In June 2014, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, leader of the world’s 200 million Shi’a Muslims, stares gloomily at the success of the lightning-fast advance of Daesh1 through Northern Iraq. The fighters of the group known as the Islamic State in the Levant have conquered most of Northern Iraq as if it was undefended. The professional Iraqi army, after all its much-vaunted US training, has melted away, leaving the group its weapons and vehicles. Mosul has fallen, the fighters are already in Tikrit. They are marching on Baghdad.

The old man’s mind dwells for a moment on the great golden dome of the Al Askari shrine in Samarrah, the third holiest shrine in Shi’a Islam, remembering its destruction at the hands of Al Qaeda, the civil war it precipitated across the country. Even in Najaf, well south of Baghdad and firmly in the Shi’a heartland, the city is already abuzz with fears of this new threat. He shakes his head. A repeat of Al Qaeda’s bombing of the mosque of nearly ten years before and the civil war that followed cannot be allowed. Samarrah’s shrines are barely 60km south of Tikrit. He reaches for paper and a pen, begins to write.

Later that week, beneath the vast golden domes and minarets of the Imam Hussein shrine in Karbala, an old man in a white turban and wispy beard gets slowly to his feet. He is the Grand Ayatollah’s most senior representative. Abdul Mehdi al Karbalei is his name. It is Friday prayers. Thousands of the Shi’a faithful fall silent to hear his words. The fatwa calls on all Iraqi citizens capable of bearing arms to join security forces to defend the country against the rapidly advancing Islamic State (ISIL/ISIS).

The Ayatollah’s 2014 fatwa triggered massive volunteer mobilization and a "defensive jihad" aimed at protecting Iraq's people, honour, and sacred sites,

It was a seminal moment. Perhaps as many as 60,000i Iraqi men, Shi’a from the country’s poor south, followed his instructions to the letter. They formed themselves into groups known as the Popular Militia Forces (PMF).

The US, concerned by the growing terrorist threat, immediately commenced a campaign of air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq.

By December 2017, the efforts of Iraqi land forces, the PMF and the bombs of the US military’s Operation Inherent Resolve had combined to effectively eliminate Islamic State control of Iraqi territory. And in the act of victory, PMF fighters became national heroes, their undoubted valour rewarded with considerable internal status and power.

So what?

In the course of the war, Ayatollah Sistani’s sacred militias fell under the influence, funding and control of Iran, in the shape of General Qassem Suleimani, commander of the IRGC and its expeditionary Al Quds Force.

Suddenly, Iranian Shi’a influence in the wider Middle East was no longer blocked by the vast bulk of Sunni Iraq. Seven centuries of Ottoman, British and French colonialism seeking to subdue the Shi’a were shaken off at a stroke. The “Shi’a Crescent”ii extending from Tehran to the Mediterranean was at last united. Iranian influence was free to spread through the proxy organisations it has armed, funded and supported until very recently in pursuit of its hegemonic and survivalist agendaiii.

In the practical sense, the beneficiary was Lebanese Hezbollah. The ground and air routes linking Iran with its proxy gaped suddenly wide. Shipments of materiel proceeded unimpeded under the watchful eye of the new PMFiv. Before long, supplies of ballistic missiles, powerful armed drones, sophisticated air defence systems and missile site-hardening technology were flooding the region.

By the time of the Hamas attacks in 2023, Hezbollah was regarded as the world’s most heavily armed non-state actorv. It controlled an arsenal of some 150,000 rockets and the ability to fire more than 4,000 missiles a day, many with the accuracy and range to hit targets throughout Israelvi.

In addition, the PMF in Iraq numbered perhaps 230,000 fighters and was openly backed by Iranvii. Together with other members of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” against Israel, such as Iran-aligned Shi’a militia groups in Syria and the Houthis in Yemen, they undertook regular attacks against US, Western and Israeli assets throughout the Middle East.

These threats together drew Israel’s survival into questionviii. The so-called “Shi’a Revivalix” became an existential battle.

Pare down the current conflict in the Middle East and one exposes an existential struggle between two races which have both endured centuries of persecution. Each has adopted offence as the best means of defence. Both depend upon the enmity of the other to legitimise their agendas. For so long, the interests of both were well served by a level of localised, retaliatory conflict which held the two sides in a precarious balance. But the unforeseen consequences of the second Gulf War, another war proclaimed as an initiative in pursuit of peace and security, have proved to be the foundations of another war, one that will inevitably come to be called the third Gulf War. One shudders to imagine what the unforeseen consequences of this will be.