“It Seems Like Blind American Ignorance”: The New U.S. War on Iraq

In the shadow of its wars in Iran and Lebanon, the U.S. has conducted devastating attacks on the security forces of its Iraqi ally.

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People attend the funeral ceremony of Popular Mobilization Forces members killed in a U.S. airstrike on a base in Iraq’s Anbar province, at the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, Iraq on April 1, 2026. Photo by Karar Essa/Anadolu via Getty Images.

Story by Nir Rosen and Hajar al Obeidi

ANBAR, Iraq—Colonel Dr. Talal Hussein Talal Dhiab, commander of the military hospital at Habaniya military base in Iraq’s Anbar province, feared the worst when he heard the sound of a low flying plane overhead at 5 a.m. on March 25. The U.S. A10 attack plane, which likely flew out of an American base in neighboring Jordan, ascended and descended repeatedly, Talal told Drop Site News.

Talal hurriedly woke up other medical officers, alerting them to go to the emergency room and prepare to receive new wounded.

Only the day before, the U.S. military had attacked a building at the base housing the province’s command for the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an Iraqi state security force reporting to the prime minister. He said 1st Lt. Abdallah al Zobai, also a doctor, was exhausted from treating the previous day’s wounded, so he let him sleep in the officer’s housing.

After circling the base, at about 9 a.m. the A10 attacked the same PMF building. Shrapnel from the explosion wounded Iraqi army soldiers nearby. Talal and his men rushed over to help the wounded, and the plane returned and struck the army officer’s housing, gravely wounding Zobai.

Medical staff climbed over debris searching for wounded, Talal said. As the first responders arrived, the A10 attacked them, firing its 30-mm Gatling-style rotary canon—typically armed with a mix of armor-piercing and high explosive incendiary rounds, fired at a rate of 4,000 rounds per minute—tearing bodies apart, cutting off heads and limbs. Talal himself was wounded and lost consciousness, bleeding heavily. Two other officers with him were badly wounded. The U.S. attacked the Habaniya base five times that day, killing seven Iraqi soldiers and officers and wounding 23. Most of the casualties were among the responders.

At one point, as the A10 descended to attack again, a soldier desperately opened fire at it with his rifle, according to other soldiers on the base. The base did not have air defenses; its men had never expected to be attacked from the sky.

Habaniya was established in 2005, during the U.S. military occupation of Iraq, and provided support for Iraqi security forces throughout Anbar province during the years of the al Qaeda-led insurgency and then the war on ISIS. It is well known to the U.S. military.

“At this clinic we perform our humanitarian and professional duty only,” Talal told Drop Site while recovering at home in Anbar’s Khaldiya. “We receive the wounded without asking about their affiliations or groups, whether they are from the army, the PMF, or any other group, and we treat and provide them with first aid.”

The March 25 assault was the sixth American attack on the Iraqi army since the launch of the war on Iran. As of April 7, there had been a total of 138 U.S. attacks on Iraq—including two additional strikes on the Iraqi army—resulting in the deaths of more than 73 PMF fighters, 10 Iraqi army soldiers, three dead from the Interior Ministry, and six dead civilians, according to Iraqi officials. For many in the country, it was starting to feel as if the U.S. has declared war on Iraq as well.

The U.S. attacks continued until the two-week ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran was announced on April 8. On April 8, as Israel struck Lebanon at least 100 times and killed hundreds, Iran refused to implement the ceasefire agreement until Israel halted its aggression against Lebanon. Likewise Sheikh Akram al Kaabi who leads Nujaba, a key group in the Islamic Resistance of Iraq, rejected any ceasefire that did not include Lebanon in it. Even if the ceasefire holds, the U.S. strikes of the last six weeks are likely to have long-term consequences on both internal Iraqi dynamics and the relationship between Baghdad and Washington.

“There was a political, economic, and social effect to this last war,” said an official with the Islamic Resistance of Iraq, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Who is striking Iraq today? America, right? What is America striking in Iraq? Bases of security forces, the PMF, the army. America is destroying the Iraq it built.”

Joe Kent, former director of the Trump administration’s National Counterterrorism Center, worked closely with the Iraqi government before resigning in March in protest over the U.S. war on Iran. He said he was at a loss to explain why the U.S. military was going after such a wide variety of targets in Iraq.

“For the life of me I don’t know,” Kent told Drop Site on March 28, “a lot of targeting inside Iran comes from Israelis. I’m assuming they have done some targeting in Iraq. They didn’t invest much. It seems like blind American ignorance. Someone convinced us that everything that is PMF is an Iranian proxy. It’s people who didn’t understand the history of Iraq in the last 20 years.”

“There’s definitely no strategy there. The charge d’affaires [at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad] and his team are not this fucking dumb, there’s no way they’re advocating this, they would know the difference between the militias,” he added. “You have guys who didn’t spend that long in Iraq, or senior leaders who spent time in Iraq during the ‘surge’ and think this is their chance to settle scores.”

The “surge” refers to a period beginning in 2007 when President George W. Bush increased the American military presence in an attempt to quash Sunni and Shia insurgents, as well as suppress the raging Iraqi civil war. It was during this period that the Americans increasingly clashed with Shia militias such as the Mahdi Army, as well as the so-called special groups who would become today’s resistance factions. Many Americans who served in this period became anti-Shia, as opposed to those who had been in Iraq in the preceding years, when Sunni extremists were the main threat to their project and to Iraqi civilians.

According to a former State Department official, who until recently worked on Iraq and spoke to Drop Site on condition of anonymity, the American attitude was, “There are no friendly forces in Iraq. Everything is the same, army, PMF, militias, resistance. Same people, same commanders, same supply chain. That’s why fighting militias is impossible. I just don’t think anyone knows what anyone is doing in any part of this.”

“The Israelis want the chaos and some at CENTCOM want a do-over of the Iraq war,” Kent said. “There are guys who think we can use this as a chance to wipe out Shia and Iranian influence, it’s absurd.”

“U.S. forces have recently taken action in response to attacks from Iran-backed militia groups against American forces and personnel. We will not hesitate to protect our people,” said U.S. Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesperson for U.S. Central Command, in response to questions from Drop Site on the targeting of PMF and the Iraqi army.

Members of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces guard the streets during a funeral in Baghdad on March 24, 2026. Fifteen fighters from the PMF were killed before dawn on March 24, in an U.S. strike on Anbar province in western Iraq. Photo by AHMAD AL-RUBAYE / AFP via Getty Images.

“I lost comrades before my eyes.”

After the attack on Habaniya, the scene in the nearby Ramadi general hospital was chaotic. It smelled like disinfectant mingled with blood. Mothers and wives were screaming as children cried out without understanding. Men tried to compose themselves, their eyes filled with sorrow. Along the corridors, coffins lined up silently, awaiting their final departure.

“The plane circled above us for over an hour and a half. We could clearly see it at a low altitude. We didn’t understand why there was no response or defense. Then suddenly the firing began,” a noncommissioned officer named Ahmad recounted. Another soldier, writhing with pain in his bed, could only say “we were treating the wounded when they bombed us again.”

An army captain who witnessed the events said, “When we started evacuating the wounded, we were targeted again. I lost comrades right before my eyes.”

On his bed, another wounded soldier, barely able to speak, could say only, “My comrades died. They left their children behind.”

The day before, on March 24, when the Americans attacked the PMF headquarters on the base, they killed the commander of Anbar operations, General Saad Dawai, along with his chief of staff and up to a dozen others. Talal and his men had spent the night evacuating the dead and wounded and treating survivors. Earlier that day Talal had attended a meeting with the base commander, who exhorted the men to maintain their readiness and be cautious in case U.S. forces failed to distinguish between targets. Talal told him he could not evacuate the field hospital because of the continuous arrival of wounded. He said there were no wounded PMF or resistance men in the hospital when the Americans attacked it.

Abbas Sabah, a member of the Anbar police, lost his brother Ali, an NCO with the army in Habaniya who called Ali when the attack began. Ali went to provide aid to the wounded and was killed when the A10 returned to strike the rescuers. “We called him many times but he didn’t answer,” said Abbas, “I couldn’t imagine he was gone. We went to the place, it was all chaos, smoke, screams, bodies. Then they told us he had been martyred.” He and his relatives demanded an apology and compensation for the victims.

Sheikh Muhamad Mukhlif Harat of the Shaaban tribe, who fought ISIS alongside the Iraqi security forces and is a spokesperson for the tribes fighting extremism in Anbar, said his tribe lost two of their men, both Iraqi soldiers in the engineering company, in the American attack. Both men were fathers. Men of the Shaaban tribe gathered in the Khaldiya area of Ramadi with their sheikh, complaining that the attack was a premeditated and deliberate act of murder. They said their sons were wearing Iraqi army uniforms, which clearly identified them. They too wanted compensation and an apology.

The Habaniya attacks were preceded by a March 17 attack on Sunni tribal mobilization forces in Anbar, a holding force that descends from the Sunni Awakening militias who cooperated with the U.S. to fight al Qaeda during the occupation, killing at least nine. The tribal mobilization forces are considered pro-American and lost many men fighting ISIS.

The sounds and shockwaves of explosions carry easily throughout Anbar’s desert, frightening the population. The streets in cities like Ramadi are desolate, reminding people of the days when ISIS first invaded.

The loss of so many men from the region has caused a palpable shift in the attitudes of many Anbar residents. They had been among the most pro-American populations in Iraq, but the absurdity of the situation is turning them against the U.S. After the attack on the PMF command in Habaniya, some of the first responders were led by Sattam Abu Risha, son of the Awakening group founder Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, who was killed by al Qaeda in 2007. Today, Sattam is a senior commander of the tribal PMF in Anbar. In a further sign of solidarity with the majority Shia casualties of the attack on the PMF, Anbar mosques called on residents to donate blood. Heeding the call, men gathered in front of the Ramadi hospital to do so.

While PMF units in Anbar are not located near residential areas, the local tribal mobilization forces do have positions in some towns. This has provoked fears among residents that they will become collateral damage. Likewise in Mosul, in the Nineveh province, residents asked the police to encourage PMF and affiliated political party offices to evacuate. Well over 10,000 Mosul citizens were recruited into the PMF, according to Nineveh officials, with many thousands others in the tribal PMF. Likewise, Shia-led PMF units and affiliated parties recruited Sunnis into their ranks and political representation in places like Salahedin and Diyala provinces.

Despite all this, Sunni politicians have remained silent, refraining from condemning the American attacks on this important all-Sunni province.

Iraqi Resistance Groups

Four hours after the Americans launched their February 28 war on Iran, they also attacked a position belonging to Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH) in Babil Province, south of Baghdad. For the Americans this was possibly conceived as a preemptive strike to deny Iran’s allies the opportunity to support it. If that was the intention then it might have backfired. KH is one of several groups known as the resistance factions, or the Iraqi Islamic resistance, who exist outside the chain of command of the PMF. KH is an armed group with a political party and members of parliament. It is at once an Iraqi group with local political and military goals and part of the Iran-financed and trained Resistance Axis, taking guidance, but not orders, from the Islamic Republic. In this it resembles foreign-funded NGOs in the developing world.

The resistance factions descend from armed Shia groups who fought al Qaeda insurgents and the American and British occupation until the U.S. withdrew in 2011. Some of those groups sent men to fight al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria during that country’s civil war, fearing that if those Sunni extremist groups succeeded in capturing Damascus they would pose a threat to Iraq. When the Islamic State in Iraq took advantage of former Sunni insurgents seizing control of protests in Anbar and other parts of Iraq, the resistance factions deployed men to protect Baghdad in late 2013.

ISIS took advantage of the failed state zone created in northern Syria with Turkish, Gulf, and Western help to raise funds and build an army that allowed it to invade Iraq and seize much of the country in June 2014.

Due to the collapse of the security forces, Iraq’s leading cleric Ayatollah Sistani issued a fatwa calling on Iraqis to volunteer and defend the country. These forces became known as the Popular Mobilization Forces and were made a formal security body in 2016 under the command of the prime minister. Over the years the PMF became increasingly institutionalized and acted as one more security force under the command of the prime minister.

What often confuses outside observers is that the resistance factions also contribute men to the PMF, who then receive state salaries and fulfill normal government security duties and are part of a chain of command culminating with the prime minister, while other men belong to the resistance factions receiving salaries from other sources and are therefore outside the official chain of command and can perform other “resistance” missions. In the months before their war on Iran, the Americans had been worried about drones and missiles possessed by KH and other factions, lest they be used as a second strike option in the event of a war with Iran.

After the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran, the Iraqi factions attacked American targets in Jordan and Kuwait and possibly Saudi Arabia. They also attacked bases from which the Americans had already evacuated in northeast Syria as well as locations housing American military personnel such as Camp Victory near Baghdad International Airport, the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center, a logistics and administrative hub for the Americans near the airport, as well as the Harir military base near Erbil International Airport. They hit Iranian Kurdish insurgent factions in Iraqi Kurdistan. Initially the Iraqi resistance factions insisted that the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and consulate in Erbil were excluded from targeting. But after the Americans attacked two homes in dense central Baghdad residential areas, the embassy was also targeted.

In keeping with the tradition of American and Iraqi resistance fighting, a hasty deescalation was arranged to keep residential areas and diplomatic facilities outside the war. NATO withdrew its forces as a precaution and many western ambassadors left Iraq. The Iraqi factions also targeted offices of American and British oil companies in Iraq after Iranian energy facilities were attacked. The goal of the Iraqi resistance in the battle was to attack “everything helping America in the region, all the logistical help in the region, pressure logistical bases,” according to a senior official in the Islamic Resistance of Iraq leadership.

There was no way that Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iraqi factions would sit idly and wait for their turn to be attacked. A Hezbollah official once quoted a Persian poet who compared Iran to a barrel of wine and its smaller allies to glasses of wine. As long as the barrel was preserved the glasses could break or be emptied without risk. Even Iraq’s Ayatollah Sistani, who has many followers in Lebanon and Iran and rarely intervenes in politics, called on his followers in Iran to defend their homeland. He condemned the war and mourned the murder of Khamenei. On March 29, crowds gathered close to Sistani’s house in Najaf as men calling themselves his soldiers and professing unity with Iran waited for him to issue an order for them to join the fight. “Erase Tel Aviv and don’t negotiate,” they chanted.

“There’s no strategy.”

Before the war began, everybody in Iraq was busy making money and benefitting from shared power and access to patronage networks. The Americans had withdrawn their combat forces as agreed, and had stopped flying drones over Shia areas. They had promised to restrict surveillance to areas at risk from ISIS.

Iraqis were engrossed with the post-November 2025 elections government formation, a process thrown into disarray when president Trump directly and openly intervened to reject the candidacy of Nuri al-Maliki, issuing vague threats about ominous consequences and halting the political process. Iraqis are traumatized from years of al Qaeda and Islamic State attacks on their country’s population, and the Shia political elite was not eager for their country’s tenuous improvement in stability and prosperity to be threatened. They are a generation that endured sanctions or exile and grew up in poverty and deprivation. They fear sanctions being imposed on the Iraqi state as much as they fear a return of ISIS.

There are some powerful political parties with affiliated militias that were established and trained by Iran who did not enter the Iran conflict. They are not seeking revenge, perhaps because they are afraid to jeopardize their role in the government, and still hoping they can be rehabilitated.

A day before the Americans and Israelis launched their war on Iran, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, who is also Trump’s envoy to Iraq, met with Maliki to sort out their differences, but once the war started Iraqi politics was put on hold as the parties awaited the results. Iraq had also been on heightened alert in the weeks and months before the war on Iran started as the formerly al Qaeda affiliated government of Syria expanded the control of its militias into areas that had been held by the Syrian PKK branch, and tens of thousands of ISIS families escaped from detention. Iraqis are anxious about a resurgent Sunni jihadist force whose rhetoric they interpret as openly genocidal when it comes to Shias, Druze, Alawis, Yazidis and other sects in the region.

Iraq’s resistance factions had warned that they would take part in attacks on U.S. targets should Iran be attacked, which might explain why the KH position south of Baghdad was struck on Feb. 28. In the past, the Iraqi state and its security forces were able to avoid being caught up in the conflict between the Americans and the Iraqi resistance, even when the Americans killed innocent PMF men. This time the Americans widened the scope of their targets.

In addition to the attacks mentioned above, several officers from the ministry of interior were killed in Anbar and Nineveh, including a colonel, prompting the Interior Minister Abdul Amir al-Shammari to lament him on Facebook as “a paragon of the courageous commander and the loyal officer—one who never once faltered in defending the security and stability of the homeland, willingly offering his very soul so that Iraq might remain standing tall.” Shammari is a former general in the Iraqi army who is viewed in Iraq as being very close to the Americans. The Americans also used Iraqi airspace to attack Iran despite Iraqi opposition.

“The majority of Anbar people condemn this violation. They say that regardless of who they are, whether in the PMF or Kata’ib Hezbollah, those are Iraqis and they are our sons and America has no right to strike them,” said a member of an Iraqi NGO based in Anbar, who spoke to Drop Site on condition of anonymity. “Our government is not a government. If we had a state it would not allow the Americans to insult Iraqis like this. There is hatred of America for its strikes on the PMF and army and everything it did in this war.”

On March 1he Americans hit a KH position in western Anbar and then hit the ambulance teams evacuating wounded from the site, killing 33 in a double tap attack on first responders resembling what Israel does in Lebanon and Gaza. On March 16, the U.S. hit a joint checkpoint of army, ministry of interior, and PMF personnel in western Anbar’s al Qaim district, according to a senior commander in the Anbar tribal PMF and an official in Iraqi National Security. Such joint checkpoints are common throughout Iraq and have nothing to do with attacking the Americans or anybody else, and the forces who man them are conventional security forces. The American attack, which also targeted the caravans where personnel were staying, led to the death of five PMF men and one ministry of interior man. In a strike in Wasit province the Americans killed a woman and wounded her son with shrapnel. Both were civilians.

“They targeted the PMF more than they targeted the resistance,” said a senior official from the Islamic Resistance of Iraq, “this is targeting the government.”

The U.S. has sanctioned some groups and accused them of being terrorists, even if—as in the case of the militant group Asaib al Haq—they are not believed to have engaged in attacks against the Americans since their 2011 withdrawal. Still others like the Christian PMF unit Babiliyun are sanctioned for political reasons.

The Americans hit sanctioned groups and resistance factions but they have also heavily targeted PMF brigades belonging to groups that are purely security forces. For example, the PMF’s 31st Brigade—which is affiliated with Risaliyun, a group led by Adnan al-Shahmani—has been attacked at least three times, according to local news accounts. Risaliyun and Shahmani are not on sanctions lists nor are they designated as terrorists. Shahmani belonged to the ruling coalition in 2012 and established his group to fight ISIS after the 2014 collapse of Mosul. The Americans attacked the Mosul residence of Baghdad based Faleh al-Fayadh, a respected moderate politician who heads the PMF and who was never close to Iran or the resistance factions, though the first Trump administration put him on a sanctions list just days before Biden assumed the presidency.

“It’s a message,” said an official in the Iraqi National Security Service, who spoke on condition of anonymity, “even those in PMF who want to be close to America will be afraid now.”

The NSS official said that Anbar PMF chief Saad Dawai, whom the Americans killed, had also been close to Faleh Fayadh. “He had no relation to the resistance, he was not part of Iran’s map and he was not affiliated with any faction.”

A Sunni member of parliament from Anbar said he was shocked by the attack on Dawai. “He was in charge of our tribal PMF,” he said, “we had no problems with him and never complained about him,” he said, “and he helped with the return of refugees, aid distribution, he helped when there was flooding, when there were problems he helped solve them, he was very cooperative.”

The Americans also hit PMF units, both Arab and Turkman, belonging to the Badr organization, which has been a key American partner since the 2003 invasion. On April 1, a U.S. strike killed several Badr PMF members in the Turkman town of Tel Afar in northern Iraq, where Badr had worked hard to achieve reconciliation between Kurds, Yazidis, Sunnis, and Shias. These are men who never fought the Americans and only focused on securing their area from ISIS.

“In 2025 there was a big effort to designate Badr corps as terrorists,” said Kent, “I successfully argued them off the cliff. I was surprised the sentiment was so strong; it was comical, we could have done it 15 years ago. We installed the Badr corps. This is us.”

Kent specifically blamed Sebastian Gorka—deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council—for the indiscriminate targeting. Gorka has built a career as a self-styled expert on Islamic extremism despite lacking any credentials to discuss the issue other than having worked for a white nationalist publication belonging to Steve Bannon.

“Gorka has people on his team who wanted to list Badr as a terrorist organization,” said Kent, “They also thought that Faeq Zeidan is behind a nefarious plot to bring Iran in and is the next Qassim Suleimani.” Zeidan is the most powerful judge in Iraq and president of the Supreme Judicial Council. In 2024 then-Rep. Mike Waltz (current ambassador to the UN) called for designating Zeidan as a “tool of Iranian influence” in Iraq.

The White House and Gorka did not respond to requests for comment.

Zeidan has harshly criticized the resistance factions for violating the constitution by arrogating to themselves the right to declare war, which is not their prerogative. His remarks were the most senior criticism of the resistance factions since the war began.

The Iraqi president, prime minister, and other senior officials condemned the attacks on the PMF, insisting they were part of the Iraqi Security Forces, and that targeting them violates Iraqi sovereignty. On March 24, Iraq’s National Security Council chaired by Prime Minister Sudani authorized the PMF and other Iraqi security forces to defend themselves or retaliate to attacks.

Attacks on PMF units in Anbar and Ninawa are especially provocative because these are areas close to the Syrian border and there is a heightened sense of concern about the threats from a resurgent ISIS there. There is a risk of a security vacuum because of the American attacks.

On March 17, Kent resigned, expressing his opposition to the war on Iran and blaming Israel for dragging the U.S. into the conflict.

“We were on very good terms with all the Iraqi leadership, everybody from prime minister Sudani to [Badr head] Hadi al-Ameri to [national security advisor] Qassim al-Aarji, there wasn’t anybody in the Iraqi government that wasn’t engaging with us,” said Kent, who before he resigned visited Iraq twice for the Trump administration, in November and January, to arrange a transfer of ISIS prisoners from Syria to Iraq.

When Kent first proposed the transfer to Iraqi security and political officials in November, he said the idea was met with skepticism. Iraqis are traumatized from years of al Qaeda and Islamic State attacks on their country’s population. Accepting thousands of ISIS fighters on behalf of the international community was very much like being asked to house dangerous radioactive material. This transfer was announced completed only two weeks before the Americans launched their attack on Iran and Iraq.

“They went out of their way to do the ISIS prisoner transfer,” said Kent. “We didn’t like Maliki but we had a lot of leverage based on relations with all his rivals. All were Shias who were friendly with Iran, but they have to be because it’s their neighbor. There was no big falling out with Sudani. We had a great relationship with all the Iraqi security forces. Iraq is the most legitimate member of the defeat-ISIS coalition. They were echoing everything we were saying in the January coalition meeting in Saudi Arabia. They had the most significant input to add, they had been the most engaged in the fight.”

Kent said he was sure the few Americans who knew the difference between the resistance factions and the other organizations being hit were being ignored. “There’s no strategy,” he said, “just bomb shit that seems vaguely Iranian.”

“The Americans are not coordinating with each other,” the Iraqi National Security Service official observed. He attended a meeting with an American officer from the American led anti-ISIS coalition and complained about the CENTOM attacks against the Iraqi army. “The coalition guy could not defend it,” he noted, “because he did not know. There is no logic for the American strikes, their information bank is funny. But we do not have any diplomatic or military means of responding. We are too divided.”

He worried about the security vacuum in majority Sunni areas that border Syria. “Sunni politicians are silent about the American attacks,” he said, “they think this is a chance to get rid of the PMF. But they have no alternative force to hold the ground and it’s an area fertile for terrorism.”

“Friends of America”

Iraq’s Shia elite were torn about how to respond to the U.S. attacks. The country’s top positions are always staffed by Shias who have a good relationship with the Americans. The prime minister and his chief of staff, the head of the federal court, the governor of the central bank, the head of intelligence, the national security advisor—all are Shias and all but the chief judge come from Islamist political backgrounds. The Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service, a massive organization established and trained by the U.S. and arguably the most experienced counterterrorism force in the world, is also led by a Shia officer.

These men—the friends of America—sleep well at night because they know the PMF protects the Iraqi Shia-led political order from threats such as ISIS. All these officials are aware that the Americans are mainly attacking the PMF in majority Sunni areas previously controlled by ISIS, risking security there. But they also know that the PMF cannot be destroyed, because it was created and sanctified by the leading cleric, legalized by parliament, and its affiliated parties have 80 members of parliament, almost as many as there are Sunni and Kurdish MPs. They have ministries, supporters, deep roots, and legitimacy.

The PMF and Shia factions are no longer merely emerging movements. They have political power and a social base. Unlike in other countries in the region, and much of the world, where most people and popular classes are removed from politics, and government is transformed into an alliance between ruling elites and foreign powers, in Iraq people were pushed into politics by invasion, occupation, and civil war—and through the collapse of the central state and the fighting and organization that followed.

Some in Iraq and abroad called for the factions to return to their homes after the battles to be demobilized. Those who fought and whose comrades died resented this. They believe they shed blood to liberate Iraq from ISIS and they do not trust the elites who collaborated with the occupation or who facilitated the rise of ISIS through their collaboration with Gulf countries. The processes of war, occupation, and terrorism, and everything to which the Iraqi poor, especially the Shia, were exposed—and which they confronted head-on—changed their attitude toward power. They saw a new role for themselves, no longer defenseless but entitled to the state for which they struggled and thoroughly connected to the struggles of their comrades in the region.

In Lebanon after Israel’s 2024 victory over Hezbollah there were failed attempts to strip the resistance party of its weapons. This effort failed, and the weapons were perceived by Shias as their weapons, not those of the party alone. Likewise American and Israeli wars on Shias have made the weapons of the PMF in Iraq more sacred.

“Prior to the onset of this war, there was significant momentum towards curtailing the activities of armed factions operating outside the chain of command,” said Ali al-Mawlawi, a writer at Iraq Horizons, a publication specializing in Iraq’s political economy, “by targeting the PMF as an entity and conflating it with resistance factions, the U.S. has entirely derailed that process. The PMF is a state institution so the attacks on it are widely seen by Iraqis as an attack on the state itself.”

On April 4, the Americans targeted a civilian aid convoy crossing from Iraq to Iran, killing one civilian, and they targeted Iraq’s border with Syria, killing one Iraqi army soldier.

Mawlawi said the U.S. attacks, and its refusal to admit any wrongdoing, had fueled a lot of public anger. “Ironically, the U.S. strikes are validating the narrative of the resistance factions by reinforcing the argument that despite Baghdad’s efforts to invest in its relationship with Washington, it cannot protect the country from unlawful attacks on its sovereignty.”

Nir Rosen has worked in Iraq since 2003. Hajar al Obeidi is an Iraqi researcher based in Anbar.