After Qaani’s visit to Baghdad.. Armed factions ease attacks on US forces
Shafaq News/ Several Iranian and Iraqi sources told Reuters that the visit of Iranian Quds Force commander Ismail Qaani to Baghdad led to the cessation of attacks by Iranian-allied factions in Iraq on US forces, and the sources described this as a sign of Tehran’s desire to prevent a wider conflict.
The sources said that Qaani met with representatives of several armed factions at Baghdad airport (on January 29), less than 48 hours after Washington accused these factions of being behind the killing of three American soldiers at the military site of Tower 22 in Jordan.
Ten of the sources said that Qaani, whose predecessor was killed in a U.S. drone attack near the same airport four years ago, told the factions that the American bloodshed risked a violent American response.
The sources added that Qaani told the armed factions that they must move away from the scene to avoid US strikes on their senior commanders, destroy their main infrastructure or even direct retaliation against Iran.
One faction initially did not approve Kaani’s request, but most of the other factions agreed, according to Reuters.
The next day, the Iran-aligned Kataib Hezbollah group announced that it would suspend its attacks.
Since February 4, there have been no attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria, compared with more than 20 in the previous two weeks to visit Qaani as part of a wave of violence by factions in response to the Israeli war in the Gaza Strip.
“Without Qaani’s direct intervention, it would have been impossible to convince Kataib Hezbollah to stop its military operations to de-escalate tensions,” said a senior leader of one of Iraq’s Iran-allied armed factions.
Neither Qaani nor the Quds Force, a force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards that works with allied armed factions from Lebanon to Yemen, have so far responded to requests for comment. Kataib Hezbollah and another faction could not be reached for comment. Neither the White House nor the Pentagon responded either.
Iraqi media referred to Qaani’s visit, but details of his message and its impact in reducing attacks were not reported before.
Reuters spoke to three Iranian officials, a senior Iraqi security official, three Iraqi Shiite politicians, four sources in Iraqi armed factions allied with Iran and four diplomats focused on Iraq.
The apparent success of Qaani’s visit highlights Iran’s influence over Iraqi armed factions that are sometimes increasing pressure and sometimes de-escalating tensions to serve its goal of getting U.S. troops out of Iraq, Reuters said.
The government in Baghdad, a rare joint ally of Tehran and Washington, is trying to prevent the country from once again becoming a battleground for foreign powers and asked Iran to help rein in factions after the attack in Jordan, five of the sources said.
Farhad Aladdin, the Iraqi prime minister’s foreign affairs adviser, told Reuters in response to a question to confirm Qaani’s visit and confirm a request for help in reining the Sudanese armed factions that he “worked with all relevant parties inside and outside Iraq,” warning that any escalation “would serve to destabilize the security of Iraq and the region.”
“The attack came in a way that served the interest of the Iraqi government,” a Shiite politician from the ruling coalition said.
Following the ensuing lull, talks resumed on Feb. 6 with the United States on ending the U.S. presence in Iraq.
Several other Iran-allied parties and armed factions in Iraq prefer talks rather than launch attacks to end the presence of U.S. forces.
Washington was not willing to negotiate a change in its military status under the attacks, fearing it would lead to Iran’s dare, according to Reuters.
The U.S. currently has about 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria on a mission to advise and assist. These forces are part of an international coalition formed in 2014 to fight ISIS, especially in western Iraq and eastern Syria.
A U.S. State Department spokesman said the U.S. presence in Iraq would turn into an “ongoing bilateral security relationship,” and declined to comment on Qaani’s visit to Baghdad.
The U.S. asserts that Tehran has a high level of control over what it calls Iran’s “proxies” in the region.
Tehran says it has provided funding, advice and training to allies, but decides on operations themselves.
Another U.S. official acknowledged Iran’s role in reducing the attacks but said it was “not clear whether the calm would continue.”
“We need to see more effort on the ground” by Iraq to control the factions, another senior U.S. official said, noting that only a limited number of arrests were made after a December mortar attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
The senior Iraqi security source said that as Iran was preparing for an American response to the Jordan attack, Qaani’s visit came quickly as he did not leave the airport “for heightened security reasons and fear for his safety.”
The raid that killed the former Quds Force commander, Qassem Soleimani, was followed in 2020 outside the airport by an attack that Washington also accused Kataeb Hezbollah of, an attack that killed a U.S. contractor and raised fears of a regional war at the time.
Tehran and Baghdad want to avoid a similar escalation this time, nine sources said.
“The Iranians learned the lesson from the liquidation of Soleimani and they do not want to repeat it,” the senior Iraqi security source said.
“Comander Qaani’s visit was successful but not fully as not all Iraqi groups agreed to de-escalate,” a senior Iranian security official said.
Al-Nujaba, a small but very active group, said it would continue the attacks, noting that U.S. troops would never leave only by force.
It is not clear how long the truce will last. A group with several armed factions vowed to resume operations after the United States killed a senior leader in the Hezbollah Brigades, Abu Baqer al-Saadi, in Baghdad on February 7.
Al-Saadi was also a member of the Popular Mobilization Forces, an Iraqi security entity that includes mostly armed Shiite factions allied with Iran and fought ISIS, highlighting the extent to which armed factions allied with Iran overlap with the Iraqi state.
U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq in 2003 and toppled Saddam Hussein before withdrawing from Iraq in 2011.
However, Shiite armed factions that spent years attacking U.S. forces in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 fought on the same front against ISIS but without entering into a direct partnership with U.S. soldiers until the militant group was defeated in Iraq.
In subsequent years, rounds of mutual fighting with remnants of U.S. forces in Iraq intensified until the death of Soleimani and the engineer.
The killings of the two men prompted the Iraqi parliament to vote in favor of the exit of foreign forces from Iraq.
Government officials said Sudan’s government came to power in October 2022 on a pledge to implement that decision, although it was not considered a priority.
But the situation changed again with the start of the war in Gaza.
Dozens of attacks and many U.S. responses to them, including the killing of a senior leader of the Nujaba movement in Baghdad on Jan. 5, prompted the Sudanese to declare that the coalition had become a factor for instability in the region, announcing the start of talks to end its presence in Iraq.
However, it kept the door open for the continuation of the American presence but in a different form through a bilateral agreement.
Iraqi officials said they hoped the current calm would continue until talks, which are expected to take months, produce results.
The senior Hezbollah Brigades official and the military commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces, Abdulaziz al-Mohmedawi, pledged at the Saadi funeral to respond to the recent killing but did not announce a return to violence. He stated that the response would be based on consensus including with the government.
He said that “revenge (…) For Saadi, it will be the exit of all foreign forces from Iraq. And we’re not going to accept anything less.”
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