With the Trump administration’s June 2025 strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities considerably weakening the regime, it is now increasingly focused on Iraq as one of its last footholds in the region, posing an existential threat to the survival of the country’s Christians and other religious minorities, reports Providence newsletter (August 18). After decades of war, unrest, and widespread persecution, Iraqi Christian communities now comprise only 1 percent of Iraq’s total population. Hannah Kearns writes that since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, “Tehran has pursued a deliberate, multifaceted campaign to infiltrate Iraq’s political landscape, often at the expense of Iraq’s religious minorities.” She cites the Babylon Brigades, established in Iraq in 2014 and backed by Tehran under the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), as well as its political offshoot, the Babylon Movement, to illustrate Iran’s exploitation of Iraq’s religious minorities to advance its agenda. Founded by U.S.-sanctioned human rights violator Rayan al-Kildani, these groups are nominally Christian and depend on the support of Iraqi Shi’a. They are widely viewed by Christians as not representing their interests. Strategically based in the Nineveh Plains, Iraq’s only Christian-majority region, al-Kildani is reported to have incorporated the explicitly Christian Nineveh Plain Protection Unit (NPU) into his militia.
Kearns charges that al-Kildani has further consolidated his authority by silencing the political voices of Iraqi Christians. Iraq’s constitution allocates a certain number of seats to religious minorities in the Council of Representatives (COR), with five currently reserved for Christian candidates. Through the loophole of an Iraqi election law that permits anyone, regardless of religious affiliation, to vote for these seats, al-Kildani and his Babylon Movement have “effectively hijacked nearly all Christian-designated seats at varying levels of government in federal Iraq.” Kearns adds that Iranian-backed infiltration has extended beyond political exploitation to include, allegedly on al-Kildani’s advice, revoking recognition of Cardinal Sako as patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church— Iraq’s largest Christian denomination. A bill pending in the COR aims to institutionalize the PMF by establishing a more clearly defined structure for the organization, which critics, including U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, argue would only further integrate the PMF into Iraq’s security apparatus and deepen Iran’s influence, Kearns concludes.
(Providence, https://providencemag.com/category/newsletters/)
