SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iran is intervening in Iraq to quell destabilizing internal unrest stirred by Iranian-backed militias, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing officials, politicians and diplomats.
The intervention came last month, after the Iraqi prime minister’s residence was attacked by rockets. Officials in Baghdad blamed the attack on Iran-backed groups.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack on Kadhimi’s residence in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, which houses government buildings and foreign embassies.
Following the attack, Iran’s commander of Quds Force Brigadier General Esmail Qaani rushed to Baghdad, Reuters cited militia officials, Iraqi politicians close to the militias, Western diplomats and Iraqi security source as saying.
Qaani had a message for Iranian-backed militias refusing to acknowledge results of October 10 parliamentary elections in which Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was the top vote-winner.
“Accept the results,” Qaani told the Iraqi militias, according to Reuters.
The Iranian commander told the leaders of two militias that “petty politics was threatening the power of Iraq’s ruling Shia majority”, Reuters cited people familiar with the meeting as saying.
Qaani held a terse meeting with two leaders of Iran-backed militia groups at the office of a veteran Iran-backed politician in Baghdad, Reuters said. He accused them of handling the fallout from the election “badly”.
He told the two militia leaders to get their supporters and militants under control, one of the militia officials and two politicians told Reuters.
“The Iranians were furious,” Reuters quoted the militia official as saying. He added that one Iranian official asked: “Do you want a Shia civil war?”
Reuters reported that the sources it spoke to gave similar accounts, saying the Iranian commander told the Shia groups to stop fueling unrest in Iraq.
The Iraqi Shia leaders Qaani met with were Hadi al-Amiri, head of al-Fatih alliance, and Qais al-Khazali, leader of Asaib Ahl al-Haq, Reuters said.
Following the Nov. 7 attack on the premier’s residence, Qaani also met in Baghdad with the chief of Iraq’s state paramilitary forces, which are dominated by Iranian proxy groups, according to the two politicians close to militias. The politicians said that Qaani gave the commander, Abdul Aziz al-Mohammedawi, a longtime Iran-backed operative, the same message: Get the militias under control.
