Mar 19, 2026 13:00 pm IST

Opinion | The Story Of Why Two Iran 'Proxies' Haven't Joined The War Against Israel - Yet

The silence from two of its strongest groups may possibly hinge on two factors.

Aditi Bhaduri Aditi Bhaduri

On March 16, the internet was abuzz with the footage of an Iranian-backed militia infiltrating the US Embassy in Baghdad, using a first-person view (FPV) drone for a reconnaissance mission. It was released by the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) and showed the drone - likely controlled via fibre-optic cable to bypass electronic jamming - flying unchallenged through the heavily fortified complex for nearly two minutes.

On its heels came another announcement by a group calling itself Kata'ib Hezbollah, demanding that every "foreign soldier" leave the country. Its security chief said, "Iraq's instability is due to the malicious American presence, and security will not be achieved until the last foreign soldier leaves Iraqi territory."

The group, which Washington has designated as a "terrorist organisation", is part of the same umbrella organisation known as the PMF, or, as they call themselves, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which has been claiming daily attacks on US interests in Iraq and the region.

These incidents spotlight the role of the proxies that Iran has created, funded, and supported over the years to fight its shadow war with Israel and the US. These include Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and the more recent PMF or the AL Hashd-al Shabi in Iraq. There have been other groups such as Islamic Jihad in Gaza, and Shiite groups in Syria and in Lebanon, but they are now defunct or have become bit players.

The PMF has a relatively recent history. These Shiite militia groups appeared as late as 2014, to fight the Islamic State (ISIS) when the Iraqi army proved too inept, weak and corruption-riddled to do so, and Mosul, the second-largest Iraqi city, quickly fell to ISIS. Many of them, trained by the elite Quds force of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and thereafter closely aligned with Iran,........

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