Iranian Infiltration of Iraq’s PMF: ISW Report

The ISW report focuses on the military dimension of Iranian influence in Iraq, above all the PMF.

Laurie Mylroie 2024/03/21 11:07

Fighters of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) marching. (Photo: Kurdistan24)

WASHINGTON DC, United States (Kurdistan 24) – Washington’s highly-regarded Institute for the Study of War (ISW), on Tuesday, published a detailed account of how Iran uses Shi’ite militias in Iraq, known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), to exercise influence in Baghdad and pressure the Iraqi government.

The ISW report is similar in tone to a New York Times story published in mid-December about Iran’s strong influence in Baghdad. That is also a view held by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), and the Times’ report cites a long-experienced Kurdish political figure, Hoshyar Zebari.

Iran is “the predominant influence in Iraq today,” Zebari told the Times, and its interests affect “every sector of the security forces, the military, the provincial governors.”

The ISW report focuses on the military dimension, above all the PMF, of Iran’s influence in Iraq.

Several of the militias in the PMF are “U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations,” the ISW explained, which “killed hundreds of U.S. service members” during the war in Iraq that overthrew Saddam Hussein and his regime, in the years between March 20, 2003, and Dec. 15, 2011 (the 23rd anniversary of the war’s start was yesterday.)

That war is formally known as Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), and the successor to George W. Bush, Barack Obama, brought it to an end in Dec. 2011.

But less than three years later, as ISIS suddenly emerged in the summer of 2014 out of the Syrian civil war, the PMF were formed to fight the Sunni terrorist group. In 2016, a new law, the PMF Commission Law, gave the PMF an official status, separate and distinct from Iraq’s Defense and Interior Ministries.

The PMF Commission is supposed to report directly to Iraq’s prime minister. But the Commission is headed by an individual, Faleh al-Fayyadh, who is close to Tehran. Fayyadh cooperates with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) “to implement Iranian directives in Iraq and reinforce Iranian influence over the militias,” the ISW explained.

‘Asa’ib Ahl al-Haqq

Those militias include ‘Asa’ib Ahl al-Haqq (AAH), “an Iran-backed Shia militia that encourages and conducts attacks against the U.S. diplomatic and military presence in Iraq as it seeks to compel U.S. forces to withdraw completely,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) explained in its online Counter-Terrorism guide.

“AAH formed in 2006,” breaking away from Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia, “to align with Iran and target U.S. and allied forces more aggressively,” the ODNI said.

Since then, “AAH has conducted thousands of attacks against U.S. and allied interests, including killing five U.S. soldiers during an attempted kidnapping” in Karbala in 2007.

AAH has an estimated 10,000 members. It has an official status as part of the PMF, which “provides some members government salaries and access to state resources,” the ODNI explained.

Kata’ib Hizballah

Kata’ib Hizbollah (KH) is similar. It, too, was established with Iranian support during OIF. “Founded in 2007,” KH “seeks to establish an Iran-aligned government in Iraq, expel US and coalition forces from the country, and advance Iranian interests throughout the Middle East,” the ODNI stated.

In 2006, a KH rocket attack on a major U.S. base in Baghdad killed six U.S. service members. Five years later, another KH rocket attack killed three U.S. service members.

Like AAH, KH is officially part of the Iraqi government and at least some members enjoy government salaries and access to state resources.

As the ISW explained, KH controls three PMF brigades, and it “has attacked U.S. forces dozens of times since October 2023, under the pretext of opposing the United States’ support for Israel” in the wake of the war in Gaza, which began on Oct. 7, with Hamas’ bloody cross-border assault.

Indeed, U.S. officials have identified KH as the most active of the militias attacking U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.

Other, smaller groups, like Liwa al-Tafuf, work with the major groups, the ISW said, in the belief that “military pressure and U,S. casualties will erode U.S. willingness to sustain deployments in the Middle East.”

Effective Deterrence-Finally!!!!

So far, however, there is little evidence that the Iranian-orchestrated approach is working, once the Biden White House resolved on an effective response to the militia assaults.

The U.S. military suffered some 120 attacks in Iraq and Syria, without responding in an effective way to stop them. That passivity culminated in the deaths of three U.S. service members on Jan. 28 at a base in Jordan.

Those fatalities then caused the Biden administration to let CENTCOM undertake major retaliatory strikes against the Iranian-backed militias involved in attacking U.S. forces, as well as their IRGC advisers.

On the night of Feb. 3, CENTCOM forces hit 85 targets in seven locations in Iraq and Syria.

The next day, KH responded with an attack on a U.S. base in northeast Syria which killed six soldiers from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF.)

The following day, U.S. Special Forces within CENTCOM, using an explosive drone, targeted an automobile in eastern Baghdad carrying Wissam Mohammed Sabir al-Saadi, assassinating him.

Saadi was the KH commander responsible for the militia’s operations in Syria.

The strike was a stunning display of U.S. intelligence and capabilities. There has not been an attack on U.S. forces in Iraq or Syria since.

Ineffective Deterrence

However, that has not been the case with the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen. The U.S. has not undertaken any major retaliatory strike, and the Houthis’ attacks on international shipping have continued.

The U.S., often accompanied by U.K. forces, regularly bombs Houthi weapons in response to their attacks. But the allied response is ineffectual, because the weapons are easily replaced by Iran, which supplies the arms and trains the Houthis on how to use them.

Critics, like Sen. Dan Sullivan (R, Alaska), who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, have strongly criticized the Biden administration for not doing more to counter the Houthis’ attacks—above all to hold Iran responsible for those attacks.

Not doing so, Sullivan protested in a recent letter to President Joe Biden, is a "continuation of a clearly failed policy of appeasement.”

The Houthis’ stance in support of the Palestinians is popular in Yemen, even as the Houthis face significant domestic opposition. One of their techniques for suppressing that opposition is to destroy people’s homes (ironically, that is what the Israelis do to their Palestinian opponents.)

On Tuesday, the Houthis demolished a home in Radaa, in the central province of Al-Bayda, Al-Arabiya reported, killing nine members of a single family.

“Since seizing control in Yemen by force in late 2014, the Houthis have demolished hundreds of opponents’ residences in a bid to quell any opposition, Yemeni activists and authorities say,” Al-Arabiya explained.