After years of growing influence, a new sign of IranÂ’s presence in Iraq has hit the streets. Thousands of signs, that is, depicting IranÂ’s supreme leader gently smiling to a population once mobilised against the Islamic Republic in eight years of war.The campaign underscores widespread doubts over just how independent Iraq and its population can remain from its eastern neighbour, now that US troops have left the country.
The posters of Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei first appeared in at least six neighbourhoods in Baghdad and across IraqÂ’s south in August, as part of an annual pro-Palestinian observance started years ago by Iran. They have conspicuously remained up since then.
“When I see these pictures, I feel I am in Teheran, not Baghdad,” said Asim Salman, 44, an owner of a Baghdad cafe. “Authorities must remove these posters, which make us angry.”
In Basra, located 550 km south of the capital, they hang near donation boxes decorated with scripts in both countries’ languages — Arabic and Farsi.
One such militia, Asaib Ahl Al Haq, even boasted that it launched the poster campaign, part of a trend that’s chipping away at nearly a decade’s worth of US-led efforts to bring a Western-style democracy here. Sheik Ali Al Zaidi, a senior official in the militia, said they distributed some 20,000 posters of Khamenei across Iraq. He said Khamenei “enjoys public support all over the world” including Iraq, where he “is hailed as a political and religious leader.”
Asaib Ahl Al Haq, or Band of the People of Righteousness, carried out deadly attacks against US troops before their withdrawal last year. This month, the group threatened US interests in Iraq as part of the backlash over a blasphemous film.
Iraqi and US intelligence officials have estimated that Iran sends the militia about $5 million in cash and weapons each month. The officials believe there are fewer than 1,000 Asaib Ahl Al Haq militiamen, and that their leaders
IranÂ’s clout with IraqÂ’s Shias picked up after Saddam HusseinÂ’s fall from power in 2003, and, in many ways, accelerated since the US military pulled out. Iran has backed at least three militias in Iraq with weapons, training and millions of dollars in funding. Billion-dollar trade pacts have emerged between Teheran and Baghdad, and Iran has opened at least two banks in Iraq that are blacklisted by the United States.
Religious ties also have been renewed, with thousands of Iranian pilgrims visiting holy sites in Iraq daily, including in Najaf, where Iranian rials are as common a currency as Iraqi dinars, and Farsi is easily understood. The posters may reflect a push among some groups for a clerical system similar to IranÂ’s. Teheran is widely believed to be lobbying for a member of its ruling theocracy, Grand Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, to succeed IraqÂ’s 81-year-old spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani.
Ever since the ouster of SaddamÂ’s regime, political leaders in Iraq have sought to rebuild and strengthen relations with Iran, which has responded in kind. Teheran has not been shy about wielding its influence. It was at IranÂ’s urging that cleric Muqtada Al Sadr grudgingly threw his political support behind longtime foe Nouri Al Maliki, allowing him to remain prime minister in 2010 after falling short in national elections.
In return, Al Maliki last year all but ignored Iranian military incursions on Kurdish lands in northern Iraq. The government also has delayed, and in Al SadrÂ’s case, quashed, arrest warrants on militants backed by Iranian forces and financiers. Still, even some Iraqis, like the cleric Al Sadr and the cafe owner Salman, advocate retaining strong Iraqi nationalism and their Arab identity.
Iraqi government spokesman Ali Al Dabbagh condemned the Khamenei posters and said they could add to the already-strained political unrest in the country.