This Sentence Should Cause a Lot of Concern About Iran Taking Over Iraq

A disturbing sign of Iran's growing influence in Iraq and beyond was highlighted on March 8 during a seminar titled “The Iranian Identity,” Bloomberg View reports.

“Iran is an empire once again at last, and its capital is Baghdad,” said Ali Younusi, an adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei.
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Iran's ambitions go far beyond Iraq and are taking them increasingly closer to the borders of the country's regional adversaries.

Last month, Suleimani gloated: “We are witnessing the export of the Islamic Revolution throughout the region. From Bahrain and Iraq to Syria, Yemen and North Africa.”

Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, explains what Iran's military mastermind means by this: “When he talks about exporting the Islamic Revolution, Suleimani is referring to a very specific template. It's the template that the Khomeinist revolutionaries first set up in Lebanon 36 years ago by cloning the various instruments that were burgeoning in Iran as the Islamic revolutionary regime consolidated its power.

“As a result, Hezbollah remains the most comprehensive and developed export of the Iranian model … Now the Islamic revolutionary model is being reproduced in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen as well, by setting up those same structures.”
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