Roughly a month after the start of the protests in Iraq, a large number of protesters attacked the Iranian Consulate in the holy Shiite city of Karbala on the evening of Nov. 3. The demonstrators surrounded the consulate, raising Iraqi flags and throwing Molotov cocktails, causing a fire to break out on the premises.

As the protests have become strongly anti-Iranian, Iran has banned its citizens from traveling to Iraq until further notice.

With anti-Iranian sentiments growing, the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) have gotten involved in the protests, accusing the West and its regional and local allies of being behind the unrest.

“Three Iraqi, regional and international parties are participating in a project aimed to create strife and chaos in the country,” the leader of Asaib Ahl al-Haq, Sheikh Qais Khazali, said in a TV interview Oct. 3. “The United States and Israel — in addition to some Gulf states, most notably the United Arab Emirates — in coordination with one of the three Iraqi 'presidents' [in reference to the president, prime minister and parliament speaker] and a prominent security leader are a part of a conspiracy aimed at bringing chaos to Iraq.”