Iraqi factions a wild card in US-Iran blame game
Armed militias in Iraq will have to determine whether their loyalties lie with their neutral government or against the United States in a standoff with Iran.
BAGHDAD — It's hard to tell what's really on the minds of Iranian and US officials in the flurry of words they've exchanged this week, but Baghdad has been perfectly clear about any potential confrontation between the two: not in my backyard.
Amid prolonged dares and double-dares between Tehran and Washington — punctuated with claims from both sides that they don't want a war — Iraq has made it known it won't become a proxy battleground.
The issue becomes a bit murky, however, when factoring in Iraq's pro-Iranian armed military factions.
For example, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, a radical Shiite militia in Iraq, has long been demanding that US troops leave Iraq. The pro-Iran group, an affiliate of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), defines itself as “a faction of the Islamic resistance in Iraq, which aims to defend the homeland and sanctities in both Syria and Iraq.” Nujaba has been working with the Iranian military's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for a long time. United States recently declared the IRGC a terrorist organization.
