Qais al-Khazali is Lying

With his turban, his carefully selected words, and his deliberate distortion of history, Qais al-Khazali is attempting to link himself to a historical figure like Imam Khomeini to pass off a major political lie. This is to justify the recent move by "Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq" to form a committee to disengage from the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) under the banner of "restricting weapons to the hand of the state."

Al-Khazali cited the beginnings of the Islamic Revolution in Iran to claim that the initial volunteers later integrated into the official military establishment after the state stabilized. However, historical reality exposes the falsehood of this claim.

Neither Imam Khomeini nor his successor, Imam Khamenei, ever dissolved any volunteer formation like the "Basij" or the "Revolutionary Guard." Even the "Revolutionary Committees" (Komiteh), which were initially formed for specific security purposes, were later merged to reinforce and build the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a parallel, independent force; they were never canceled or dismantled in favor of the traditional army.

Lying about Iranian history exposes al-Khazali's objective. The key figures who led the region's strategy and were assassinated in recent years—such as the martyr commander Qasem Soleimani, and commanders Pakpour, Hajizadeh, and others—all belong to this robust revolutionary institution (the IRGC), not to the classical army.

In fact, the strategic missile capabilities and Iran's regional influence—neither of which existed in the country's history, even during the Shah's era—were established and grew within the cradle of this independent, ideological institution, which protected the state rather than dissolving into it.

The paradox here is that the PMF establishment in Iraq is already an official, legal state institution. Yet, al-Khazali—in an odd intersection of interests where he meets his rival Muqtada al-Sadr—is attempting to circumvent it.

This endeavor to dismantle the PMF does not stem from a concern for the discipline of an institution that has given more than 11,000 martyrs and possesses an engineering, military, and field apparatus unparalleled in the region (even in Iran itself). Instead, it is a clear attempt to break Iraq's strong arm and dismantle it from within, continuing the project initiated by the United States when it assassinated the leaders of the PMF, foremost among them the martyr founder Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

Al-Khazali's attempt to market the dismantling of the PMF as an "institutional" step by citing Iran is nothing but a distorted reading of history, serving narrow political interests at the expense of Iraq's strategic security.