TEHRAN // A rare public demonstration was allowed in Tehran last week as Iraqis living in Iran gathered to show support for the embattled Shiite-led government in Baghdad.
Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have seized large sections of Iraq’s north and west over the past few weeks, vowing to capture the capital and obliterate cities and shrines considered holy by Shiites.
“I have two countries and if one of them is under attack, I’m glad to know that the other is strong enough to help protect it,” said Falah Al Shamma, an Iraqi demonstrator who turned out on Friday.
Mr Al Shamma, 50, who is one of about 250,000 Iraqi nationals who reside in Iran, spent nine months in prison under Saddam Hussein for refusing to fight in the 1980-1988 war between Iraq and Iran, his ancestral home.
The Iraqi community in Iran grew out of a wave of exiles that were expelled by Saddam during and after the war. The majority of them are ethnically Iranian, as is their spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, the highest religious authority among Iraqi Shiites, who resides in Najaf.
The demonstrators in Dolatabad, Tehran’s only predominantly Arab neighbourhood, chanted slogans in support of Mr Al Sistani’s fatwa, issued on June 13, to fight the advances by ISIL, which has taken over large areas of Iraq.
The Iraqi demonstrators said that they wanted Iran to provide assistance to fight ISIL, an extremist group that poses a new threat to both of the Shiite-dominated nations.
For these Iraqis, who are now Iranian citizens, what is happening in their homeland is the beginning of a new sectarian war between Shiites and Sunnis.
“A terrorist group that is mostly formed of non-Iraqi people couldn’t survive without the support of Sunni countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar,” Mr Al Shamma said. “This is a plot to overthrow the Shiite government in Iraq.”
Mr Al Shama, along with his two sons, 21 and 18, registered with Shiite militias to join the fight against ISIL if called to do so.
“I registered to fight because Iraq is my fatherland, but now my life is here,” said Mr Al Shama’s 21-year-old son, Amar. Born in Tehran after his parents moved here 25 years ago, Amar studies dentistry at an Iranian university and does not resemble the war-hardened Shiite fighters who have battled with Sunni rivals in recent years in Iraq and Syria.
There were murmurs in the crowd that Iranian forces were already in Iraq, as demonstrators openly wondered about recent state television reports about the deaths of several Iranian soldiers, although they did not say where.
Officials of both countries deny claims that Iranian fighters are in Iraq.
Ruhollah Jomei, the head of the interior ministry’s Information and International Affairs department, on Saturday denied reports that an Iranian border guard was killed by ISIL militants in Qasr-e-Shirin an area in the west of Iran.
While the governments in Baghdad and Tehran still contend that Iraqi forces under prime minister Nouri Al Maliki are capable of securing Iraq, members of the local diaspora want the Islamic Republic to step in militarily.
“We do not want the intervention of the US, but Iran is different,” said Alieh Karradi, 39, another Iraqi at the demonstration who cried while describing scenes of violence by ISIL fighters that she saw on television.
“We expect our second home to help our brothers and sisters in Iraq. I’m sure the Basij and IRGC are already helping us. We are soldiers, we are not scared of death,” she said, referring to Iran’s paramilitary volunteer militia and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Mr Al Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government and its representatives say it has the forces and funds needed to defend the country, although many believe the situation is spiralling out of his control.
“There is no need for the involvement of Iran or any other country at this moment. Even currently there is no need for recruiting of Iraqis in Iran. Our brothers, Shiite, Sunni and Christian, are all resisting in Iraq,” said Majid Ghasam, the representative of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq in Tehran, who attended Friday’s rally.
Mr Ghasam claimed that of the approximately 250,000 Iraqis living in Iran, more than 100,000 had already been recruited to possibly go fight in Iraq, although none have been sent back to their homeland yet. The claim was impossible to verify.
Hundreds of thousands of Iranian pilgrims visit holy sites in Iraq each year, and many Iraqi tourists come to Iran, but Iran announced last week that it had temporarily closed its borders with Iraq to maintain security.
foreign.desk@thenational.ae