Who is behind the protests in Iraq?

Behind the popular movements, demonstrations and protests that have recently taken place in Iraq, naturally everyone is looking for an external plot. When it comes to Iraq, the usual suspect for an external plot is naturally the USA; after all, it is the most influential actor both in the design of Iraq, which it has occupied since 2003, and in its politics today.

Even if most US soldiers have withdrawn, it has not taken its hands off Iraq, and one should not expect it to. But it is also known to everyone that the same USA has handed Iraq's administration and influence to Iran almost on a golden platter. Everyone agrees that today Iran's influence over Iraq's ruling elites is even greater than that of the USA. Therefore, even if the target of the protests is the country's rulers, who are accused of corruption and of selling off the country's resources to foreign powers, the real target here is the very special form of relationship these rulers have established with Iran.

Since the war begun in 1979, immediately after the revolution, Iraq has been Iran's primary target of expansion. This activity, carried out initially under the heading of "Exporting the Islamic Revolution," could not be brought to a conclusion in the 8-year war that continued with Saddam, but what Iran could not obtain by fighting was, with the USA's occupation of Iraq, as if bestowed upon it. But this time what was exported to Iraq was not Iran's famous "Islamic Revolution," but only its influence, which had its eyes on Iraq's resources.

Today, Iran's presence or influence in Iraq has gained the Iraqi people nothing. No project or experience that has been carried out successfully in Iran, that has brought or will bring peace, prosperity and happiness to its people, that would develop Iraq, has been transferred. On the contrary, it displayed a meddlesomeness that threatened the demographic pluralism of the Iraqi people. By drawing sharp friend-enemy distinctions between the groups close to and allied with it and those distant from it, it carried to the Iraqi people an instability and a fitna of civil war that cost them very dearly.

While using the Hashd al-Shaabi militias that it armed as a complete "ethnic-sectarian cleansing machine" against Sunnis, it sowed blood feuds among peoples that will be very hard to make good. Iran thus also exploited the DAEŞ threat, which the USA and Assad exploited in other ways. While all of Hashd al-Shaabi's savage murders directed at the Sunni population were being justified in the name of fighting DAEŞ, Iraq was becoming unlivable in the meantime, who cared?

Of course, throughout all these operations it was easy to ignore or dispose of the objections coming from the Sunni side by saying "DAEŞ- or USA-backed." Yet now the vanguards of those in Iraq who are disturbed by the situation and have risen up are not Sunnis but Shiites. The Shiite youth in Iraq object to the game that they think Iran plays in Iraq and whose entire cost it makes the Iraqi people and country pay.

This objection is an objection in the name of Iraqi nationalism. They think that Iran is exploiting Iraq's oil wealth to finance its own regionally confrontational politics. Iraq is a country that, if its oil resources were properly utilized, could be among the richest countries in the world. A country strong enough to be more than self-sufficient and to help others too. Yet today in the Samawah region, which is almost entirely Shiite, the proportion of people living below the hunger line is recorded as 42 percent. People get by gathering food from whatever garbage they can find. Overall, the proportion of those below the poverty line is approaching 30 percent. The reason for Iraq being in this state is assessed to be the seizure of its resources by Iran with the cooperation of its current rulers.

In fact, the activities and wars in Yemen, Lebanon and Syria, three of the 4 Sunni countries that some Iranian officials boast of dominating, bring Iran no material return. On the contrary, it is probably not easy for Iran, which is also suffering from sanctions, to cover the financial burden of this. The protesters think that precisely in these countries, the cost of the senseless war Iran has been fighting is also being loaded onto the Iraqi people. For among these four countries, only Iraq is a place that yields returns for Iran. That is, it takes from Iraq what it spends in the other countries.

In doing so, it finds a way to determine the ruling elites in Iraq who will consent to this exchange, but this way inevitably alienates the rulers from the Iraqi people more with each passing day. Because no people would consent to their own resources being used, without their being asked, through systematic corruption networks, to finance wars in other countries. Especially if the result is a situation like Iraq's, where the people are made to suffer want amid plenty.

To object to this situation there is no need to take inspiration from the USA or from anywhere else outside. The situation itself already provides sufficient inspiration for a strong and fierce objection.

This time the objector is not of the kind that can be brushed aside by calling them "Sunni and DAEŞ or USA agents." The Shiites of Iraq form the vanguard of the movement, but it finds support from all segments on the common ground of Iraqi nationalism.

The fact that the blood shed in the demonstrations so far has been due more to the influence of pro-Iran militias or pro-Iran elements within the army than to the army itself shows that Iran will not easily give up its influence in Iraq, however many Iraqis' lives it costs. In the end, if Iran has anything truly to say to the world, it is drowning anyway in this sea of blood it has created.