Executive Summary
The Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, Al-Hashd al-Shaabi) represent one of the most consequential and historically anomalous outcomes of modern statecraft: a formally recognized component of a sovereign state's armed forces that answers, operationally and ideologically, to a foreign power. This report argues that the PMF is the direct and irreversible byproduct of a foundational strategic failure in US post-invasion policy in Iraq, whereby the removal of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and the catastrophic dismantling of Iraqi state institutions created a power vacuum that Iran systematically and patiently exploited over two decades.
The result is a parastatal organization, formally Iraqi and functionally Iranian, that now constitutes Tehran's most versatile instrument of forward power projection. In the context of the ongoing US–Israeli military campaign against Iran (launched 28 February 2026), the PMF has activated as Tehran's primary western theatre of operations, executing hundreds of attacks against US military and logistical assets across Iraq, Jordan, and the Kurdistan Region. The central analytical takeaway is stark: Washington is fighting, from within the borders of a nominal ally, an armed organization it helped bring into existence through its own policy errors, an organization that wears the Iraqi state uniform while taking orders from the Iranian Supreme Leader.
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