Kurdish Leader Warns: Pro-Iran Militias Trying to Drag Iraq into Israeli Conflict—Against Will of Sudani, his Gov’t, and even Coordination Framework

WASHINGTON DC, United States (Kurdistan 24) The long-time Kurdish political leader, Hoshyar Zebari, has warned about the intentions of Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, particularly al-Nujaba and Kata’ib Hizbollah.

Both groups are supported by the Qods Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the U.S. has designated both of them as terrorist groups.

As Zebari explained, the two groups are operating contrary to the wishes of almost every Iraqi politician—including Prime Minister Mohammed Shi’a al-Sudani and even the Coordination Framework, the pro-Iranian alliance of Iraq’s Shi’ite parties.

The two militia groups are seeking to embroil Iraq in the war with Israel being conducted by Iran, along with Hamas and Hizbollah. While the damage to Iran has been limited, it has been devastating in Gaza, while growing in Lebanon, as described below.

This invites the question: Do al-Nujaba and Kata’ib Hizbollah want the same for Iraq? The kind of destruction that Gaza and Lebanon have suffered? Are their supporters in Iraq even thinking such a possibility might stem from their actions?

Hoshyar Zebari’s Warning 

Before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Zebari was a prominent figure in the Iraqi opposition to his brutal-rule. After the 2003 U.S.-led war that ousted him, Zebari became Iraq’s first post-Saddam Foreign Minister and then Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister. He remains an important member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP.)

On Saturday, Zebari posted a message on X warning about al-Nujaba and Kata’ib Hizbollah and their plans for Iraq.

Writing in Arabic, Zebari said, “The insistence of some factions to involve Iraq in the upcoming regional war, especially al-Nujaba and Kata’ib Hizbollah, and against the will of al-Sudani’s government, the parliament, and the Coordination Framework,” is a serious danger.

The political parties see the declaration of “a state of war or peace as a sovereign Iraqi decision,” Zebari explained. But the militias are “exposing the security and safety of Iraq to imminent danger and the biggest loser will be the Iraqi people and them as well.”

اصرار بعض الفصائل لاقحام العراق في الحرب الإقليمية القادمة لا سيما النجباء و كتائب حزب الله و بالضد من ارادة حكومة السوداني و البرلمان و الاطار التنسيقي في إعلان حالة الحرب او السلم كقرار سيادي عراقي انما يعرضون امن و سلامة العراق إلى خطر محدق و الخاسر الأكبر سيكون الشعب العراقي…

— Hoshyar Zebari (@HoshyarZebari) October 19, 2024

Zebari’s warning followed the ransacking of the studio of a production company in Baghdad that works for the Saudi broadcaster, MBC. 

MBC had referred to some commanders of the Iranian-backed militias in the region as “terrorists.” So after midnight, early on Saturday, some 400-500 people attacked the Baghdad studio, destroying electronic equipment and computers and setting a small fire.

An Iraqi parliamentarian, Mustafa Sanad, a member of the pro-Iran majority, accused MBC of "insulting resistance leaders in all countries,” saying “the report would have been more suited to Israeli TV.”

"It is not enough to ransack or set fire" to its offices, Sanad said on X, vowing to "cancel the license" of the channel in Iraq.

Read More: Pro-Iran protesters storm office linked to Saudi TV channel in Iraq

And that is what happened! “Iraqi regulators have suspended the license of a Saudi-owned television channel and are taking steps to terminate its right to operate in Iraq after the channel aired a report describing former leaders of Hamas, Hizbollah, and Iran’s Qods Force as ‘faces of terrorism.’” The New York Times reported later on Saturday.

Enormous Destruction in Gaza

Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border raid into Israel, which triggered the ongoing war, was extraordinarily brutal. It was akin to ISIS’s assault on the Yazidis a decade before.

Hamas had never done anything like that before. Peggy Noonan, a Wall Street Journal columnist and, much earlier, a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, wrote a column about it, titled, “The October Horror is Something New.” As Noonan described Hamas’s attack,  "It was savagery as strategy."

On Oct. 7, Hamas killed some 1,200 Israelis and took over 250 people hostage. It committed other atrocities, including the burning of infants alive and the wholesale rape of women. Israel has responded in kind.

On the war’s first anniversary, the Associated Press reported, “Gaza is in ruins after Israel’s year-long offensive,” adding that rebuilding the area may take a very long time.

“Even after the fighting stops, hundreds of thousands of people could be stuck living in squalid tent camps for years,” AP said. “Experts say reconstruction could take decades.”

Something like 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has been displaced multiple times, AP stated. Around 70% of Gaza’s water and sanitation plants have been destroyed or damaged, while the war has created something like 40 million tons of debris and rubble in the strip.

As long as Hamas’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, was alive, it was Hamas that refused to accept a ceasefire. It remains to be seen if the situation has changed after his death on Wednesday, when he was killed in an Israeli raid. Hamas has remained defiant—although that is only an initial response.

What About Lebanon?

There may well have been coordination between Hamas and Hizbollah before Hamas’s assault on Israel, perhaps mediated by Iran. After all, the day after Hamas’s attack, Hizbollah fired artillery and rockets at a strip of territory on the Lebanese-Syrian border that is occupied by Israel.

It seems unlikely that a major decision like that would have been taken on such short notice—hence the likelihood that there was prior coordination.

Whereas over 40,000 Palestinians have been killed as a result of Israeli attacks during the current war, the number is much less in Lebanon—around 2,500 fatalities.

Lebanon’s Shi’a population is concentrated in the south, including the southern suburbs of Beirut. Hizbollah is based in those areas. Like Hamas, Hizbollah embeds itself within the civilian population, which it uses as a shield against attack.

So far, the physical destruction in Lebanon is much less than Gaza, although southern Beirut is regularly described as a “ghost town,” with so many people having fled the area.

But the fighting is far from over, and Lebanon is currently the focus of Israel’s military activity. Thus, it remains to be seen just how serious the situation will become.

Such are the possible consequences for Iraq, if it is dragged into the conflict with Israel. That is what Zebari warned about.

It is little wonder that the Iraqi government opposes such involvement. What is unclear is if it is prepared to resist the pressures for involvement, coming from the Iranian-backed militias, and if the Iraqi government can control them.