Since the United States and Israel launched their bombing campaign against Iran, Tehran has expanded the battlefield across the Middle East.
That includes in Irans western neighbor, Iraq, where Tehrans proxy forces have carried out almost daily attacks against US targets, including diplomatic and military facilities, triggering retaliatory American air strikes.
Iran itself has carried out waves of missile and drone strikes in Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region in the north, where Iranian Kurdish opposition groups operate camps and offices.
The intensifying violence has threatened to destabilize Iraq, a Shiite-majority country of some 46 million people that is still recovering from years of insecurity following the US-led invasion in 2003 and the long conflict it set off.
The chances of Iraq being pulled deeper into the Iran war are extremely high, said Colin Clarke, executive director of the Soufan Center, a New York-based think tank.
That’s partly a result of Tehran’s influence, especially over the past two decades, where the regime has become in many ways inextricably linked with Iraqi militias.