“There is no interest or justification for the Iraqi government to send backup forces to Tehran, nor is Iran in need of extra reinforcement from Baghdad,” Sheikh Ghaith Al-Tamimi, a prominent Iraqi scholar of Islamic theology and the founder of the Iraqi Center for Diversity, told The Jerusalem Post in a recent interview.
According to some media outlets, including London-based, Persian-language news channel Iran International, thousands of Iraqi militiamen have crossed into Iran to help Tehran suppress the ongoing protests.
Tamimi said he could not rule out that some Shi’ite militants who are directly connected to, funded by, and trained by Iran “might have gone, but that would have been voluntarily and certainly not sanctioned by the Iraqi state.”
These voluntary missions “were both secondary and marginalized,” with no significant contribution, he said.
Various Shi’ite factions sent volunteers to support Hezbollah in its war with Israel following the October 7 massacre, Tamimi said.
“We saw a considerable number of militants making their way to Lebanon to fight alongside Hezbollah,” he said. “But Hezbollah did not trust their military capabilities, and they weren’t offered any key roles, leading to their eventual return to Iraq.”
“A small number of fighters definitely did go, but I repeat again that the Iraqi government would not have sanctioned their enlistment,” he added.
These volunteers most likely would be deployed to minority-inhabited regions, such as Ahvaz, home to Ahwazi Arabs, an oppressed ethnic minority within Iran with a strong sense of Arab Sunni identity, or they would be deployed in Iran’s Kurdish region, Tamimi said.
“Theoretically, I doubt that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC] will open its territories for Iraqi militiamen to carry out armed duties,” he said. “It’s highly questionable.”
“Let’s not forget that the Basij, a paramilitary branch of the IRGC, has about eight million members,” he added.
The Basij has permeated many layers of Iranian society. It has cells all over 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 domestic security, enforcing social norms and dress codes and cracking down on dissent and protests.
In addition to the Basij, there are also the IRGC and various other intelligence agencies to consider, Tamimi said, which is why “I doubt a ruthless police state like Iran would need extra reinforcement from Baghdad.”
Iran is a theocratic, tyrannical regime that has “an iron grip on its people,” he said. “I doubt that protesters will be able to topple the rule of Iran’s Supreme Leader [Ayatollah] Ali Khamenei.”
“The protesters have managed to expose and discredit the government’s legitimacy to rule,” he added. “But without outside intervention, specifically the US, it is challenging, if not impossible, to overthrow Khamenei.”
Iraqis largely in favor of toppling Khamenei regime
Toppling Khamenei would be something that an overwhelming majority of Iraqis would welcome, Tamimi said. Nevertheless, one cannot rule out genuine concerns about the day after Khamenei and its impact on Iraq and broader regional security, he said.
Some Iraqis are unequivocally loyal to the ayatollahs, Tamimi said. Powerful and influential Shi’ite political and paramilitary groups, such as the Badr Organization’s armed faction and the Iran-backed Fatah coalition in the Iraqi parliament, have benefited from immense Iranian investment in training and funding, he said. These proxies keep close ties with Tehran and cooperate with Iran’s people inside Iraq.
ONE OF them is Amir Mousavi, a former Iranian defense official who has close ties with 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 has become something of a celebrity political analyst whose fame has expanded beyond the borders of Iraq and Iran. He has been a fixture on major Arab-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-seated hatred of Israel have played a major role in his rise as a well-known figure in regional media. With the ongoing protests in Iran, he is regularly invited to speak on both Iraqi and regional channels.
Mousavi depicts the protests as “turbulence” driven by “agitators” and engineered by “foreign state actors.”
In a recent interview with an Iraqi television channel, he referred to protesters as “terrorists” working with “foreign infiltrators” who are “trained and equipped with maps and lists of figures they have been ordered to assassinate.”
Behind these infiltrators are “specifically three neighboring countries,” which authorities in Tehran know about and “will target soon,” Mousavi said.
Furthermore, all indications support that these three countries are behind the funding, training, and facilitation of “these dark forces” entering Iran, causing instability and terrorism, he said. Tehran wants these countries “to come clean, apologize, and cooperate with Tehran to expose the location of the cells they implanted within the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he added.
Mousavi declined to name the three countries. “Tehran wants to give them a chance to come clean,” he said.
One of the countries he was alluding to is possibly the Kurdistan Regional Government of northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish Region. The IRGC has targeted it with ballistic missiles, claiming it struck “a Mossad spying ring” there, among other allegations. Other countries he might be referring to could be Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, and possibly Israel.
Suzan Quitaz is a Kurdish-Swedish journalist and researcher on Middle Eastern affairs. She is an Israel-based journalist and podcast presenter for the Arabic- and English-language series Exposing the Lies – The Voice of Truth from the Middle East at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. She previously worked as a field producer and journalist at several Qatari media outlets.