By Tahseen Wsu Abdullah
The complexity of events in Iraq in general and the Shiites in particular has led to the formation of militias in Iraq by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in a way that is different from their regional counterparts over the past two decades.
This is reflected in their diversity, multiple specialties and leadership. This reality has created challenges for the Iranian project due to the difficulty of managing these militias and controlling their internal conflicts. This requires the presence of direct Iranian supervisors, especially after the deaths of Qassem Soleimani (former commander of the Quds Force) and Hassan Nasrallah (former secretary general of Lebanese Hezbollah), who played a key role in coordinating the work of the various factions.
On the other hand, the reality of militias has contributed to strengthening Iran’s continued hegemony over Iraq through armed networks whose roles can be divided to wage a multi-level war on Iraq’s future and Iranian influence.
With the outbreak of the recent war, these perceptions came to the fore as Tehran sought to bind regional agents and expand the scope of its conflict in a controlled manner, while managing the conflict between Iraqi militia groups under US pressure and attacks. The general characteristics of the role of the militias and their management of Iran during the recent war are as follows:
– First, the command cell of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, which oversees the operation of various Iraqi militias, was revealed for the first time. This cell was targeted in a precision US airstrike on a headquarters used as a major command center in the Jadriya area of Baghdad on 17 March. The Iranian and Iraqi secrecy surrounding the targets of the strike reflects the importance of this cell.
– The early weeks of the war showed that the Lebanese Hezbollah brigade was the most reliable militia for Iran, a fact due to the nature of US operations against its camps and positions, as well as the destruction of its leaders.
– Developments in the war showed that the military capabilities of Iraqi militias exceeded expectations. Their recent operations, whether in the Kurdistan Region or against the US embassy and some military installations, have been remarkably accurate, indicating that the militias have recently acquired new weapons systems, particularly drones and missiles.
– In any case, the war exposed Iraqi security vulnerabilities to Iranian-backed groups, which moved freely and conducted large-scale, precision operations despite daily U.S. air strikes against them. In addition, the political situation was hit by the militias, which, after expanding their presence in parliament (more than 80 seats), intensified pressure on various political forces and threatened not to appoint any new prime minister “without their consent”.
– The fighting confirmed that attempts to establish a separation between Hashdi Shaabi groups, as an official security institution, and armed factions were not united enough to prevent the US from launching a series of operations against Hashdi Shaabi headquarters. This, in turn, has implications for the nature of future U.S. relations with the Hashd -factional dichotomy and the possibility of continuing with this dichotomy.
Since the end of the 12-day war in mid-June 2025, Iraqi militias have sought to target military installations that could be used in an Iran-US confrontation scenario, as Iran prepares Iraq as the main arena for such scenarios. From the beginning of the current war, the militias continued what they had started on the last day of the previous war by bombing Iraqi air defense systems and radar installations, based on the assumption that these could be used against them.