Twenty Years of Iraq War: Iranian Interests Protected Most

 Twenty years of the Iraq war: Iranian interests were protected the most. The country's Shiite majority was subjugated for a long time while Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was in power. But after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein under American leadership twenty years ago, the Shiite majority dominates the country's politics with all the powers and disadvantages in every government.

The 'real winner' of the invasion of Iraq
After the US invasion in 2003, the biggest winners of the Iraq war were the Shia organizations.

In the country's sectarian power-sharing system, they dominate the Sunni and ethnic Kurdish minority. They have ties to their big neighbor, Iran, and they sort of oversee Iraq's Shia community.
This relationship sometimes gets a bit complicated because the US has declared the Shia clerics who rule Tehran as enemies since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Two decades of power in Iraq, a Shia-majority country of 42 million people, also means that the country's Shia leaders are now largely responsible for many of the country's problems.
The biggest change for the Shia community after the fall of Saddam's power was that they were once again free to preach their faith openly. Millions of pilgrims once again attend Ashura and other religious celebrations in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala every year.

Marcin al-Shamri, a researcher at Harvard University's Middle East Initiative, says, “Were the Shiites the victors of the post-2003 order? They are winners in the sense that they are in the majority and therefore have the largest stake in the government.”

In post-war Iraq, a Shia now holds the powerful post of prime minister and a Sunni speaker of parliament, while the formal office of president is held by a Kurd.

'Dominance of the Shia House'
After two decades, Iraq continues to be dominated by powerful political players known as the "Shia House". Among them are former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and former top government officials Ammar al-Hakim and Hadi al-Amiri. Many of them are veteran opposition politicians from conservative and Islamist parties, who have been at the mercy of Saddam's rule. He had once sought refuge in Iran or Europe to escape oppression.

According to al-Shamri, “In the last 20 years, we have seen the consolidation of the political elite. Meanwhile, these representatives of the aristocracy have gone from being government officials to heads of political parties, who still wield power despite not technically having any state office.

New political players
Meanwhile, new players have also entered the political scene, some backed by Tehran, such as the Hashd al-Shaabi forces, which were formed years ago to join the fight against ISIS.

The former Hashd paramilitary forces have now been integrated into the regular Iraqi armed forces and are represented in the parliament and government.
According to Fanner Haddad, assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen, "elite politics has changed over the past twenty years: new faces, the waning influence of exiled politicians, but the fundamentals of the system remain largely unchanged. Split block
The Shiite bloc has been anything but united, and at times this division has led to bloody violence. After the 2021 elections, a deep rift erupted between the pro-Iranian camp and followers of powerful Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, culminating in bloody fighting in central Baghdad last August.

The ruling elite also became a target of popular anger. An example of this was the violent protests that broke out on the streets on a large scale in October 2019. The youth-led opposition sectarian movement vented its anger at everything from incompetent governance and corruption to the country's crumbling infrastructure and limited job prospects.

"Generation Change"
Government crackdowns in Baghdad and Shiite-majority southern Iraq have resulted in hundreds of deaths and violent protests.

Al-Shamri said the "generational shift" means that for many young Iraqis, "old-fashioned identity politics is probably the last thing on their list of worries."

"Most Iraqis born after 2003 have grown up in a state where, above all, they face growing income inequality and extreme corruption," he explained. For them, that's what they're fighting against."