“He makes it sound like Iran invaded Iraq and stormed the U.S. embassy. “
Iran organizes and supplies these Iraqi “militias”. Many are the same as those who killed 4,000 US military in Iraq with roadside bombs and sneak attacks of every sort.
To stop it, Iran must be under military pressure.
Buy THAT nonsense.
In the meantime, the embassy should be vacated and all U.S. ties to Iraq severed until there is peace and quiet there for 12 consecutive months.
This wasn’t a “militia” that attacked the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. It was an unruly mob of Iraqis ... and they stormed the embassy after the Iraqi prime minister condemned the recent U.S. air strikes against Shi’ite militia groups in Iraq.
“He makes it sound like Iran invaded Iraq and stormed the U.S. embassy. “
“Iran organizes and supplies these Iraqi “militias”. Many are the same as those who killed 4,000 US military in Iraq with roadside bombs”
It is Iran’s policy to establish surrogate Shi’ite militias in countries around the region, to subvert them, and eventually take over. They did it first with Hizbollah (The Party of Allah) in Lebanon; and are very far advanced in doing that in Iraq and Syria as well.
The very militia at issue here (Kata’ib Hizbollah - the Hizbollah Brigades) has long been directly paid and commanded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force - their foreign Legion of local surrogate militias, all commanded by IRGC Major General Qassim Suleimani.
Kata’ib Hizbollah members are paid full time salaries by Iran, and trained by Iranian Military and IRGC personnel. They were used early after the American liberation of Iraq from the Ba’ath Party, as death squads to assassinate former Ba’ath Party war criminals, and political rivals hostile to Iran’s interests (as well as anyone threatening the criminal rackets they used for fundraising).
Later, Kata’ib Hizbollah members were trained and organized into more regular military units, and began being used to attack American occupation forces with snipers, IEDs, mortars and rockets.
When Iran got heavily involved in supporting the Assad Regime in Syria’s civil war, Kata’ib Hizbollah along with Iran’s other surrogate militias around the region took another big step in developing into an openly standing conventional military force, deploying Battalion and Brigade-sized formations for combat operations in Syria (some are still there today).
The Kata’ib Hizbollah and several other Iranian controlled militias within Iraq received a major boost in official recognition/acceptance during the great war against ISIS (the battle of Mosul was the biggest urban battle since Stalingrad, which was the deadliest battle in all of human history). During the war against ISIS, Iran’s surrogate militias were accepted with other militias (like Kurds) as auxiliary forces to the Government called Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, or Hashd al Shaabi), like National Guard forces, or Police auxiliaries or volunteer Firemen might be here.
Although Kata’ib Hizbollah recruits among Iraqi Shi’ites, and has Iraqi citizens in high leadership positions, they take orders, receive most of their pay and weapons, and owe their loyalty to Iran’s IRGC, despite their semi-official status.
Qais al Khazali, a (perhaps now the senior) Kata’ib Hizbollah commander was outside of the American Embassy with the Kata’ib Hizbollah members who were assaulting it. He and his brother Laith were both captured by American forces and incarcerated at Camp Bucca, for their taking (and killing) of American and British hostages (including Peter Moore, who was later exchanged for the release of of the the Khazali brothers).