Are divisions deepening between Shia leadership in Iraq and Iran?
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Insight
For outsiders, all Shia groups know just one master, Iran, a Shia-majority country. But recent escalations between the two Shia groups disprove that understanding.
Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Tehran has aimed to increase its political and military presence across the Middle East, creating its own Shia proxies like Lebanon’s Hezbollah to dominate the Middle East.
With the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Washington unexpectedly helped Iran play its political game better, removing one of Tehran’s fiercest enemies, Saddam Hussein, the former Sunni leader of the Shia-majority country.