Another Iraqi “Shia militia” threatens to fight Israel
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
After Qais al-Khazali came to Lebanon in December 2017 and then a member of Liwa al-Baqir, and then Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi visited in early February 2018, now the latest Shia group to join the chorus supporting Hezbollah against Israel is Iraq’s Harakat al-Nujaba. Press TV of Iran praises the group “for its brave fight against the Daesh Takfiri terrorists in Iraq and Syria.” The group has vowed to join Hezbollah in any new war with Israel. Hezbollah has said that thousands of foreign fighters would join in a new war with Israel if it broke out.
Press TV claims “While on a visit to Lebanon on Tuesday, Nujaba’s secretary general Akram al-Kaabi said that if Israel launches an aggression against Hezbollah, as it has been claimed in media reports, the Iraqi group would firmly stand beside Hezbollah.”
He said;
“We in the Iraqi resistance stand with Hezbollah, and we will stand with Hezbollah in any Israeli attack or action against it,” he said, adding that Nujaba would fight “with Hezbollah in a single row, on a single front, just as we stood with them on a single front in Iraq or Syria.”
He was in Beirut to commemorate the death of Imad Mughniyeh, a former Hezbollah commander. The movement’s twitter account posted a photo showing Israel being crushed with a boot.
With his visit the map of Shia militias seeking to confront Israel in the next war shows how the Iranian-support “corridor” running across Iraq is coming into shape. The weaving together of the militias and relationships of leaders who transcend “militant” groups and also pose as politicians in Iraq and Lebanon, presents a difficult challenge for Israel. If groups that are part of Iraq’s government seek to join a conflict with Israel, how will Jerusalem distinguish between them and Baghdad as a government?
