According to three Iranian officials, two Iraqi intelligence sources and two Western intelligence sources, Iran has transferred short-range ballistic missiles to allies in Iraq over the last few months. Five of the officials said it was helping those groups to start making their own. ...
The Zelzal, Fateh-110 and Zolfaqar missiles in question have ranges of about 200 km to 700 km, putting Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh or the Israeli city of Tel Aviv within striking distance if the weapons were deployed in southern or western Iraq.
Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza are already home to Iranian proxies that are resistant to being removed. They are cancers that are destroying the hosts.
And they are a threat to foreign civilians working in Iraq:
The U.S. State Department has ordered all non-emergency government employees to leave the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and U.S. Consulate in Erbil, amid tensions with Iran and warnings about possible threats to American interests in the region.
We must not let Iraq go down that path. It is already dangerous enough.
We should do whatever we need to do to help Iraq's government and security forces disarm those militias. And if that requires having Iraqi units surround the pro-Iran militias while our artillery and air power destroy the missiles, so be it.
UPDATE: Strategypage is optimistic that Iraq can suppress the Iranian threat inside Iraq:
More than half the militias were always Shia. Much publicity was given to instances where Shia militias massacred Sunni civilians and the use of many Iranian trainers and military advisors by some (at one point most) of the Shia militias and the Iran connection in general. But most of the PMF just concentrated on defeating ISIL and once that was accomplished by 2018 Iraqi realized that the pro-Iran PMF units were a threat to the Iraqi government. It’s getting close to another 2011 crackdown on Iranian militias but this time the Iranians are better prepared for that and it won’t be so easy this tome. But the crackdown will happen and it will succeed.
Iraq has the precision air power to help the crackdown if the militias try to hold their ground when the crackdown comes. But if the Iraqis need help, I assume we'll add our firepower.
