All Policy Analysis by Michael Knights

With militia targeting of activists on the rise, Western officials need to name the perpetrators, hold them accountable, and support homegrown democratic movements before they are snuffed out for good.

Even Iran’s proxies now have proxies, but authorities can still untangle and attribute their illegal acts through expanded use of rich open-source evidence.

Proxy rocket attacks in Iraq require a clear response, otherwise the safety of U.S. troops and the prospect of nuclear negotiations will both be in doubt.

Iran-backed militias took the unprecedented step of rocketing a major city and U.S. base in Iraqi Kurdistan, and the Biden administration must quickly find its own formula for restoring deterrence.

Militia Spotlight provides timely, high-quality evidence, analysis and contextualization of militia activities in Iraq and Syria, both within government agencies and outside them.

Despite welcoming the idea of separating the nationalist “shrine units” from the Iran-leaning Popular Mobilization Forces, Washington should lighten its touch on the issue.

Two enigmatic drone incidents in Saudi Arabia point to gaps in U.S. intelligence coverage and increasingly sophisticated deception tactics by Iran’s integrated militia networks in Iraq and Yemen.

The Iraqi government continues to sharpen the leadership of various commands and bolster civilian control, giving the U.S.-led coalition more leverage to fight the Islamic State with a light footprint.

In the year since their most iconic leaders were killed, Iran-backed militias in Iraq have been changing in crucial ways, providing rich insights into how Baghdad and its international partners should approach them in 2021.

The latest sanctions against a senior leader in the Iranian-backed terrorist militia are a reminder that such figures cannot slip onto the political spectrum merely by changing their job title.

The Biden administration should embrace the new sanctions against the civilian head of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, a decision that is supported by strong evidence of human rights abuses and can help hold other violators accountable.

Tehran and its proxies may wait until after inauguration to take any action, potentially leaving Biden to decide how to balance the safety of American personnel with the chance for reengagement.

One of the fruits of Arab-Israeli normalization should be more robust U.S.-led missile defense collaboration between states that face the greatest threat from Iran.

Spending cuts are necessary and overdue in the Kurdistan Region, but international players need to ameliorate the impact of politicized provisions in the new funding deficit law.

History may be repeating itself as Tehran develops new, smaller, and more secure Iraqi cells reminiscent of the formation of KH itself.

Although halting the escalation of militia attacks on American personnel is crucial, simply evacuating the Baghdad embassy and downscaling the bilateral relationship would allow Iran to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

As technocrats increasingly fill key government roles, U.S. officials need to help Baghdad withstand the inevitable counterpunch from political and militia factions used to dictating such appointments.

To strengthen Iraq’s capacity for resisting militia and foreign influence, Washington should keep supporting the campaign to remake the military one commander at a time.

Last week, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi led a large cabinet delegation to Washington D.C. for new sessions of the U.S.-Iraq Strategic Dialogue, topped off by the first Iraqi prime ministerial visit to the White House in over three years. During the visit, I spoke to most of the Iraqi