Most Iraqis now fully understand that Iran, having taken absolute control of their political system, has become their real enemy, one that managed to infiltrate the layers of their society in order to tear them apart with precision. This is despite the fact that their national culture, back when there was an independent and fully sovereign Iraqi state, was shaped around viewing Israel as an enemy that it would be unwise to overlook.

However, what they have come to grasp after the U.S. occupation and the resulting Iranian infiltration, which disrupted their ability to form a new social contract - is that Iran’s threat to their existence and fate cannot be compared to the threat posed by Israel. Iran is far more harmful and destructive to them in a direct way that makes it difficult to imagine any other potential enemy, an enemy with whom they had never been in direct contact.

The difference between Israel and Iran, from the perspective of Iraqis, lies in the fact that the former is an external enemy with clear contours and openly declared expansionist maps. As for the latter, it is like a mined belt that could explode at any moment without anyone noticing who fastened it around their waist. All the members of terrorist organizations who blew themselves up in markets, restaurants, and Iraqi gathering places in the years that followed the U.S. occupation were merely a passing embodiment of what the situation in Iraq would become after Iran succeeded in planting its followers throughout the various joints of the state, meaning it could trigger an internal collapse in Iraq at any moment it wishes.

Khomeinism is still ready

Many people promote the Israeli threat, which is not to be underestimated, in an attempt to cover up the Iranian threat. Yet what neither Iran nor its followers ever concealed is that the project of exporting the revolution was planned to swallow the Arab region without harming Israel’s security, at least in the foreseeable future.

The Jewish state was not part of the map Khomeini drew in his imagination. For more than forty years, Iran - through its parties and militias, worked to normalize Khomeinism and its expansionist principles, to the point that for some it became a doctrine: the only metric by which they measure their level of caution toward the “Great Satan,” a label intended to direct attention toward an external enemy of the Islamic nation, whose peoples were at the same time required to abandon their own national constants.

The Iranian sectarian game had gone beyond the limits of rational thinking when evidence showed that Iran itself had established camps for (Sunni) terrorist organizations, foremost among them Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Iranian Quds Force, forced the Syrian government and its president, Bashar al-Assad, to open their borders to jihadists so they could carry out suicide operations inside Iraqi territory. “Did Israel do anything similar?” A naïve question. It is true that Israel was present in Baghdad from the first day of the U.S. occupation, confirmed by Ahmad Chalabi and Kanan Makiya transferring the Jewish archive stored in the Iraqi Intelligence headquarters to Israel - yet it was not directly concerned with what was happening on Iraqi soil.

The collapse of the regime is not a US demand
What does Iran want from Iraq? An unacceptable question. For Iran, Iraq is its outer barrier in any potential confrontations with the world, in addition to serving as its financial reservoir. Regardless of the U.S.-exported rumors of change and the sanctions imposed on Iran, the Iranian containment of Iraq is broader, more precise, and more penetrating and controlling than what appears on the surface.

Millions of Iranians who reside in various areas of Iraq under strict protection have been granted citizenship, and successive Iraqi governments committed to paying retirement pensions to Iranians killed in the eight-year war (Iran–Iraq War) while depriving Iraqi families of of such benefits.

Economically, Iran did not burden itself with illusory investment or reconstruction projects in Iraq; instead, it went directly to the financial market, tightening its grip over the Central Bank, the currency market, private banks, and exchange companies operating inside and outside Iraq. As for everything said about the SWIFT system, complicit Iraqis managed to overcome its obstacles: every time the U.S. Treasury imposed restrictions on a company, alternative financial companies were established and operated under new working contexts and administrations free of suspicion.

Iran fears for its influence in Iraq from one thing only: the regime’s collapse and breakdown from within. This, however, is not seen by the United States as necessary, as it fears its unpredictable consequences. Keeping Iraq a failed state with no political weight in the region is the optimal option - even if that option ultimately serves Iranian interests.

The implications of the pre-set US stance
Privately, Iranians mock the American naivety behind imposing economic sanctions on entities and armed factions tied to them. Those cards have already been burned after being used with precise effect. Quite simply, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) can establish alternative entities and factions under new names, just like someone changing the name of their company: they remove one sign and replace it with another. Militias disappear without their members being discharged from service. An Iranian game that successive Iraqi governments helped cover up by continuing to pay salaries to members of militias that had already been internationally banned.

But no one can truly believe that the Iranians, with their cunning, have defeated American attentiveness. Rather, the position toward the victim, Iraq, has played and continues to play an influential role in shaping a balance that could never be fair. A dead Iraq is useful to Israel, a conclusion that can be reached by overlooking Iranian influence in Iraq.

Iran filled the American vacuum in Iraq in a way that did not allow national will to separate itself from the sectarian quota system. Sectarian identity became the defining label of representation for each “component,” as stipulated by a constitution written to resemble an elegy for historical Iraq. This is what the Americans sought when they placed Iraq under Iranian tutelage.

No force can serve Israel in marginalizing Iraq, isolating it, and pushing it aside as effectively as Iran. Therefore, it can be said once again that Iran is the greatest threat to Iraq’s future by keeping it a state with no political significance in the region.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Annahar