Iraq has long been a flashpoint for tensions between the United States and Iran, but deadly attacks, an embassy siege and unprecedented protests could push the war-torn country past its tipping point.
The New Year's Eve storming of Washington's embassy in Baghdad marked an escalation of the feud between the United States and Iran, bringing their international spat from rival desert bases to one of the largest, most expensive and heavily-fortified diplomatic compounds in the Middle East.
Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi, along with leading figures such as Ali al-Sistani, Muqtada al-Sadr, Amir al-Amiri, Qais al-Khazali and Falih al-Fayyadh all condemned the Pentagon's strikes because they were not coordinated with Baghdad. The embassy protests came after a funeral rally for the slain fighters, and Amiri, Khazali and Fayyadh, along with other top Popular Mobilization Forces militia leaders, were among those in attendance.
The relationship deteriorated into the 21st century, and by 2003, a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq toppled Hussein. After that, U.S. troops continued to face off with many of the Iran-aligned militias that would later go on to become part of the Popular Mobilization Forces. Washington also began accusing Tehran of seeking nuclear weapons in 2003 and helped to push forward international resolutions to sanction Iran in 2006.
to the battle against the Islamic State militant group , helping Iraqi troops and militias, along with Kurdish fighters, defeat the ultraconservative jihadi group from 2014 on. The fall of ISIS in 2017 and the renewal of U.S.-Iran tensions, however, have eroded the fragile truce between Washington and what it perceives to be forces acting under Tehran's orders in Iraq.
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