maksousi. It also has a political wing, Muntasirun, and a presence in the Iraqi parliament. Parliamentarian Falih Khazali, a former spokesperson for KSS, has a high public profile and is active in traditional and social media, besides being involved with the Muhandis General Company (MGC), a PMF-backed construction firm created to mirror the IRGC’s engineering firm and cover vehicle, Khatam al Anbiya.

These Iraqi Shia proxy militias have been shaped by the campaigns the IRGC has involved them in, which can be broken down into the following phases:

• 2003-2007 (early post-Saddam conflict inside Iraq and against US forces)
• 2007-2011 (efforts to complete the expulsion of US forces from Iraq)
• 2012-2014 (support of Assad against the Syrian opposition)
• 2014-2019 (the struggle against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria)
• 2019-2023 (consolidation of the Iraqi proxies within the Axis of Resistance and efforts to expel US forces from Iraq again after the defeat of the Islamic State)
• 2023 onward (following Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the Israeli assault on Hamas in Gaza, a shift in focus toward targeting Israel)

KH remains the strongest proxy of Iran in Iraq, and its killing of US personnel in January 2024 is the most notable Iraqi-generated incident of the past year, even though Iran quickly forced the group to announce a suspension of attacks on the US to forestall direct US retaliation against Iran. The security, research, and analysis firm Valens Global has looked in detail at KH, AAH, and KSS and concluded that all of them are partially but not entirely responsive to the needs and wishes of the Iraqi government, and KH and KSS are almost entirely loyal to Iran. Only AAH maintains an equally limited distance from either government.

So, what is the overall value of these Iraqi proxies to Iran, and to what extent are they a factor to be taken seriously in the current conflict between Israel and the Axis of Resistance—and a possible escalation into a regional conflict involving the United States?

As mentioned earlier, the calculus in Iraq is different from Lebanon, Syria, or Yemen because Iraq is willingly hosting US forces for the sake of its security. The Islamic State remains a latent threat to the Iraqi state and might resurge in the absence of a US contribution to the country’s defense. The terrorist group was more than a match for Iraqi troops and militias before the international coalition came to Baghdad’s rescue.

In September 2024, the US and Iraq agreed that most American troops would leave Iraq by 2026. The US will not welcome any Israeli action in Iraq that complicates this orderly drawdown. However, Iran’s Iraqi proxies have attacked Israel and, now that Hezbollah has sustained so much damage in Israeli strikes and ground incursions into Lebanon, the militias may feel (and Iran may expect from them) a responsibility to step up anti-Israeli activity as the nearest undamaged proxy (only Jordan lies between Iraq and Israel). Certainly, the Houthis are too far away and too vulnerable to Israeli retaliation to take on that role. So, if Israel strikes Iran (as most analysts agree it will do, at a time of its choosing, in response to the Iranian missile attacks on October 1), the nature of the response by Iran and its Axis of Resistance will be critical to whether and how any further escalation unfolds.

There is a risk, from a US and Israeli point of view, that a decisive kinetic response to a provocation from the Iraqi proxies could seriously destabilize Iraqi politics and drive the Shia-led government into complete dependence on Iran. This is the key political difference with the dynamics inside Yemen (where the Houthis, a minority population occupying the capital and the country’s largest port) can be attacked without prohibitive concerns about impacting the broader interests of the Yemeni people. The situation also contrasts with Lebanon, where Hezbollah’s sustained aggression against Israel makes the latter’s military campaign easy to understand and not entirely unpopular—and where there is no US military presence or alliance to protect.

Finally, if we have reached a point of no return—where a more widespread conflict between the Axis of Resistance on one side and Israel and the US on the other has become inevitable, even if its timing is not yet certain—there is a vital question about the implications that will follow for the components of Iran’s axis. There is a common hypothesis, which is by no means universally accepted, that the theocratic regime in Tehran is weak and unstable, and that a well-judged military campaign targeting its organs of oppression (especially the IRGC) could bring about regime change. That would, of course, be the optimal outcome for the West and dramatically change the Middle East for the better. This scenario would leave the Government of Iraq with a greatly strengthened hand, as it would be free to build balanced relations with all of its neighbors, crucially including Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Cooperation Council partners.

However, if such a wider war produces a less decisive or worse outcome, there will be no Hezbollah or Houthi-type solution to the Iraqi proxies, and Iraq may become as much of a headache as Syria became—a failing state, dependent on Iran and its remaining allies, and suffering from repeat cycles of sectarian violence.

Valens Global provided key research for this piece, including deep insights into Kataib Hezbollah, Asaib Ahl al Haq, and Kataib Sayyid al Shuhada.

Edmund Fitton-Brown is a senior advisor to the Counter Extremism Project. He formerly served as British ambassador to Yemen and as a coordinator of the UN Security Council’s Monitoring Team for ISIS, AQ, and the Taliban.