According to media outlets, including Iran International, thousands of Iraqi militiamen have already entered Iran to help Tehran crack down on the ongoing protests.
“There is no interest or justification for the Iraqi government to send reserve forces to Tehran, nor does Iran need additional reinforcements from Baghdad,” Sheikh Ghaith Al-Tamimi, a prominent Iraqi scholar of Islamic theology and founder of the Iraqi Center for Diversity, said in comments to The Jerusalem Post.
According to media outlets, including Iran International, thousands of Iraqi militiamen have already entered Iran to help Tehran crack down on the ongoing protests. Sheikh Al-Tamimi says: “There is no interest or justification for the Iraqi government to send reserve forces to Tehran.” He adds that it would not be out of the question that some Shia militants who are directly connected to, funded and trained by Iran “could have gone, but that would have been on a voluntary basis and certainly not sanctioned by the Iraqi state.”
These voluntary missions, asserts Sheikh Al-Tamimi, “are both secondary and marginalized,” with no significant contribution. Drawing on an earlier occasion when various Shiite factions sent volunteers to support Hezbollah in the war with Israel after October 7, Sheikh Al-Tamimi says: “We saw a considerable number of militants heading to Lebanon to fight alongside Hezbollah. But Hezbollah did not trust their military capabilities and did not offer them any key role in Iraq.” However, he continued, “a small number of fighters certainly left, but I repeat again that their enlistment would not have been sanctioned by the Iraqi government.”
These volunteers would most likely be deployed in minority-inhabited regions such as Ahwaz, home of the Ahwazi Arabs—an oppressed ethnic and linguistic minority in Iran with a strong sense of Sunni Arab identity—or they would be deployed in the Kurdish region of Iran.
He continues: “Theoretically, I doubt that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) will open its territories to Iraqi militias to carry out their armed tasks; it is highly questionable.” He adds: “Let’s not forget that the Basij, a paramilitary branch of the IRGC, has about 8 million members.” The Basij permeated many layers of Iranian society. It has cells throughout Iran and is present in every university and government institution, including healthcare, law enforcement, and other social and cultural institutions. Its main role is to maintain internal security – from enforcing social norms and dress codes to cracking down on dissent and protests.
Sheikh Ghaith Al-Tamimi, a prominent Iraqi scholar of Islamic theology and founder of the Iraqi Center for Diversity. (credit: COURTESY SHEIKH GHAITH AL-TAMIMI)
“Add to that the IRGC and various intelligence agencies,” says Al-Tamimi. “I doubt a ruthless police state like Iran would need additional reinforcements from Baghdad.”
Iran is a theocratic, tyrannical regime that has “an iron grip on its people.” “I doubt the protesters will be able to overthrow the leadership of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei,” says Sheikh Al-Tamimi. “The protesters have succeeded in exposing and discrediting the government’s legitimacy to rule. But I tell you: without outside intervention, especially the US, it is challenging, if not impossible, to topple Khamenei.”
Iraqis are overwhelmingly in favor of overthrowing the Khamenei regime
He explains that Khamenei’s overthrow would be welcomed by an overwhelming majority of Iraqis. However, he says, we cannot rule out real concerns about the day ahead for Khamenei and its impact on Iraq and wider regional security.
However, there is another Iraq: an Iraq that is faithfully loyal to the Ayatollahs. Powerful and influential Shiite political and paramilitary groups—such as the armed faction of the Badr Organization and the Iranian-backed Fatah Coalition in the Iraqi parliament—have benefited from huge Iranian investment in training and funding. These proxies maintain close ties with Tehran and cooperate with the Iranian people in Iraq.
One of those men is Amir Mousavi, a former Iranian defense official who enjoys close ties to Iran’s Supreme Leader. Mousavi has been Tehran’s central man in Baghdad at least since the assassination of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in January 2020 by the Americans.
Mousavi became a political analyst celebrity whose fame extended beyond the borders of Iraq and Iran. He has been part of the main Arabic language news channels that are often aligned with Iran and Turkey, such as Al Jazeera, Al Mayadeen and Al Alam.
Mousavi’s fluency in Arabic and his deep-rooted hatred of Israel played a major role in his rise as a well-known figure in the regional media. With ongoing protests in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mousavi is regularly invited to speak on both Iraqi and regional channels.
As for the protests, he describes them as “turbulence”, led by “agitators” and engineered by “foreign state actors”. In a recent interview with Iraqi television, he referred to the protesters as “terrorists” working with “foreign infiltrators” who are “trained and equipped with maps and lists of figures they were ordered to assassinate.” He claimed that behind these infiltrators are “especially three neighboring countries”, which the authorities in Tehran know about and “will target them soon”.
Furthermore, he claims that all indications are that these three countries are behind financing, training and facilitating “these dark forces” entering Iran, causing instability and terrorism. He says Tehran wants these countries to “come clean, apologize and cooperate with Tehran to reveal the location of the cells they implanted in the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Mousavi declined to name the three countries, saying “Tehran wants to give them a chance to come clean.” One of those countries is likely the autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq (the Kurdistan Regional Government, KRG), which the IRGC has a long history of targeting with ballistic missiles, claiming to have hit “a Mossad spy ring,” among other allegations. Other candidates could be Azerbaijan, Afghanistan and possibly Israel.
Suzan Quitaz is a Kurdish-Swedish journalist and researcher on Middle East issues. She is an Israeli journalist and podcast host for an Arabic and English series, Exposing the Lies – The Voice of Truth from the Middle East, at the Center for Security and Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem. She previously worked as a field producer and journalist at a number of media outlets in Qatar.