The Iranian regime under new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is now functionally, even structurally, different from the one of the preceding forty-seven years—and that is reshaping Tehran’s influence in Iraq and leaving Iraq’s militias rudderless. In its first Khomeinist version (1979–1989), governance was entirely controlled by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The subsequent Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (1989–2026) kept control of political and strategic decisions, but the military—the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—acquired a larger share of decision making power. The military also competed with the clergy’s candidates for the highest offices, to the point that twenty IRGC generals ran for the presidency in 2021. The IRGC also came to control around two-thirds of the Iranian economy. Even so, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s charisma, experience, relationships, and powerful influence within both the religious and military establishments allowed him to play the man holding all the strings.
Yet the leader’s role appears to have receded since Mojtaba Khamenei succeeded his father. This is not only because Mojtaba took power wounded, unable to govern after the Israeli strike on February 28 that killed his father and kicked off the current war, but, more importantly, because of the significant role the military played in his selection, both before and after his father’s assassination. Mojtaba owes his position to the IRGC’s influence.
Iran’s governance under Mojtaba now resembles a juntocracy, in which a council of officers runs the state and makes the principal decisions, using the supreme leader’s office and its religious sanctity as cover for their grip on security and their monopoly over war and peace, at home and abroad.
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Hard and soft power
Iran today possesses both soft and hard power within Iraq. Tehran’s influence predated 2003, but both elements of power grew enormously after the US invasion, to the extent that more than a quarter of the first Iraqi Governing Council, formed by the Americans in July 2003, had either lived in Iran before the occupation or belonged to Tehran-backed parties. Indeed, five of the nine members chosen to chair the council in monthly rotation had at some point lived in Iran or received its direct support. Diplomatic cables leaked via WikiLeaks likewise showed the US Embassy knew of Iran’s penetration of Iraqi affairs, and that between 2003 and 2010 it warned the administration of the IRGC’s deep influence within the Iraqi state. But the United States chose not to add the burden of confronting this growing Iranian influence to its long list of existing troubles in Iraq.
Through its IRGC and the elite Quds Force under General Qasem Soleimani, Iran invested in both hard and soft power. On the hard side, Iran went beyond the militias it had trained before 2003, such as the Badr Corps, to create a large array of powerful factions whose followers and leaders religiously followed Ali Khamenei. These were no mere military tools; they became forces parallel to the official security agencies—so powerful that they challenged Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi in 2020 and tried to assassinate him in 2021.
On the soft front, Iran combined cultural, religious, economic, and political tools to dominate Iraq. Through its representatives, on Soleimani’s direct instructions, it shaped and selected government leaders including the president of the republic and the speaker of parliament; one former president told me how American influence stood powerless before Soleimani’s, which proved decisive in his own appointment.
In religion, the Najaf authority under Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani—whose followers include most of the Twelver Shia in both Iraq and Iran—carries considerable weight. But Ali Khamenei’s fusion of political and religious leadership (as both supreme leader and the highest religious authority in Qom) swayed many followers in Iraq, above all the leaders of the Iran-aligned factions.
They saw in him a fighting revolutionary of Khomeini’s generation, not merely a spiritual guide like al-Sistani; to them he was the “Orator of the Revolution,” named for his eloquence and ability to rally the masses, the foremost rhetorical face of the 1979 revolution. Although Soleimani, and after him General Esmail Qaani, directly supervised policy in Iraq, every aligned faction and politician knew that Khamenei held the final word—a reference to be trusted religiously as well as politically. After his death and his son’s accession, the situation changed entirely. Mojtaba is unable to fill the vacuum.
Mojtaba belongs to the revolution’s second generation. He was not yet ten when it broke out, and he was barely touched by the Iran–Iraq War of the 1980s that became the cornerstone of revolutionary Iran’s political, military, and strategic consciousness. Against this, the ongoing war with the United States and Israel has strengthened the “Council of Guard Generals”—a small number of officers whose outlook was formed during the war with Iraq and who were promoted to general before they turned thirty. Men like Ahmad Vahidi, Mohammad Zolghadr, Gholam Eje’i, Hossein Taeb, and Mohammad Jafari now manage the war and make its strategic decisions.
Fracturing factions
This shift means that the command structure of Iraq’s militias—especially those who follow the religious authority of Qom rather than Najaf—has been shaken. The Iranian organizational and spiritual power that long regulated and unified the militias’ rhythm through Iraq’s repeated crises has weakened. Today, these groups face mounting US pressure to disarm, dissolve, and separate from the official security apparatus. The US has brandished economic sanctions, threatened to withdraw support from the new prime minister Ali al-Zaidi (whose nomination the ruling Coordination Framework reluctantly accepted after the US effectively scuttled the first choice, Nouri al-Maliki), and threatened military strikes against those factions. This pressure has split Iraq’s armed groups into four main camps:
- factions that have announced the handover of their weapons to the state, such as the Sadrists (Saraya al-Salam), Asaib Ahl al-Haq, and the Imam Ali Battalions;
- factions that appear ready to hand over their weapons, such as Badr, the Sayyid al-Shuhada Battalions, and Thar-Allah;
- factions that refuse, such as Kata’ib Hezbollah and al-Nujaba—though they do not object to others doing so; and
- factions that have not announced a position, awaiting the outcome of the others.
Such divergence over an existential question like disarmament was rare while Ali Khamenei—aided by Soleimani and later militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis—held the factions’ spiritual and organizational strings. It will sharpen as US pressure mounts, and/or as a US–Iran agreement is reached, even one that does not explicitly halt Iranian support to the militias. Regional pressures too—particularly from the Gulf states and Jordan, recently targeted by those factions—will deepen the rift between the Coordination Framework and the Iraqi government on one side and the more hardline factions on the other.
In sum, Iraq’s factions face a spiritual and organizational dilemma that gravely endangers their existence. The most likely outcome is a sharp divergence in their positions, since many have become deeply engaged in the political process and its tempting economic privileges. While most will probably relinquish their weapons, dissolving the more hardline factions will be harder, given the IRGC’s grip on strategic, security, and political decision-making. Unless the United States and Iran reach a clear agreement on this issue, a military confrontation between the US and the militias appears the most likely way to settle their fate.
Munqith Dagher is the director of Gallup International for the MENA region and a former advisor to the Iraqi prime minister.
Further reading
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Image: Members of Kata'ib Hezbollah attends the funeral of fighters from Kata'ib Hezbollah, who were killed in a US airstrike in Babil province southwest of Baghdad.