Anti-Iran sentiments percolate

Iran’s interference in Iraqi affairs has angered many Iraqis.

Iraqi demonstrators pose in front of burning tires on a blocked road in the central holy shrine city of Najaf, amid ongoing anti-government protests. AFP

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AFP) — By torching Tehran’s consulates and slapping their muddy shoes against photographs of top Iranian officials, Iraqi protesters have shattered a taboo on public criticism of their influential eastern neighbor.

But even as it faces red-hot rage in the streets, Tehran has consolidated its influence within Iraq’s political class and among armed actors, analysts tell AFP.

In the latest expression of fury, protesters crowded around the Iranian consulate — already emptied of diplomats — in Iraq’s shrine city of Najaf late Wednesday.

Shouting “Iran out, Iran out”, they set fire to tyres and other items before storming the consulate itself.

“Iran’s interference in Iraqi affairs has angered many Iraqis,” a young protester in Najaf told AFP.

“The consular fire is a clear message to Iran to reconsider its role in Iraq,” he warned.

It was the second Iranian consulate attacked by protesters since the grassroots movement erupted on 1 October in anger at a government deemed corrupt and inefficient.

With unprecedented bluntness, demonstrators in Baghdad and across the restive south have charged Iran with overreaching.

They say Iran interferes too much in Iraqi politics, holds undue sway among its armed actors and has even hamstrung Iraqi industries by flooding markets with its own goods.

Protesters have slapped their shoes against pictures of Qasem Soleimani to insult the commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps’ foreign operations arm and Tehran’s pointman on Iraq.

Soleimani, sources told AFP, has played a key role in convincing Iraqi factions to keep backing embattled Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi, further fuelling protester outrage.

“Anti-Iran sentiment isn’t new, but how openly it’s being expressed is unprecedented,” said Fanar Haddad, an expert at Singapore University’s Middle East Institute.

“The epicentre of public anger is at the Iraqi political system, but (anger at) Iran is a by-product of that. You cannot disentangle them.”

For decades, Iran has carefully crafted ties to a vast range of Iraqi political and military actors, from Shiite opponents of ex-dictator Saddam Hussein to Kurdish factions in the north and even Sunni tribes in the west.