Ahead of the 1st anniversary of Soleimani's assassination, senior Iranian officials praise his contribution to the liberation of Iraq from ISIS. But in fact, the Quds Force led by soleimani took advantage of the ISIS crisis to maximize the Iranian influence in Iraq.⬇️

The IRI sees great importance in Iraq as part of its own national security for variety of reasons. Historically, Iran has aspired to control the Shiite holy shrines of Iraq, mainly in Najaf & Karbala. For this purpose, fierce battles took place btw Iran and the Ottoman Empire.⬇️

Thus, Iraq became a major destination for exporting of the Islamic Revolution immediately upon the rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The essence of Iranian motivation in the war was to establish a pro-Iranian Shiite puppet government there.⬇️

Highly motivated to establish a Shiite revolutionary regime in Iraq, the IRI rejected Saddam's proposal for a ceasefire in 1982. Accordingly, the war continued for another six years in which hundreds of thousands more people on both sides were killed.⬇️

In 2003, due to IRI's fear of the possibility of the U.S. establishing a Shiite democracy in post-Saddam Iraq, it meddled in Iraq's affairs and established an array of Shiite militias. Tehran used this transnational array to wage a proxy war against the U.S. in Iraq.⬇️