Any political change in Afghanistan can trigger broader geopolitical transformations in south Central and West Asia. Thus, the Taliban’s return in Afghanistan has disturbed many geopolitical calculations. Iran had played a vital role in overthrowing the Taliban in 2001 by sharing key intelligence input with the United States and showing its full support for the Northern Alliance, the main group opposing the Taliban. However, Iran is now facing a serious dilemma.

In the past, Iran competed with Pakistan by providing support to the Taliban’s opponents in Afghanistan during the 1990s. In particular, the Iranian regime supported the Shia Muslim minority’s participation of the larger anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. Iranian assistance was the bedrock of the Northern Alliance’s resistance to the Taliban. Other nations like Russia, India, and Turkey also joined Iran in backing the alliance.

The visit of Faiz Hameed, the chief of Pakistan’s ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), to Kabul to help finalize the composition of the interim government setup under the Taliban was not taken lightly by Iran. Iran’s foreign ministry statement criticizing Pakistan and the anti-Pakistan protests that followed in Tehran indicate that the nascent Taliban-Iran bonhomie, which was generated after Tehran recently participated in some conciliatory negotiations with the Taliban, is not going to last long.

Iran’s Discomfiture with Pakistan 

When the Taliban were busy taking control of the last Northern Alliance stronghold, the Panjshir Valley, the Iranian regime’s mouthpiece Tehran Times cited a United States Central Command (CENTCOM) source, which told FOX news that the Pakistan military was assisting the Taliban offensive in Panjshir. The report said that Pakistani assistance included 27 choppers loaded with Pakistani Special Forces, and that they were backed by Pakistani drones. Interestingly, in 2019, the Iranian Parliament had voted to put CENTCOM on its list of terrorist groups.

Iran’s former conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in an interview on August 3, 2021 with WION, an Indian news channel, heavily criticized Pakistan. He alleged, “Pakistani officers directly got involved in the war for Panjshir. I have a piece of advice for Pakistan. What happened in Afghanistan will soon expand and engulf Pakistan too. The countries which supported and designed this plot will face the consequences.”

Ahmadinejad called the Taliban’s rise to power in Afghanistan an international anti-human “satanic plot” by a few world powers – referring to the U.S. and the West in general. He further stated that the entire Taliban project is a violation of international law. According to him, the U.S., Russia, China, and Pakistan helped the Taliban. Ahmadinejad’s choice of an Indian media outlet to speak against Pakistan demonstrates Iran’s frustration about not getting a share in post-NATO Afghanistan as it had hoped.

Following this, Turkish, Azerbaijani, and Pakistani militaries launched their first-ever joint exercises in Baku on September 12, 2021. The drills were named “Three Brothers – 2021.” The joint exercises emphasized Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Pakistan’s roles in building peace, stability, and development in the Caspian Sea region.

Iran reacted with a sharp criticism and claimed that this would pose a danger to regional stability. In response, Iran held its own military drill on the Azerbaijan border on September 28. Now, Iran has worries that Afghanistan might join the “Three Brothers” in the future.

In fact, most of Iran’s harsh criticism in recent weeks has been directed at Pakistan and not against the Taliban. The selective attacks on Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan signify Iran’s displeasure with Pakistan’s growing profile both in geopolitics and diplomacy resulting from the Taliban takeover in Kabul.

Potential Troubles for Iran

Iran’s support of the overthrowing of the Taliban in Kabul in 2001 was due to its ideological rivalry with the then Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Iran also wanted to ensure that U.S. forces could not operate against it from Afghan soil. Tehran tried its best to help establish a friendly government in Afghanistan and avoided any semblance of a coalition with other regional actors, especially Pakistan and its arch-rival Saudi Arabia.

From 2017 onwards, Iran diverged from its initial anti-Taliban policy and started developing cordial ties with them in order to maintain pressure on the U.S. military forces on Iran’s borders, and to gain leverage against the U.S. forces and deter their efforts to intimidate their country.

It is true that the Taliban seem to have evolved from their first stint in power and their relations with Iran have improved markedly. Iran’s embassy remained functional after the Taliban takeover of Kabul on August 15. Iran is now among the few countries that the Taliban invited to their government inauguration ceremony.

Unlike Iran, the Taliban in Afghanistan have directly defeated the U.S. in an open battle and emerged victorious. Iran’s anti-American rhetoric perhaps lost some of its competitive sheen in the Muslim world. Above all, the gravest challenge to Islamist Iran will be Islamist Afghanistan. A Sunni emirate under the Taliban will posit itself as an ideological rival to the Shia imamate in Iran.

Iran fears that the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan after the stabilization phase will pose a challenge to the politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the region. Unlike the previous Kabul regime, the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate will not hesitate to criticize Iran’s regional policies.

The Chabahar Port in Iran, in which India had made considerable investments, will no longer be an alternative seaport to Pakistan’s Gwadar Port, built and controlled by the Chinese, as it was anticipated by Iranians some years ago. It was supposed to provide passage to Afghanistan by bypassing Pakistan. However, the current situation in Afghanistan has changed the game. The Taliban leadership seems more interested in utilizing the infrastructure built under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects in western Pakistan to link up the Afghan infrastructure network with the CPEC. This decision will definitely not sit well with the Iranians.

The Taliban have openly announced their preference for the CPEC extension to Afghanistan, which is both economically and logistically better from Afghanistan’s point of view. Kabul is very close to Peshawar, Kandahar is very close to Quetta. Herat remains the only major Afghan city close to Iran.

Iran’s endorsement of the Taliban, which started with the 2015 visit of a Taliban delegation, actually emanated from Tehran’s political compulsion as none of Afghanistan’s neighbors was willing to antagonize the Taliban by supporting the militias of the erstwhile Northern Alliance. Iran’s outcry started only after the fall of the Panjshir Valley.

The Taliban will make sure that powerful warlords will have no political future in Afghanistan. With this, Iran will lose its proxies on the ground, especially the Shia Hazara militia in Afghanistan. Unlike the period of the previous Kabul regime, when patrons of Afghan warlords enjoyed a huge sway in the government, the Taliban will not allow warlordism and will most certainly disarm all the militias. There is also the question of the existence of the Iranian-backed Fatemiyoun Brigade before the Tehran rulers. The Fatemiyoun Brigade mainly comprises the Hazara Shia minority of Afghanistan. Hazaras currently make up around 10% of Afghanistan’s total population of 38 million. It is highly possible that the Taliban will not tolerate the recruitment of their Hazara population for Iran’s proxy wars.

Although there is no immediate and direct threat to Iran from the Taliban rule in Afghanistan, the Taliban takeover of Kabul has in fact strengthened Pakistan’s geopolitical ascendance, which in turn will pose a direct challenge to Iran’s influence in many adjoining regions. New Afghanistan will tilt the balance of power in Pakistan’s favor and it will deepen Iran’s already tumultuous relations with Pakistan.

Despite being a fundamentalist Shia Islamist power, some may have been surprised to see Iran hosting the Sunni Islamist Taliban in Tehran and congratulating them over their victory in their 20-year war against the United States that finally saw Kabul back in the hands of the insurgents and the Joe Biden administration withdrawing all forces not long after. But it is precisely the Taliban’s military successes and their ability to inflict humiliating defeats against the U.S. that has Iran so overjoyed, rather than any particular affinity for the Taliban themselves.

Iran played a role in the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan

It is easy to forget considering Iran’s incessant rhetoric on being the spearhead of the so-called “Axis of Resistance”, but Tehran played a significant role in facilitating the invasions of both Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.

Far from being warm friends, Iran once considered going to war against Afghanistan in 1998 after the Taliban massacred not only hundreds of Hazara Shia but also managed to kill eight Iranian diplomats and a journalist at Tehran’s consulate in Mazar-i Sharif. Seeing an opportunity to avenge themselves against the Taliban, the Iranian regime provided military and intelligence support to the George W. Bush administration, helped the United States to topple the Taliban and force them out of power.

The Iranian regime then spent the better part of the first decade of the War on Terror agitating against drawing any distinction between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, insisting that the two ought to be considered inseparable from one another and deserving of the same powerful military response from Western powers.

However, once Tehran’s ambitions for nuclear weapons came under the spotlight and international pressure began to mount against them led by Washington, they suddenly changed their tune. Iran began to host Taliban fighters and commanders in Iran, extended some weapons and other supplies to the militants, and even tried to insert themselves into the Afghan peace process brokered by the Donald Trump administration in 2019.

It suddenly became in Iran’s interests to support the Taliban if only to ensure that the Afghan group could inflict continued losses against the United States and to apply pressure against Washington in the nuclear talks that were first started by Barack Obama, abandoned by Trump, and now being courted once again by Obama’s protégé and ideological successor Joe Biden. By supporting the Taliban’s military activities and providing shelter to its leadership and commanders, Iran was using the group to humiliate the Americans in Afghanistan and weaken their resolve against Tehran.

Up until that point in time, however, it is clear that Iran has never harbored any real love for the Taliban and has in fact fought them and opposed them since the 1990s.

The Iran-Taliban honeymoon didn’t last

It is perhaps unsurprising that a fundamentalist Shia regime would view the existence of a fundamentalist Sunni regime right across its border as being anathema to its national security interests. After all, and until very recently where they showed some softening, the Taliban have shown a very low tolerance to Shia minorities in Afghanistan and have perpetrated massacres against them.

Additionally, there is an ethnic element to Persian Iran’s dislike of the Taliban. While they do recruit from across the ethnic divide, the Taliban are predominantly Pashtuns and they have disputes with Persian-speaking nationalist groups, particularly the Tajiks of the Panjshir valley and surrounding areas. Only recently, Ahmad Massoud, the son of famed Soviet-era Afghan militia commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, launched a rebellion against Taliban rule with the assistance and urging of the Tajik former Vice President Amrullah Saleh.

That rebellion was swiftly crushed after offers by the Taliban to power share were rebuffed by Massoud and Saleh, but while the operation was still underway, Iran repeatedly made announcements that the Taliban’s campaign breached international law (without explaining how) and that the Taliban conquest of Panjshir was to be “condemned in the strongest terms”. Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad went so far as to implicate Pakistan in the Panjshir campaign and accused the U.S. of concocting a “Satanic plot” by surrendering power to the Taliban.

While it is still too early to get a precise read on what Iran intends for the Taliban, it knows that the new Afghan government is in dire need of international aid and recognition and so it may try to leverage this weakness against them. However, Iran’s allies in Panjshir have been all but wiped out, and its Shia Hazara militia proxies in the Fatemiyoun Brigades who served with such bloody distinction in killing Syrian civilians are also in no position to fight Afghanistan’s new rulers – at least not yet.

Tehran will therefore likely try to patiently wait for an opportunity to undermine the Taliban again, precisely as they did when they facilitated the U.S. invasion in 2001. They will agitate against them diplomatically by encouraging other states not to engage with them, and will attempt to foment domestic discord by pushing Afghanistan’s Shia minority to rebel while simultaneously offer political and military support to Persian-speaking ethnic minorities.

Obviously, the Taliban are not going to forget who the Iranians fundamentally are and their approach toward them since 1996. The marriage of convenience in order to eliminate the U.S.-led Western presence in Afghanistan is now at its end, and the honeymoon period did not last long at all. The Taliban will now be wary of Iranian subterfuge and will crackdown vigorously against any plot against them, perhaps forming a flashpoint for future conflict between the neighbouring countries.

Eighteen years after the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Iraqi Shiites are divided on the relationship between political power, ethnicity, and religious legitimation. However, one thing that is clear is that the greater majority of high-ranking Shiite religious scholars in Iraq support democracy. Peyman Eshaghi of Politics Today interviewed Dr. Ali Taher Elmemmud, associate professor of sociology at the University of Baghdad, on his book titled The Embers of Governance: Iraqi Shiites and Nation-State Building Challenges in the Post-2003 Era, Beirut, Darelrafidayn, 2017 [in Arabic].

Q. What is the inspiration and motivation behind this book? What is the inspiration and motivation behind this book?

This book was my doctoral dissertation. It took two years to write, and a passionate defense that lasted six and a half hours was held for it. This was because it was the only dissertation defended in the Faculty of Humanities and the Department of Sociology of Baghdad University on Shiism and state-building in Iraq. After that, of course, it took a year to turn the dissertation into a book.

Of course, I removed some theoretical aspects from the book, and it became more suitable for non-academic readers and researchers. To write the dissertation, I conducted field research for more than a year. I succeeded in conducting interviews with twenty notable personalities. It was very challenging to meet Iraqi high-ranking Shiite clerics, known as “Sources of Emulation,” and top political figures due to Iraq’s situation and the sensitivities surrounding the issue. Among them are Al-Sayyid Ali Al-Sistani, Sayyid Muhammad Saeed Al-Hakim, Muhammad Is’haq al-Fayadh, and Bashir Al-Najafi.

Talking to intellectuals was much easier, but as I said, interviewing leading religious figures in Iraq was more difficult. For example, I spent six months trying to interview a Shiite high-ranking religious scholar known as “Marja” (literally Source of Emulation) in Najaf.

Q. How did you conduct research for this book?

While examining the state-building by Shiites in Iraq after 2003, I tried to study the fundamental theories of state-nation building. But I soon realized that many of the approaches cited about Iraq do not reflect the realities of the country. Perhaps this is because most of the researchers who have worked in this field have been non-Iraqis or have not done fieldwork. It must be borne in mind that Iraq is a country with an ancient history and deep-rooted culture. Therefore, it is challenging to bring together all the affairs of Iraq and understand the country in terms of the relationship that the government has had with its people.

For example, Francis Fukuyama has written about state-building in Iraq, and British author Liora Lukitz has written another book on state-building in Iraq. In this book, Lukitz applies Anthony Smith’s theory of national identity to the case of Iraq. However, when we scrutinize the issue, we find that neither of the two writers has been able to consider and understand Iraq’s realities. These two “Western ways” of thinking could not comprehend the local complexities.

Since 2003, Iraqi Shiite Islamists have ruled with the same secular tools and way of thinking. Thus, it must be said that this is a new phenomenon in the course of Shiite political thought. In practice, no Shiite Islamist has tried to pass Islamic law in parliament since 2003. Personal status laws were never transformed into the “Islamic” ones. The budget law, one of the clauses of which imposes a tax on alcoholic beverages, which practically guarantees their free sale in Iraq, has never been criticized by a parliament whose majority is Shiite Islamists. They never tried to establish an Islamic institution called the government. Such things show that their Islamism enjoys a civil approach.

Although this approach is not Islamist in the conventional sense, it is not necessarily secular in the anti-religious sense. Instead, it respects religion without allowing religion to rule directly. Iraqi Shiite Islamists are in favor of a civil society, and Islamism for these Islamists is a belief in Islam and a personal commitment to it. In other words, Islamism is defined by performing a series of private acts of worship, observing sincerity and trustworthiness, and the like. Islamists have no purpose other than themselves and individual issues, and do not intend to lead society towards Islam.

Most of the Iraqi Shiites are following Ayatollah Sistani. However, they are not the only ones. Some Shiites are also openly secular in three types: first, liberal seculars represented by people like Ahmad Chalabi, who passed away a few years ago. Second, the national seculars who are represented in the political arena by politicians such as Ayad Allawi. The third group is the Communist seculars, represented by the Iraqi Communist Party.

Islamist Shiites are also made up of several groups. Most of them follow Ayatollah Sistani. The second group, which is smaller than the first group, is Muqtada al-Sadr. Religiously, they were following Sayyid Muhammad-Sadiq al-Sadr, Muqtada al-Sadr’s father, who was assassinated by state forces in 1999, and now they follow Muqtada al-Sadr. Muqtada is a nationalist figure who has never called for the formation of an Islamic-Shiite state since 2003. He has promoted religious, denominational, and cultural pluralism in Iraq, especially in recent years.

The third group of Shiite Islamists is loyal to the theory of velayat-e faqih (Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist). They follow Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, who resides outside Iraq in the Iranian capital of Tehran. These people are mainly affiliated with Iraqi militia groups. They have never dared to say that they want an Islamic or Shiite state since the fall of Saddam, but their approach is vividly focused on the Shiite identity and creating a Shiite ummah. In their view, the Shiite ummah ranges from the Hazaras of Afghanistan to Hezbollah in Lebanon. According to them, the leadership of this Shiite nation will be in Tehran.

The last group of Iraqi Shiites is supporters of Ayatollah Sayyid Sadiq al-Shirazi. They are much fewer in number than others. They are more focused on ritual issues, and they do not have a specific political program.

Iran has ushered in a new leader on August 5 as Ebrahim Raisi is sworn in as President. As the latest government takes the helm, they are faced with mounting pressure—both internally and externally. Countries around the world are facing mounting pressure in response to COVID19 and struggling economies (especially in Emerging Markets). In my previous article, I covered several of them, but given the current events in the Middle East, it is important to do a deeper dive on the inner workings of Iran.

President Raisi is a vocal anti-Western cleric and currently sanctioned by the U.S. for human rights abuses. His hardline political stance makes it very unlikely that protests will stop within the country; if anything, they will increase in frequency. Iran has made some headway in negotiations on a new deal with the West, but key differences remain, and given the new shift in governments, the lack of compromise and differing ideologies makes a new deal unlikely.

The U.S. and allies have maintained strategic assets in the region even as the U.S. looks to reduce personnel and equipment there. Even as some adjustments are made, the U.S. is maintaining a presence, with the USS Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group and USS Iwo Jima, as well as other military capabilities throughout the Middle East at strategic points.

So, while the numbers may diminish, the coalition’s ability to respond to threats remains in place. The elevated presence of naval capacity is meant to maintain safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital region for trade and choke point in the global supply chain. This is a place that has seen an increase in hostilities as Iran tries to flex its muscle and project power on the international stage.

Recently, two maritime events took place. The IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) boarded the Asphalt Princess (a Panama flagged vessel) in the Gulf of Oman, but their plan was foiled by nearby coalition forces and the ship’s crew disabling the engines. The armed men escaped on another vessel as several naval ships approached the area. This closely follows an alleged Iranian attack against a different vessel—Mercer Street (owned by a Japanese company but operated by one out of Israel)—off the coast of Oman, which was struck by a drone, killing a British and Romanian crew member.

As economic pressures mount and local support wanes, the Iranian government will face more questions from proxies regarding funding and underlying allegiance. By striking outward, it provides a show of force and a deterrent to local protests, while trying to create a unified external enemy. The problem is: the issues internally have reached a breaking point, and these actions will only serve to further rally the masses against the government.

The lack of infrastructure investment is on display with the current water shortage that is starving crops and driving more animosity against the government. Their political future is nearly impossible to predict, but a major shift will most likely happen over the next 24 months. It’s doubtful that a deal with Iran will take place in 2021, but to show strength and solidarity with their proxies, attacks will remain prevalent throughout the region. A deal is possible once the government feels more pressure from the local populace—they will try to do anything to stay in power, but by that point it will be too late.

The water shortage in Iran is just compounding existing problems and providing a spark for further protests against their living conditions.

The most recent pressure point is the shortage of water throughout large parts of the country, with the most recent flashpoint occurring in Khuzestan. The Ahwaz (Minority Arabs: 2% of Iran’s Population) kicked off protests in Khuzestan, which quickly spread into Lorestan and Tehran. The water shortage is just compounding existing problems and providing a spark for further protests against their living conditions. The Ahwaz sit on large parts of Iran’s Oil and Gas reserves, which is arguably some of the most mineral rich acreage in the world.

This has always been a source of contention as they live in an area facing pollution, dust storms, dried up wetlands, and extreme poverty—even though their land is worth billions. They have previously called for a separatist movement, but current protests are more focused on water shortages and underlying economic conditions. But the international sanctions (limiting foreign aid), weak harvest, and economic struggles are also a big source of anger that is culminating—the water shortage is just the rallying cry. Instead of responding with water, the government sent military equipment and personnel that have used live fire on protestors to disperse rallies resulting in civilian deaths.

The IRGC used the excuse of guns and military equipment moving across the Iraq-Iran border to bring such force into the mix. There have also been blackouts across parts of the country due to overwhelmed capacity from searing heat, but also driven by government actions to stop the protests. They have even gone so far as to cut the internet for periods of time to stop the spread of information on rallies and government actions against protestors. But nothing seems to stem the tide of anger throughout the country. The government wants to control the narrative, but they have been losing control slowly over the last two decades, and it has only accelerated throughout the last five years.

The Ahwaz are not the only ones impacted by rampant droughts; poor water management and aging infrastructure has plagued Iran’s system for years.

The Ahwaz are not the only ones impacted by rampant droughts; poor water management and aging infrastructure has plagued Iran’s system for years. Now, as Lake Urmia and the Karun River dry up, the failure of managing reservoirs and groundwater becomes a huge sticking point. Some of the water has been shifted to farmland and cattle, but previous farmland in Khuzestan is facing severe drought, with other sources diverted inland and away from normal flow patterns. Opening dams would provide a short-term respite but create broader shortfalls in cities such as Isfahan and surrounding provinces.

Along with Khuzestan, Sistan and Baluchestan are also seeing an uptick in protests and riots against the current government. The Iranian people have carried out many protests over the years, but they have always been met with violent suppression (many of them led by Qasem Soleimani, the head of the IRGC’s Quds Force). The death of Soleimani has eliminated the mastermind behind successful tactics within and outside their borders. He is responsible for the deaths of many U.S. soldiers and Iranian civilians while in control. Soleimani was an enemy to many, but his whereabouts and movements were typically shrouded in mystery—the Quds Force is a clandestine unit.

The populace has been turning away from the government over time, but the shooting down of the Ukraine flight in July 2020, the handling of COVID19, the new deal with China, and now severe drought have pushed people beyond their breaking point. Iran and India have been friends and allies for over a thousand years, and part of the China deal stipulated that India had to be “expelled” from current and future deals with Iran. India has built refiners specifically for their crude and has deals in place to build roads, rails, ports, and oil and gas exploration that was temporarily paused (but not stopped) when the U.S. sanctions came back into play.

The U.S. even turns a blind eye to some shipments of Iranian crude heading into India. After the Ukraine plane was shot down, the local Iranians stopped walking on Israeli and U.S. flags that were painted on the ground, with some even getting rid of them all together—symbolically showing that they were no longer eager to “trample on” and disrespect these countries. The U.S. also set up humanitarian aid through the Swiss Embassy during the COVID19 pandemic to show solidarity and support for the local populace.

The attacks on international assets cost money and move them farther away from striking a deal with the U.S. and Europe. The constant funnel of money to proxies is also a drain, as coalition forces hit sensitive Iranian and proxy targets throughout the regions. This only compounds the shortfalls created by sanctions, causing the Iranian government to run short on money (and time!) as the populace turns against them. This is on full display as intelligence leaks like a sieve from Iran and high-value targets continue to be eliminated.

Today, June 18, a 59,310,307-strong Iranian electorate, including 1,392,148 new voters, are voting to elect their eighth president. Although there are many uncertainties and problems awaiting Iran in domestic and foreign politics, it is almost certain that Sayyid Ebrahim Raisi, a conservative cleric who has spent most of his career in judicial posts and serves as the head of Iran’s judiciary since 2019, will be the country’s new president. Raisi’s first bid for presidency was in the last presidential elections in 2017 against Rouhani.

Although Rouhani won the elections by a landslide victory (57.14%), Raisi’s 38.28% wasn’t negligible either. Unsurprisingly Raisi has been given a second chance to run for president but this time in a well-engineered election which, some of the critics say, is “stage-managed.” For this, they blame the Guardian Council whose long record of election-engineering has a very bad reputation.

For the people, despite the people?

Although, from a technical point of view, Iran has a well-functioning electoral system, the disqualifications by the country’s election watchdog always create a problem. As in every election, the council once again disqualified many potential candidates, including some of the most influential figures. Although as many as 592 people applied for candidacy, on May 17, the council shortened the list of potential candidates to 40. Then, on May 25, only seven candidates were allowed to run for president.

The former speaker of the Iranian parliament Ali Larijani, former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Rouhani’s vice president Eshaq Jahangiri were also barred from running in the election stirring up a heated debate. Mohsen Rezaei, a former leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards and the current secretary of the Expediency Council, Abdolnaser Hemmati, former head of Iran’s Central Bank under Rouhani, and Amir Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, a conservative politician, became Raisi’s rivals.

Iran’s ruling establishment did everything possible to fix a safe victory for Raisi for internal and external reasons.

Two of the conservative candidates, Saeed Jalili and Alireza Zakani, withdrew from the elections along with the reformist Mohsen Mehralizadeh. In a word, Iran’s ruling establishment did everything possible to fix a safe victory for Raisi for internal and external reasons.

Iran is led by 82-year-old Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, and there are different scenarios for the post-Khamenei period where Raisi has a key role. Khamenei became Iran’s president when he succeeded Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, and some believe that his past can be Raisi’s future. A successful presidential term can help introduce Raisi to the Iranian public.

At the same time and importantly, Raisi is accused of an alleged role in the mass executions of opposition prisoners – mostly suspected members of the proscribed People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran – in the late 1980s, and was put on the list of the sanctioned Iranian officials by the U.S. in November 2019 due to alleged human rights abuses.

Raisi is also sanctioned by the European Union. But inside the country, he casts himself as an austere figure and an anti-corruption champion of the poor, and makes repeated promises to battle unrelentingly against poverty and corruption. Given Iran’s economic problems, which worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the depressing pressure on low-income Iranians, it is no wonder that people are paying a lot of attention to the economic promises.

Apparently, the Iranian regime believes that a good part of the public is ready to compromise their democratic rights to ease the economic pressure on the country. This can work in the short run. Nevertheless, democratic practices will decide the fate of the country in one way or another, and Raisi’s election will have more than domestic consequences.

Wither Iran’s foreign policy?

Iran urgently needs to reach a common ground in the ongoing bilateral negotiations with the U.S. in Vienna in order to have the sanctions lifted. Trump’s sanctions, which he imposed on Iran following his withdrawal from the nuclear deal in May 2018, have brought Iran to its knees. Although the two countries, along with China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany which still stick to the deal, will obviously reach an agreement, the management of the negotiation process by Iran is less obvious.

The difficulty lies in making a face-saving deal without giving the image of compromising against “the enemy,” to wit the U.S., which conservatives accuse the Rouhani government of doing. But this is easier said than done considering the U.S. insistence on bringing Iran’s missile program to the negotiation table.

The same holds true for Iran’s relations with China. In March 2021, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi signed a road map in Tehran for a “25-year strategic cooperation pact” which would enhance bilateral cooperation between China and Iran in various fields. It is now up to the next Iranian government to negotiate this road map and turn it into a practical deal.

In the meantime, the new Iranian president will also have to attend to regional issues that are of concern to Iran, particularly Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Syria. Although laying down and revising the guiding principles of Iran’s foreign policy are prerogatives of the supreme leader, who makes up his mind after a series of complex consultations with certain official bodies and figures, their realization is carried out by the government. There are advantages and disadvantages for Iran in each of these regional issues, but given the growing regional pressure, there is no more time to lose.

The future of Turkey-Iran relations is important to mention. Although the economic relations between the two countries have never reached the expected levels, Iran is a principal energy supplier for Turkey whereas Iran imports a lot of Turkish goods. However, political relations are rather tense. Turkey’s frustration stemming from Rouhani’s reluctance to reach a reasonable and sustainable solution to the Syrian crisis is not a secret.

Iran’s position on Turkey’s fight against PKK-PYD terror has been even more disheartening. So, the elections come at a critical juncture in the bilateral relations. It would be misleading to expect Raisi to follow entirely different policies vis-à-vis Turkey, but a conservative Iranian government is more encouraging to talk real business.

It is too early to say whether the talks will produce any tangible outcomes. But the current circumstances make it impossible to have a problem-free scenario in the future. The two countries will either improve their mutual understanding and cooperation in Iraq and Syria or will look to other partners. Thus, Turkey is one of the countries which follows the Iranian elections closely.

Iraq has often been likened to a mafia state and a kleptocracy. It has the semblance of democracy through fairly regular elections, and the trappings of a judiciary and security forces serving the interests of the nation by “fighting terrorism” and “ensuring justice is served”, as Iraqi politicians often like to pontificate in an attempt to polish their credentials as public servants.

In reality, however, Iraq has become the playground for Iran-sponsored Shia jihadist groups and militias who control every kind of industry imaginable, from a Shia clergy-backed illicit sex trade that sells girls as young as 9-years-old, to a drug trafficking cartel that controls Iraq’s porous borders with Iran and smuggles copious amounts of narcotics.

Regular Iraqis who have had their lives upended by the incessant criminality and who have had their hopes for a bright future dashed by these gangs and terrorist organizations know that Iran’s insidious influence is responsible. Although they have come out in protest several times, such open dissent is often extremely deadly, with activists facing assassination and worse.

A recent spate of political assassinations

This month alone, several well-known activists and political dissidents have been killed, with the state either complicit in the slayings or else powerless to prevent these powerful militias from murdering the Iraqi citizens it is supposed to protect.

In the first week of May, Ihab al-Wazni, a leader of the protest movements in Karbala, was gunned down outside his home. Surveillance footage showed several masked men on motorcycles close in on Wazni before strafing him in a hail of gunfire, killing him on the scene.

The militants had finally killed the prolific activist, himself a Shia Arab, after attempting to do so in December 2019 just after the most recent protest movement first began in earnest. Wazni narrowly escaped an attempt on his life which tragically led to the death of his friend and co-organiser Fahem al-Tai. Wazni was dropping Tai off at his home, also in Karbala, when again masked gunmen opened fire leading to Wazni barely escaping death while Tai was not so fortunate and was killed outside his home.

The assassination of Wazni was followed 24 hours later with the attempted murder of journalist Ahmad Hassan who was shot in the head as he arrived home in Diwaniyah. Hassan has undergone brain surgery and remains in critical condition at a Baghdad hospital with his family fearing further retaliation against him and them due to his criticism of the authorities and militia violence against unarmed demonstrators.

Over the weekend, a candidate in the upcoming elections was also assassinated, again by suspected Iran-backed militants. Hashem al-Mashhadani, a Sunni candidate in Baghdad for the Azm Coalition led by businessman Khamis al-Khanjar, was killed last Saturday less than five months before elections are due to take place. Khanjar described the assassination as “a dangerous message” designed to undermine the democratic process by putting candidates in fear of their lives.

These assassinations and murders have led Al-Beit Al-Watani, or the National House bloc, a political group which emerged out of the protest movement, to boycott the elections set to take place in October this year. The party has demanded that the killers responsible be brought to justice before the electoral process can be taken seriously. Obviously, this is not a controversial position for them to adopt, particularly considering the last election in 2018 attracted an embarrassing 44.5 percent turnout, placing enormous doubts on the credibility of Iraq’s democratic process.

Shia jihadism undermines democracy

It is no secret that Karbala, Diwaniyah, Baghdad, and all major Iraqi cities are crawling with pro-Iran Shia militants. While the protest movements in Iraq were primarily Sunni-led until the rise of the Daesh terror group in 2014 (itself a consequence of sectarian Shia Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s violent suppression of protests), since Daesh’s defeat and the recapture of Mosul in 2017, most demonstrations have been led by the Shia.

The authorities in Baghdad blamed all of Iraq’s economic, security, and political woes on Sunni terrorist organizations, including Al-Qaeda, but after they declared victory in 2017, the common Iraqi Shia began to lose patience with the government for its total lack of services, corruption, and its subservience to Tehran’s interests and diktats. This ultimately led to a number of crises, including the total poisoning of Basra’s water supply due to systemic negligence, continued electricity shortages despite Iraq’s massive energy wealth, and rampant corruption that has drained Iraq of at least $150 billion since 2003, destroyed the economy, and the people’s hopes for a brighter future.

Realizing that the problems faced by the country could not solely be attributed to terrorist organisations, and having finally felt fed up of the government blaming everyone but the corrupt politicians who serve the national interests of Iran rather than Iraq, the Shia Arabs took to the streets in heretofore unheard of mass demonstrations in the Shia-dominant south.

These protesters knew who to blame. Aside from torching the offices of several Shia Islamist parties, the demonstrators have repeatedly set fire to diplomatic buildings including consulates belonging to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Anti-Iran sentiment is at the highest it has been likely since the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, a war in which many Shia Iraqis gave their lives to prevent Iraq from being occupied by Iranian forces after Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, ordered an invasion of their country in 1982.

What this demonstrates is that there is now a new kind of Iraqi nationalism forming, and it is a nationalism that is largely based on opposition to corruption engendered by malignant Iranian interference. By trampling over human rights, the rule of law, and the rights of Iraqi citizens to live with dignity and economic opportunity, Iran and its Shia proxies have inadvertently created perhaps their worst enemy yet. Rather than that enemy being a terrorist organization, it is instead the Iraqi people themselves and, as such, it is only a matter of time before they topple the corrupt state that has made their lives a living misery since 2003.

Salim Ayyash, a Lebanese citizen and a member of the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, was placed on the United States Department of State’s Rewards for Justice program a month ago. A bounty amounting to $10 million dollars, for any information on his whereabouts was announced on March 29. A few claims stood out from the U.S. Rewards for Justice Department statement.

First off, that Ayyash is “a senior operative in the assassination unit—Unit 121—of the terrorist organization Lebanese Hezbollah,” as per the department’s wording. Also, the statements claimed that the “[U]nit receives its orders directly from Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.” Lastly, the statement is said to be offering a reward for “information leading to preventing him from engaging in an act of international terrorism against a U.S. person or U.S. property.”

The last claim is particularly important but shall be addressed later.

In a televised interview with the American CNBC business news channel earlier this week, the 77th Maronite Catholic Patriarch of Antioch, and head of the Maronite Church, Lebanese Patriarch Mar Bechara Boutros al-Rahi pulled no punches in describing Hezbollah. Al-Rahi clearly labeled the group as an “Iranian military force in Lebanon to combat Israel.”

The Patriarch went on to say that “Hezbollah shouldn’t remain free in using arms whenever and wherever he wants and shouldn’t be capable of deciding wars in Israel, in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen, with disregard to the government, the president and the parliament.” In recent months, al-Rahi’s rhetoric against Hezbollah has become more aggressive in congruence with the debilitated political and economic situation in the country.

While those two events are distinct, there is a vector of causality that connects what Ayyash represents and the Patriarch’s recent statements. However, a crucial caveat must be inserted in this case as the Patriarch’s statements should be taken with a grain of salt.

Avenging the Commander

While we are oblivious to the science behind the U.S.’ reward system, common sense stipulates: the heftier the reward, the more important and dangerous the operative may be. In this case Ayyash is no newcomer to the local and international political and security scene. In fact, Ayyash was unanimously sentenced in absentia, back in December 2020, by the Hague-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon to five counts of life in prison over the “intentional homicide of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri with premeditation.”

Following years of independent investigation and an international trial, Ayyash was proven guilty in intentionally assassinating Lebanon’s own ex-Prime Minister. In this context, it is important to underline that Ayyash’s reward is equal to none except that of Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abd-al-Rahman al-Mawla, the current leader of the “Islamic State.”

Even the reward of Abubakar Shekau, who is the leader of the terrorist group “Boko Haram,” responsible for scores of atrocities committed over the past year, did not amount to that of Ayyash’s—equivalent to $7 million.

In a 6-week period, Thompson accessed “dozens of files concerning human intelligence sources, including true names, personal identification data, background information,” and photographs of the sources. Meaning, Thompson’s actions took place during the escalatory trend between the administration of former U.S. president Donald Trump and the regime in Tehran, which played out on Iraq’s own soil towards the end of 2019.

Thompson was activated only a couple of days before the assassination of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps—Quds Force Commander, Qassim Soleimani on January 3, 2020.

Thompson was activated only a couple of days before the assassination of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps—Quds Force Commander, Qassim Soleimani on January 3, 2020 when a drone strike at the road leading to the Baghdad International Airport took out his convoy.

As such, the revealed information leads us to two conclusions, with the first being that Thompson’s “alleged” activation ahead of Soleimani’s killing, as per the court case, could possibly lend credence to the first justification, among the many other shifting ones, Trump’s administration gave for killing Soleimani. At the time, members of the Trump administration said that Soleimani, posed an “imminent threat” to American lives, only to be met with cynicism especially from the Democratic Party camp during the 2020 U.S. elections.

However, Thompsons’ “mission,” which spanned for 6-weeks, was meant to offer information that will allow Iran to avenge Soleimani’s killing. While the second conclusion signals Hezbollah’s clear-cut involvement in collecting the information on U.S. personnel—most probably operatives—in the Middle East, in what appears to be complicity with Iran in its attempt to avenge the killing of Soleimani.

While it isn’t clear whether Ayyash was to carry out an attack against U.S. personnel or property, as stated in the “Rewards for Justice” announcement, or whether those attacks were imminent, one cannot but pause and ponder the question of why would Hezbollah, a presumably self-styled Lebanese resistance, spy on the U.S. on behalf of Iran? How does avenging the killing of Soleimani serve the interest of Lebanon and its citizens? And why would Hezbollah get involved, while Lebanon—the group’s supposed homeland— has enough to deal with given the unprecedented economic and financial meltdown and a near full bankruptcy, which the party itself often blames on the so-called “U.S.’ siege of Lebanon.”

Of course, reasons for Lebanon’s economic demise are way more complicated than what is attributed by Hezbollah or other Lebanese sectarian parties, but what needs to be stated is that the financial collapse, is first and foremost, homemade. Meanwhile, an answer to the questions posed above lies in the organic nature of the group and its relationship with Tehran, which is often misconstrued, either due to lack of understanding or for propaganda purposes.

Intelligence Apparatus Turned Political Party

A sweeping majority of Hezbollah’s supporters often present the group to be “an ‘independent’ resistance movement that has grown into a regional power in its own right.”  The idea serves to relieve Hezbollah from the “proxy” label, which is often raised by the group’s opponents kinetically leading to questioning on the group’s allegiance and ulterior motives.

Yet, while the proxy claim holds some truth, reality is not what those supporters intend to project. The relationship between the group and Tehran is not an “interdependent symbiosis between close allies.” In fact, Hezbollah was first conceived by Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, Iran’s ambassador to Damascus in 1982, following years he had spent in Lebanon training with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) ahead of the revolution in Iran.

According to Iranian writer Arash Azizi’s book ‘The Shadow Commander’, “based on the IRGC’s model, Hezbollah was put together by merging different Shiite armed groups as part of an Iranian transnational Shiite network aimed to represent the external influence of the newly formed Islamic republic and an export-model of its revolution.

More so, Iran assumed the role of the patron, for it would decide on everything important and would arbiter differences.” Azizi adds that “[D]ebates over the degree of Iranian sponsorship of Hezbollah sometimes fail, shockingly, to mention this fact: A majority of the party’s body of leadership consisted of Iranian officials and its composition had been decided upon in Tehran, not Beirut. There was no question about who was calling the shots.”

The group’s Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah, did not only confirm the organic nature between Dahyeh, Beirut’s southern suburb which acts as Hezbollah stronghold, and Tehran, but he doubled down on that idea back in June 2016 when he aggressively claimed in a televised speech that, “we are open about the fact that Hezbollah’s budget, its income, its expenses, everything it eats and drinks, its weapons and rockets, are from the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

According to Iranian writer Arash Azizi’s book ‘The Shadow Commander’, “[D]ebates over the degree of Iranian sponsorship of Hezbollah sometimes fail, shockingly, to mention this fact: A majority of the party’s body of leadership consisted of Iranian officials and its composition had been decided upon in Tehran, not Beirut. There was no question about who was calling the shots.”

Nevertheless, this must not be mistaken with how senior of a role Nasrallah plays in the regime’s political and theological hierarchy in Tehran. Following the assassination of Soleimani, Nasrallah is said to have been asked to play his role, especially in Iraq, and to organize the Iran-aligned Iraqi factions.

Iran has witnessed many unsettling protests in the last few years. The more recent protests are not only against economic hardships, worsening living conditions, high inflation, youth unemployment, and economic mismanagement but also show people’s frustration with the ruling establishment’s hardline ideology.

It seems that Iranians now consider an overhaul of the system as the only way out of the problems they are facing. The killing of Iran’s Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani by the U.S. military in January 2020 could only provide temporary relief to the Iranian government.

Last year was one of the worst years since Iran’s revolution overthrew the pro-American shah in 1979. Nationwide protests, harsh U.S.-led sanctions, targeted killings of top Iranian officials, and global turmoil as a result of the pandemic battered Iran in 2020.

The change in the U.S. administration brought some positive news for the country in 2021, yet the upcoming Iranian presidential elections in June may incite the disenchanted population to new street protests.

A large number of Iranians who were unhappy with the shah’s iron-fisted feudal authoritarianism are now disenchanted with the clerical system of governance established by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The pattern of Iranian protests suggests that every ten years there is a big crisis. Major protests have taken place in 1989, 1999, 2009, and have been mostly against the deteriorating economic conditions. Since 2016, street protests in Iran have been more frequent and more widespread.

A trend has emerged that after every violent anti-government protest there are always huge pro-revolution rallies backed by state institutions to show both the outside world and an internal audience that the regime is in full control.

Though it is always easy to organize mass pro-establishment rallies with the help of the state apparatus, there are clear signs that it’s a deeply divided and polarized country.

Between hope and despair

A single generation of Iranians has experienced two extremes within their country.  Under the shah, the brutal SAVAK secret police used to tear off the veils and chadors of conservative women forcibly and did not allow them to practice their religion in public. After the 1979 Revolution, first there was the Komiteh (Committees of Islamic Revolution) and now there is the Gasht-e-Ershad (Morality police).

In the new setup, women are forced to cover themselves and men are also regulated to ensure they wear modest clothes and have “decent” hairstyles. Both the forced secularization during the time of the shah and the forced religiosity by the revolutionary government have made many Iranians rebellious.

Iran transformed in a short period of time from a bastion of Western-style secularism to a state ruled by a supreme cleric who is ready to relinquish power to the 12th Hidden Imam whose time of return is uncertain.

After getting rid of the shah, who in 1953 became an absolute monarch after the ousting of Mohammad Mosaddegh in a coup engineered by Anglo-American leaders, for the last four decades, Iranians are ruled by a system of propaganda and deception.

The clerical establishment and their supporters replaced the old corrupt Westernized elites of Iran. The new elites proved to be equally ruthless – if not so corrupt. Today, Iranians have realized that those who promised to create a system of governance that will pave the way of the early coming of the Hidden Imam have fooled them.

It seems that the quick remodeling of Iranian society in a short period of time was against the natural process of societal transformation. After successfully overthrowing the shah, most Iranians were not ready for the new system. However, they adopted it in the hope of a rapid improvement in their lives.

The ordinary Iranians who uprooted the shah were made to believe that the rule of the Vilayat-e-Faqih (Supreme Leader) would transform their country into an ideal Islamic state. Such high expectations actually made people desperate for the rapid transformation of their country into this ideal state. When people realized that the promise of such a state was not possible with the current leadership, the system came under strain and popular protests followed.

It is true that Iran has faced crippling sanctions and Western hostility in the last four decades and this has hurt the government’s efforts to improve living standards. The U.S.-led Western bloc continues to wage an economic war against Iran. Anglo-American egos have made it harder for the West to digest the ousting of their favorite puppet in a strategically important region.

Meanwhile, the Iranian regime has harmed itself by insisting on pursuing a sectarian agenda and the self-defeating philosophy of a “neither East, nor West Islamic Republic.” As a matter of principle, such thinking is against Islam’s broad and inclusive humanitarian vision.

However, from the point of view of pure geopolitics, countries like Russia and China are pleased with the Iranian approach to world affairs. Indeed, Anglo-American hostility has made Iran more dependent on Russia and China.

Exporting revolution to consolidate domestic power

The post-revolution government in Tehran under Ayatollah Khomeini asked people to export the revolution. The first country he chose was Shia-majority Iraq, where Ayatollah Khomeini had spent many years during his exile under the shah’s rule. Ironically, Iran failed to export its revolution to Iraq throughout the 1980-1988 war but managed to turn Iraq into an enclave of its authority after the chaos created by the U.S. invasion of 2003.

Iraq, especially its Shia majority, now finds itself caught in a situation where the Iranian revolutionary fervor has crippled its institutions. Public resentment is growing against Iranian control of Iraqi society.

The Iranian ruling establishment hatched plans to export its revolution to every country with a sizable Shia population. They saw potential in Lebanon, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, and even in faraway Nigeria. The money, manpower, and natural resources that won Iran four regional capitals — Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, and Sanaa — have drained Iran’s capacity to serve its own growing population.

It has been almost two decades since the United States led a coalition of Western powers to invade and occupy Iraq, on the promise to the world of ending former dictator Saddam Hussein’s purported Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) program, and the pledge to the Iraqi people that only they would be the masters of their own fates.

In the ensuing years, Iraq has not emerged as a bastion of democracy in an almost uniformly undemocratic Arab world as was initially promised, but instead it has become a warning to others about the destructive potential of divisive politics, sectarianism, and allowing the politics of revenge to gain pre-eminence over the national interest.

Like many modern nation-states, Iraq’s population is composed of a pastiche of different peoples, cultures, and religions. This is as a natural result of centuries, even millennia, of population migrations, wars and conquests, and, increasingly in the modern day, globalization.

While this can in many ways be a blessing for a nation, it can also create some stark divides that are exploited by unscrupulous politicians and external powers who seek to sow discord and strife within a country to ensure that it is always under the boot.

It is unsurprising that a country as rich in resources, geostrategic importance, and as diverse as Iraq, which is ethnically, culturally, and religiously varied, would be the target for the divisive and bloody politics of sectarianism.

Iran’s self-proclaimed “Islamic Revolution” that began in 1979 was forcibly confined within Iran’s own borders and the dream of a Shia Islamic state fizzled away in the face of the Iraqi armed forces.

Iraq’s present political elite are largely those who heeded the call of the former administration of George W. Bush in 2002 and attended the London Hilton to form an official “Iraqi opposition” to support the invasion of their own country by a foreign interloper. These people were not only backed by the United States, but also by Iran, which may strike many as interesting considering the history of enmity between the two powers.

However, if there was one thing Washington and Tehran could agree on, it was that they needed a broken, weak, and shattered Iraq that was incapable of defending itself or pursuing its own interests. It was not simply the case that Saddam had to go, but the very concept of a sovereign Iraq had to be dismantled and destroyed, never to rise and stand on its own feet again.

In Iran’s case, this is simply because Iraq had, and after eight long years of war, forced the Islamic Republic’s founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to sign an embarrassing ceasefire in 1988. Iran’s self-proclaimed “Islamic Revolution” that began in 1979 was forcibly confined within Iran’s own borders and the dream of a Shia Islamic state fizzled away in the face of the Iraqi armed forces.

Iraq was thus seen as the bulwark against any Iranian plan to export their revolution and further destabilize a region that was still suffering from the effects of rampant misplaced nationalism born of European colonization in the aftermath of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.

Although the stated objective of the United States and its allies was to disarm Iraq, ensure Saddam Hussein could never develop WMDs, and as a punitive mission to stop Saddam’s support for terrorist organizations including Al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of the 9/11 terror attacks, the reality was far different.

In reality, and as became blindingly clear, all of the reasons for invading Iraq turned out to be false and based on lies. In Britain, this scandal became known as former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s “Dodgy Dossier”, a file packed to the gills with lies, mistruths, and red herrings designed to mislead the British public. Not only was Iraq effectively contained since the Gulf War concluded in 1991, but it had no WMDs and certainly did not support Al-Qaeda.

Even worse, it has engendered brutal sectarian violence and produced such politicians as former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki who has gained infamy as one of Iraq’s most sectarian Shia Islamist politicians and ruled the country between 2006 and 2014.

According to international rights monitor Amnesty International, Maliki frequently abused counterterrorism laws to target Sunnis, imprisoned and tortured many, and his administration used rape and sexual violence against female relatives of inmates as a way of forcing false confessions leading to their executions. Alongside his open support for violent, unofficial Shia armed groups and death squads, Maliki’s actions directly led to the rise of the ISIS (DAESH) terror group in 2014.

However, even after ISIS’s defeat in 2017 and Maliki’s departure from the most powerful office in the land, there appear to be no signs of the Shia and pro-Iran dominated government’s let up against the Sunni population.

Sunni cities are still a mess of rubble and destruction that have not been rebuilt since ISIS was defeated, and the closure of refugee camps for internally displaced people have forced children to live amongst bombs and corpses.

Further, and just last month, the United Nations expressed concern over how Sunni prisoners faced “imminent executions” on the basis of hasty convictions on terror charges in trials marred by irregularities and no access to fair hearings.

There can be no doubt that the primary purpose of such executions, discrimination, and disenfranchisement is to ensure that Iraq’s Sunni population can never again be an organized political force. A succession of Shia Islamist prime ministers has consistently backed policies that seek to keep the Sunnis down, blaming an entire segment of the population for the actions of Saddam.

However, as Maliki’s foolish policymaking proved, the politics of revenge does nothing to alleviate any threat to the nation-state but in fact exacerbates it and could easily lead to a resurgence of violent groups such as ISIS coming to the fore again.

Such an outcome will prove that the Iraqi elite has learned nothing since 2003 and certainly not since ISIS was defeated in 2017, and they will only have themselves to blame when they radicalize yet another generation of the downtrodden against them.