U.S. Denounces New Offices of Hamas, Houthis in Baghdad
“Tehran has created joint operations rooms and held regular meetings that bring their leaders together,” and those meetings have “intensified” since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
WASHINGTON DC, United States (Kurdistan 24) – State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller, addressing journalists on Monday, denounced reports that Hamas and the Houthis had recently opened offices in Baghdad.
Miller responded by noting that the U.S. considers both organizations to be terrorist groups. So, too, does the European Union.
Thus, as he affirmed, “Hamas and the Houthis being allowed to operate in Iraq only risks increasing the number of armed groups that have an interest in using violence to undermine the Government of Iraq’s goals for stability, sovereignty, and economic growth.”
“We support a stable and secure Iraq,” Miller continued. “The presence of these groups in Iraq risks bringing Iraq into deeper regional conflicts, and we have shared these concerns directly with the Government of Iraq.”
New York Times on Hamas, Houthis in Baghdad
The New York Times is one of America’s top newspapers, and it was a story in the Times, reported out of Baghdad, that described the increased presence of Hamas and the Houthis in Iraq that prompted the question to Miller.
These developments follow upon Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7 cross-border assault on Israel, which Iran has exploited to mobilize its proxies in the region.
Both Hamas and the Houthis opened their new offices in Baghdad in June, even as “some Iraqi
government officials,” the Times said, “say privately they are not thrilled” with this development.
Yet those Iraqi officials “did not have the power to block them, given the sway of the Iraqi political parties with ties to Iran,” it explained.
The establishment of the Hamas and Houthi offices in Baghdad “is part of a larger effort by Tehran to build a regional bloc of Shiite power that extends to Lebanon with Hezbollah and to Yemen with the Houthis,” according to the Times.
Iran Cultivates Axis of Resistance
As Thomas Juneau, a professor of international relations at the University of Ottawa, told the paper, there is “a growing institutionalization of relations between Iran’s partners in the Axis of Resistance.”
“Tehran has created joint operations rooms and held regular meetings that bring their leaders together,” the Times said, and, according to Juneau, those meetings have “intensified” since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
“One worry is that the presence of so many Iran-backed groups in Iraq could prompt Israel’s military to strike inside Iraq, further destabilizing the region,” it stated.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq
The Times’ report cites a detailed tally, maintained by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), of strikes claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI), a name that encompasses the multiple pro-Iranian militias in Iraq.
As WINEP’s report explains, the IRI emerged on Oct. 18, 2023, a mere eleven days after Hamas’s attack on Israel. That would suggest a high degree of coordination between Iran and Hamas and Iran and the Iraqi militias
According to the WINEP report, from October through February, the IRI’s primary targets were bases of the anti-ISIS Coalition in Syria and Iraq.
Since February, however, “attacks on Israel” have been “almost the only attacks” that the IRI has claimed.
“We have moderate to high confidence that most or all of these attacks did occur (i.e., were launched),” WINEP stated, “but there is very little evidence of effective strikes in Israel itself, suggesting a very low arrival rate due to interceptions over Syria, Iraq, and Jordan.”