Iran War Blowback: Iraqi Resistance Targets US Forces in Biggest Escalation Since 2003

By Robert Inlakesh  –  Apr 2, 2026

The US-Israeli attack on Iran has revived a 23 year old war front in Iraq, a blowback against the US military that continues over two decades after the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Unlike in 2003, today’s Iraqi resistance is proving capable of successfully combating American forces and it appears to be adapting tactics used in the Russia-Ukraine war.

A force, born out of the disastrous rise of Daesh (ISIS) in Iraq, is now turning its guns on another invading army, reviving bad blood between Washington and Baghdad that spans decades. The Iraqi front in the ongoing regional war could prove to be one of the most decisive, as the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU/PMF/Hashd al-Sha’abi) could muster up to 250,000 fighters if fully mobilised.

Following Iran’s March 1st announcement of Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei’s assassination, a series of Iraqi armed factions began launching drone and missile attacks against a broad range of US military targets throughout the country. Most prominent amongst them have been Saraya Awilya al-Dam (Guardians of the Blood Brigades) and an umbrella group called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq.

Awliya al-Dam emerged back in 2020 and only began to advertise itself publicly in the months leading up to the US-Israeli assault on Iran; publishing videos of its fighters operating in underground tunnel systems, displaying its arsenal of drones and rockets. It was once described as a “minor facade group” by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) pro-war think tank, but has since debunked this characterisation.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq declared itself on October 17, 2023, before launching attacks on US forces stationed at Ain al-Assad air base in the nation’s Anbar Province, followed by a string of attacks on US and Israeli targets, declaring its operations in support of Gaza. Notably, it claimed responsibility for the downing of a US KC-135 refuelling aircraft, “using appropriate weapons”, that killed 6 American crewmembers.

By March 14, when the second successful missile attack against the US embassy in Baghdad had taken place, Washington had officially called upon all Americans to flee Iraq. The remaining military personnel in the country, most of whom appear to be located inside the Baghdad embassy Greenzone and the Victoria base, with the rest concentrated in the northern Iraqi-Kurdistan region, are being hunted by Iraqi armed groups.

On March 20, hailed as a major achievement by the Iraqi resistance factions, NATO forces declared a full departure from Iraq due to the ongoing war. Only a week prior, a French soldier had been killed and Italian troops also came under fire, as Iraqi drone strikes targeted NATO-affiliated military sites.

Some of the more shocking military developments have been the successful utilisation of drones to penetrate American military bases and effectively take out air defence radars. For example, one of the most powerful groups within the PMU, Kataeb Hezbollah, used FPV Drones to attack a warehouse located at the Victory Base in Baghdad, doing so unchallenged by any air defence fire.

FPV drones, which are credited with inflicting a large percentage of battleground casualties during the Russia-Ukraine war, were also used by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq to destroy an American AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel radar, along with a UH-60M Black Hawk helicopter.

Qatar Fully Shuts Down LNG Production as Global Energy Markets Brace for Impact

To make things worse on Washington, following a series of US strikes that killed 15 PMU members, Baghdad’s National Security Council chair, Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani, officially authorised the group to act in “self defence”. This was broadly interpreted as a greenlight for Iraqi operations against US forces in the country.

Yet it is not only the Iraqi arena in which the PMU and its affiliates are a factor. For example, this Tuesday the Secretary General of the Sayyed al-Shuhada Brigades in Iraq, Abu Ala’ al-Walai, openly proclaimed that “should American forces use Kuwaiti territory as a launching point for an attack on Iran, the Axis of Resistance, within the framework of the “Unity of Fronts”, will consider this a breach of regional security borders.”

“Reports are circulating regarding Al-Jolani’s intention to cross borders and move within Lebanese territory in a manner that serves Zionist forces against Lebanon. Accordingly, if either of these two scenarios materializes, it will inevitably compel the Axis of Resistance to take similar steps, according to the equation of reciprocal response in breaching regional borders”, the Iraqi armed group leader also asserted.

Later that same day, Syrian President Ahmed al-Shara’a (otherwise known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani), stated publicly that he will not interfere in Lebanon, adding the caveat that such action would not take place unless Syria comes under attack first. This announcement also came amidst growing speculation that Damascus would order an assault due to US pressure.

The disastrous Iraq War ended up costing the United States around $728 billion between 2003 to 2012, according to Pentagon estimates. Around 4,492 US servicemembers were also killed in Iraq, with another 32,292 having been wounded. In total, around 1 million deaths are often cited to have occurred as a result of the conflict.

As part of the war’s blowback and the rise of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, later came the scourge of Daesh that again justified the US’s direct re-entrance to the nation’s conflict in 2014. It was the expansion of ISIS and its pure brutality that triggered the necessity of an Iraqi ground force capable of confronting it, which is when the PMU was formed with the help of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

It will be 23 years, come May 1, since former US President George Bush Jr. declared “mission accomplished”, yet American soldiers are still coming under fire in Iraq today, all as President Donald Trump insists that his similarly illegal war of aggression has already also “been won”.

 

(MintPress News)