Tiny militias threaten to draw Middle East into forever war

 The ghost of Qassim Soleimani is still haunting Donald Trump.

A network of Shia militias that Soleimani spent his career building across Iraq – the Hashd al-Shaabi, aka the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) – has become one of the sharpest instruments that Iran has to drag the US and other Arab countries into a longer, costlier fight.

Six years after an American drone – on Mr Trump’s orders – killed the man who forged them, the PMF returned to the fore this week when Iran launched a surprise barrage of ballistic missiles at US positions in Jordan.

Blaming the PMF for the Wednesday attacks, the US and Saudi Arabia jointly struck the group’s bases in Iraq, with Riyadh joining an American attack on what the two called “Iran-aligned terrorists”.

The PMF said the strikes had hit several of its sites and killed at least 20 fighters, with dozens wounded. The toll is expected to rise.

The militias are a product of Soleimani’s plotting. They are built to fight Iran’s enemies beyond its borders and drag conflict away from the Islamic Republic itself.

With the US and Saudi Arabia striking Iraq instead of Iran, Soleimani’s plan appears to be working.

The Shia groups sprang up as Tehran steadily entrenched itself in Iraqi politics and security matters after the US-led invasion of Iraq toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

The militias, with Iranian financial and military support, have become formidable forces that can rival the national army in firepower: their arsenals include long-range missiles and anti-aircraft weapons.

They are also deeply enmeshed in Iraq’s political, economic and social fabric, building business networks and taking seats in parliament and the government.

Iranian officials and analysts who spoke to The Telegraph offered different assessments of how much power they hold today and what Tehran expects of them now.

One Iranian analyst in Tehran said: “They are good assets but very difficult to control, and Iran needs them to project power too.

“They are always useful for Iran – first to push Isis away from Iran’s borders, and now the system is using them to put pressure on the Americans and broaden the war.”

But he warned that Tehran was asking more of the militias than they could deliver.

“Our system is expecting way more than what they are able to do,” he said.

“These small militia groups are not easy targets, or easy to destroy, because they are mainly people-based and that is their advantage.

“You can easily gather a few Shia boys as resistance groups within the bigger flag.”

Another Tehran-based analyst was blunt about their limits and clearer about their purpose.

He said: “They are nothing and have no power, but they have the potential to expand the war to Iraq and add more actors into it.

“Their main job is to move the war from Iran to Iraq, and that itself is an expansion of the war.

“If America wants to destroy them, it is a matter of one week. But that would officially bring the war to Iraq, and this is what Iran wants. More actors and fronts will make it expensive and hard for Trump to carry on.”

‘Backbone’ of resistance forces

An Iranian official framed the militias as indispensable, and signalled that Iran would defend them as it had Hezbollah.

“They are the backbone of the resistance forces in the region, and their nature of multiple groups and closeness to Iran are their biggest strengths,” the official said.

He added that “some of them were in Iran during the war to help our armed forces control the streets” to prevent anti-government protests.

He revealed that some of the fighters are returning to Iraq from Iran after the recent developments.

“We will defend them the same as Hezbollah – help is already on the way to Iraq with those leaving Iran, so they can defend themselves,” he said.

That hints at how deeply the militias are woven into Iran’s war machine and how far their story runs from their official founding.