Things were going badly for Qasem Soleimani. The Iranian general’s goal of building a continuous block of Shia power from the Caspian to the Mediterranean Seas was being challenged by Iran’s most important ally and neighbour, Iraq. The protests that began in Baghdad at the beginning of October had changed the political dynamics, as the Arab Shia of Iraq rebelled against Persian domination.
The protests started over corruption, the uselessness of public services, the fact that there is no electricity for half the day and the water runs a sandy brown from the taps in Basra. There were no jobs in a country where 60% of the country is under 25. All this in the fifth largest oil producer in the world. The slogan was formed; “We want a country.” But, then, the protesters shifted their focus to sovereignty, as it became increasingly obvious that their politicians were not representing them and they were living in an occupied country.
Back in 2018, Qasem Soleimani, while denouncing Trump as a gambler and a barman, claimed Iran to be the nation of Imam Huseyn — the grandson of Mohamad, who was killed at Karbala by the wicked Calif Yazid in 680. But Iran is not the nation of Imam Huseyn. Iraq is. The Prophet Mohamad, and his family, whom the Shia revere, were obviously Arab. Karbala, where Imam Huseyn was killed, and Najaf, where Imam Ali, the Prophet’s son-in-law, is buried and the supreme Shia religious authority is based, are in Iraq.
Iraqis view the Iranians as newcomers, who don’t quite get it. Every year, around 15 million Iraqis — about half the country — walk to Karbala to pay their respects to Imam Huseyn. They are hosted and fed along the way in a pilgrimage known as the Arbaeen.
The protesters see themselves, and their nation, Iraq, as the embodiment of Huseyn; Soleimani and Iran, however, are deemed Yazid. In October, the protesters called a two-week break to go on the pilgrimage, and when they regrouped, the protests had grown to four times the size and spread to all the major Southern cities of Iraq. Tehran was confronting a sustained challenge to its domination and Soleimani had an insurrection on his hands. He had lost control of the Shia narrative. Since then, more than 600 protesters have been killed and 20,000 wounded.
As the demonstrations rolled on and the Iraqi prime minister, Adi Abdul-Mahdi, resigned, yet stayed in his job; and the president, Barham Salih, resigned, and yet carried on working as normal; and the government insisted it had given no orders to shoot, and yet protesters died daily, it became obvious that Tehran was ruling Baghdad.
“Iran Iran Out, Out, and Baghdad will be free!” was a chant I heard constantly when I was there for the Arbaeen. If the message of Imam Huseyn is that it is right to stand up to tyranny, corruption, hypocrisy and violence, then the problem for Soleimani was that the Shia of Iraq viewed the Iranian system of government as representing all those things.
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