Iran’s Regional Influence Campaign Is Starting to Flop
Tehran has long sought to throw its weight around across the region. Now the Islamic Republic is facing a backlash in Iraq, Lebanon, and at home.
As a new wave of demonstrations engulfs the Middle East, one common factor connects the protests from Baghdad to Beirut: a deep and widespread feeling of antipathy toward the Iranian regime. This is especially true in the bloodied towns and cities of Iraq—a country Iran’s leaders have regarded as theirs since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Since the outbreak of the protests in early October, various security forces, including Iranian-backed Shiite militias, have killed more than 400 Iraqis and wounded some 20,000 others. Not only is there good reason to believe that much of the brutality has taken place at the behest of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Qassem Suleimani, the notorious commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force, but the available evidence seems to confirm it.