Some countries find themselves at the centre of geopolitical events by choice, while others find themselves there against their will. Iraq has often belonged to the latter category.
Since the 2003 U.S. invasion dismantled the Iraqi nation-state project and reshaped it along fragile sectarian and ethnic lines, Iraq has become more of an arena for regional and international competition than a truly sovereign state.
Today, with the outbreak of a U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, Iraq finds itself once again in the most precarious position, unable to remain fully out of the conflict, nor able to choose sides.
What makes the current moment exceptional is not just the scale of the military operations, but the nature of the existential challenge they pose to the Iraqi state.
For the first time since its founding, Iraq faces the prospect of the collapse of its most influential regional patron, Iran, while at the same time one of its main security partners, the United States, is exerting unprecedented pressure to reshape the Iraqi political and security landscape according to its will.
To understand the depth of this crisis, it is necessary first to understand the nature of Iran's presence in Iraq, and then to analyse its development in light of two scenarios: either the fall of the Iranian regime, or the aftermath of its survival.
Iran's presence in Iraq
Before going into the details of the two scenarios, it is necessary to draw an accurate picture of the structure that Iran has built in Iraq over the course of two decades, because this domestic network will determine the fate of the crisis.
Military and security dimension
The Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) encompass more than 160,000 fighters, a core of whom are loyal to Iran and whose ideological allegiance is primarily to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, not to the Iraqi state.
The most prominent of these factions are Kataib Hezbollah, Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, Harakat al-Nujaba and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada.
These factions are officially integrated into the Iraqi state's security structures and receive their salaries from the Iraqi treasury, but they simultaneously maintain independent chains of command whose actual lines of authority run through the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Tehran, not through the ministries in Baghdad.
This structural contradiction is at the heart of the crisis.
