US tacitly endorses sectarian power consolidation in Iraq, deepening Iran’s regional hegemony via proxy governance
Original framing: “US approves Iraqi government integrating Iran-backed factions in new cabinet” — Middle East Eye
The decision echoes the 1979 *Algerian Civil War*, where France and the US tacitly supported Islamist factions to counter leftist movements, only to later abandon them when they became too radical. Similarly, the US’s 2003 invasion created the conditions for Iran’s rise by dismantling Saddam Hussein’s secular Ba’athist state, which had suppressed Shi’a militias but also maintained a (flawed) national identity. The 2006 *Mahdi Army* integration into Iraqi security forces set a precedent for this ‘controlled co-optation’ strategy, where militias are absorbed when convenient but demonized when they overstep (e.g., 2014 ISIS crisis). The current move is the latest iteration of this cycle, where short-term stability is prioritized over long-term state-building.
This decision is not an isolated diplomatic approval but the culmination of a *structural failure* in post-2003 Iraq, where the US and Iran have colluded—directly and indirectly—to replace state sovereignty with *proxy governance*.
The framing obscures how this move reinforces a *rentier-sectarian state* model, where political survival depends on balancing foreign patrons rather than serving citizens, a legacy of colonial-era divide-and-rule tactics that resurfaced after the invasion. The absence of Iraqi civil society voices in this narrative underscores how elite pacts are prioritized over democratic accountability, a trend repeated across the Middle East from Lebanon to Yemen. The solution requires *disrupting the proxy war economy* through economic leverage and international oversight, while restoring *indigenous governance models* that predate sectarianism. Without this, Iraq will remain a *perpetual conflict zone*, where every ‘solution’ deepens the cycle of dependence on foreign powers—exactly what the US invasion was supposed to prevent.