This archive report was first published on 4 January 2020.
Qasem Suleimani, the late leader of Iran's Quds Force, played a pivotal role in shaping the Middle East's sectarian landscape. His efforts to push Iraq's Shiite prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to exclude Sunnis from the government and army, led to the rise of the Islamic State as a counterreaction.
As Iranian-American scholar Ray Takeyh noted in a wise essay in Politico on January 3, 2020, Suleimani expanded Iran's imperial frontiers, recruiting Arabs and Afghans as an auxiliary force to fight on behalf of the Persians.
His proxies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen, created pro-Iranian Shiite states-within-states, hindering the development of these countries and fostering corruption.
As a result, Suleimani and his proxies became increasingly seen as imperial powers, even more so than the United States under Trump. This led to popular democracy movements in Lebanon and Iraq, where Sunnis and Shiites united to demand noncorrupt, nonsectarian governance.
On November 27, 2019, Iraqi Shiites burned down the Iranian consulate in Najaf, replacing the Iranian flag with the Iraqi flag. This was not an isolated incident, as Iraqi Shiites had previously set the Iranian consulate in Basra ablaze in September 2018, condemning Iran's interference in Iraqi politics.
The recent 'protest' against the US Embassy compound in Baghdad was likely a Suleimani-staged operation to make it seem as though Iraqis wanted the US out, when in fact it was the opposite. The protesters were paid pro-Iranian militiamen, and no one in Baghdad was fooled by this.
