Since the collapse of the Iraqi military in Northern Iraq, allowing the Islamic State (IS) group to seize large swaths of territory in early June, the central government in Baghdad has relied in large part on various militias and volunteers to shore up its forces. One of these groups that has played a large role in liberating a number of towns from IS is the Badr Organization, headed by former Minister of Transportation Hadi al-Amiri.

Conservative website Mashregh News ran a profile of Amiri on Nov. 12. The glowing profile by Mashregh, which some believe has close connections to Iran's security agencies, can be viewed as endorsement. The brief synopsis, in addition to Amiri’s activities against former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, also read that Amiri has both Iraqi and Iranian citizenship and that his wife is Iranian.

It should be no surprise, then, that Amiri has a close personal relationship with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, who has been working closely with Iraqi forces in their fight against IS. The Mashregh profile shared a number of recent pictures of Amiri with Soleimani on the front line in Iraq.

In a Nov. 6 interview with Foreign Policy, Amiri called Soleimani a “friend, a good man, and good fighter.” One of the pictures shared by Mashregh shows the two men laughing, with Soleimani embracing Amiri. According to Mashregh, a number of these pictures were taken after the liberation of Amerli and Jurf al-Sakhar, two of the key victories by the Iraqi forces over IS militants.