How will the fall of Assad impact Iranian-backed militias in Iraq?

Now that the Assad regime has collapsed, the Iraqi militias face a dilemma.

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN DECEMBER 9, 2024 21:49 Updated: DECEMBER 9, 2024 21:50

A member of Iraq's Kataib Hezbollah attends the funeral of a commander who was killed in a strike in the Syrian capital Damascus on Friday, September 22, 2024. (photo credit: THAIER AL-SUDANI/REUTERS)

The fall of the Assad regime will be felt across the Middle East. One place that it could impact is Iraq. Iraq is not only a neighbor of Syria; it is also linked to it in many ways.

In the days before the fall of Assad, there were calls for Iraqi militias to intervene in the Syrian war. These included Iranian-backed groups such as Kataib Hezbollah. Many of these groups played a role in the Syrian civil war over the last decade.

Kataib Hezbollah is one of the most organized of the Iraqi militias. It used to be led by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a pro-Iranian terrorist who has been involved in terrorism since the 1980s.

Muhandis was killed in the US airstrike in January 2020 that killed IRGC Quds Force head Qasem Solaimani. This didn’t stop Kataib Hezbollah’s threats. It carried out a drone attack in January 2024 that killed three US soldiers in Jordan.

SYRIAN OPPOSITION fighters stand in front of University of Aleppo, after rebels opposed to Syria’s President Bashar Assad said they had reached the heart of Aleppo, last week. (credit: REUTERS/Mahmoud Hasano)

What comes next for the militias?

Now that the Assad regime has collapsed, the Iraqi militias face a dilemma.

One issue is that the militias may now lose out on the lucrative trade of smuggling Iran’s arms to Hezbollah. They could lose influence in Syria. The militias relied on a network of places to secure their route to Hezbollah. These included Albukamal in Syria on the Iraqi border as well as the Euphrates River valley.

They also relied on Deir Ezzor and Mayadin and other areas stretching to the T-4 base at Palmyra. Now that it appears that Syrian rebel groups who overthrew Assad have taken these areas, as well as the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces and US-backed Maghawir al-Thawra, a rebel group in Tanf, the Iranian-backed militias will lose out.

However, the militias may still benefit. The tribes of the Euphrates River valley have close ties to those in Anbar province in Iraq. The tribes may still need to work with the militias somehow.

Another outcome for the militias could be that they lose influence in Iraq. Iraqis could be inspired by Syrians, and they could rise up against the Iranian-backed militias. They may sense that Iran’s axis in the region is weakened.

This would mean that largely Sunni tribes and cities might rise up against the militias, who are mostly Shi’ite. This is an important dynamic that may affect Iraq.

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Another side of this coin is that the militias could also be weakened in Nineveh province in Iraq or lose influence in Kirkuk and other areas. This would benefit the autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq and the people in Mosul Sinjar and other areas.

Important Iraqi tribes might play a role in this. The SDF has seized areas on the western side of the Euphrates in the wake of the Assad regime’s fall. This could have wider impacts as well since it came at the expense of the Iranian-backed influence corridor.