People attend a funeral procession for Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on Feb. 28 in Israeli and US airstrikes, in Tehran, Iran, July 6, 2026. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/ Handout via REUTERS

Iran’s proxies are once again in the headlines, having caused havoc and instability in the Middle East over the past couple of weeks.

No, it’s not Hamas or Hezbollah.

It’s not the Houthis, either (although they are involved).

It’s the Iran-aligned Iraqi militias that have gained the attention of the media’s spotlight in recent weeks. While most casual observers of the Middle East may not be familiar with these groups, they have become a growing threat to American and Israeli interests both in the Middle East and abroad.

There are tens of Iran-aligned Shiite organizations and militias currently active in Iraq. Some are quite large, with thousands of members, while others are quite smaller. Some of these organizations, like the Badr Group, have been around for almost as long as the Islamic Republic itself while others, such as Kata’ib Hezbollah, emerged more recently out of the chaos that unfolded in Iraq following the U.S. invasion in 2003.

No matter their size and age, what ties these organizations together is their opposition to a Western (particularly American) presence in the Middle East, loyalty to the principles of the Iranian revolution, and control by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Many of these Iraqi militias are part of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, sometimes referred to as the PMU), an umbrella group of different militias (many of them Shiite ones beholden to their masters in Tehran) that played an important role in fighting and defeating ISIS in Iraq. Although the PMF originally started out in 2014 as a non-state actor, it cooperated with the Iraqi military (and sometimes even U.S. forces) in battling the Islamic State.

In 2016, the organization was formally legalized and became part of the Iraqi military. However, it still takes orders from Iran, creating this tension between its legal status in Iraq and its continuing allegiance to the regional Shiite hegemon, the Islamic Republic.

This tension has come to the fore since 2016, with the PMF and its member militias becoming important and powerful organizations within the Iraqi political landscape. At the same time as it gained political prominence, it has also become responsible for instability in Iraq and the Middle East by attacking American and Western troops in Iraq as well as American allies throughout the region.

Between 2019 and 2022, Kata’ib Hezbollah (one of the more dominant militia factions in the PMF and a designated terrorist organization by the United States) and other Iran-affiliated militias attacked energy and civilian infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on behalf of their Iranian patrons.

While the Iraqi militias stood on the sidelines during Operation Roaring Lion (Israel’s June 2025 offensive against Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs), they have been incredibly active during the current U.S.-Israel war against Iran. Between February and April 2026, these militias were responsible for up to 500 attacks against U.S forces and civilian infrastructure in Iraq, Israel, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.

As the U.S. and Iran entered into a ceasefire period that has been marked by periods of escalation between the two foes, the Iraqi militias took on an important role in Iran’s proxy strategy. The Islamic Republic’s proxies exact a toll from the U.S. and its allies while drawing fire away from Iranian territory. As one of the strongest Iranian proxies still active in the region, the Iraqi militias have become a central cog in this strategy.

The ties between the Iraqi militias, Iran, and other regional proxies heave become even more evident as it has been recently reported that the militias have coordinated with Yemen’s Houthi movement and facilitated their launch of missiles at Saudi Arabia from Iraqi territory.

As long as there are escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran, the Islamic Republic-affiliated militias in Iraq will continue to play an important role in defending Iranian interests and targeting the U.S. and its allies in the region.

Aside from the threat these Iran-aligned militias pose to the defense and economic interests of Israel, the U.S., and America’s Middle Eastern allies, they also pose a threat to American and Israeli citizens.

Kata’ib Hezbollah has been responsible for the recent kidnappings of two foreigners in Iraq. The first, Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Russian-Israeli researcher based out of Princeton, was kidnapped by the organization in March 2023 and held in captivity until September 2025, following the intervention of the Trump administration. The second, American journalist Shelly Kittleson, was kidnapped at the end of March 2026 and was held by the terror organization until her release on April 7 in exchange for imprisoned militia members.

Outside the Middle East, the U.S. government charged Kata’ib Hezbollah commander Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi with orchestrating an attack on the U.S. consulate in Toronto, directing attacks on two Toronto synagogues, planning attacks on three Jewish sites in the United States, and involvement in several other anti-Jewish attacks in Europe.

While less well-known when compared to other Islamic Republic proxies in the Middle East, the Iran-aligned militias in Iraq are a growing threat to the stability of the Middle East that should be taken seriously by both the media and Western states.

Their ability to attack countries thousands of miles away, their willingness to kidnap foreigners inside Iraq, and their resourcefulness in targeting American, Israeli, and Jewish sites around the world all demonstrate the incredible and dangerous capacity of these militias to cause real harm both in the Middle East and globally on behalf of their patrons, the theocratic and authoritarian Islamic Republic.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.