I survived the 2009 Baghdad bombing. Here’s how Iran forced us to forgive the dictator who did it

On the scorching summer morning of Aug. 19, 2009, I was walking from my home in Baghdad‘s Mansour district to Ahmed Chalabi’s residence, just a few houses away, for our routine morning meeting. As I made my way down the street, I suddenly heard a massive explosion in the distance. Moments later, the blast wave reached me with tremendous force, and I could feel the pressure ripple through the air. Looking toward the horizon, I saw a huge plume of black smoke rising into the sky, a chilling sign that another devastating attack had struck Baghdad.As I entered Chalabi’s house, he immediately asked me about the explosion. I quickly made several phone calls to determine what had happened. I was horrified to learn that the attack had targeted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, located near one of the Green Zone’s main entrances, only a few miles from where we were. The explosion had caused catastrophic damage, with extensive casualties and widespread destruction.It was Ramadan, and Chalabi was fasting, as he always did. I was not fasting, as was my usual practice. As soon as I told him that the attack had targeted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we both instinctively exclaimed, “What happened to Hoshyar Zebari?” At the time, Zebari was serving as Iraq’s minister of foreign affairs, and we already had previous knowledge that he had been inside the ministry when the explosion occurred. FROM 9/11 TO IRAN: TRUMP JUST SPEEDRAN BUSH’S BIGGEST MISTAKEChalabi immediately called for his security guards and ordered them to prepare the convoy. “We have to go to the site of the explosion now,” he said. We quickly departed and headed toward the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Along the way, we repeatedly tried to reach Zebari by phone, but none of our calls went through, deepening our fear that the worst might have happened.As we approached the site of the explosion, the area was beyond recognition. Burned-out vehicles, shattered concrete, twisted steel, and debris were scattered everywhere. The massive concrete T-walls that had surrounded the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, normally blocking much of the view of the main building, had vanished. The force of the explosion had hurled them away, leaving an open expanse of devastation in front of the ministry. From where we stood, we could see the entire building, which had been almost completely obliterated. Every window had been blown out, large sections of the facade had collapsed, and the structure resembled a hollow skeleton. The smell of burning debris and human flesh filled the air. We quickly stepped out of our armored vehicles and walked toward the building.The area felt like a ghost town. As we entered the ministry, we saw several employees suffering from severe injuries. We rushed up the stairs toward Zebari’s office. The scene was horrifying. The heavy marble cladding from the walls had collapsed into his office, burying much of his desk under rubble. We were terrified, fearing that Zebari had been trapped beneath the debris. Moments later, Zebari walked into the room wearing his familiar broad smile. Remarkably, he appeared calm and composed, showing no sign of fear, although his face was noticeably pale. Relieved to see him alive, we greeted him warmly and congratulated him on his survival. He thanked us for coming to check on him and assured us that he was unharmed.Not surprisingly, Zebari, who had spent decades of his life as a brave Kurdish Peshmerga fighting in the mountains of Kurdistan, handled such massive devastation with remarkable composure and a smile. He then explained that only seconds before the explosion, he had stepped out of his office. Had he remained inside, he said, he would almost certainly have been buried beneath tons of collapsing marble and concrete debris. The initial conclusion of this explosion was 95 dead and over 400 injured.That same evening, news outlets released surveillance footage showing a small blue truck packed with a massive quantity of explosives detonating outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a classic al Qaeda suicide attack. Investigators quickly traced the truck’s license plate and determined that it had crossed into Iraq from Syria shortly before the bombing. It was yet another deadly gift from Bashar Assad’s regime to the Iraqi people, delivered under the pretext of supporting the “resistance” against the American presence in Iraq.Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki was outraged by the attack and was determined to hold Assad and his regime accountable for such a heinous act of terrorism. “Ninety percent of terrorists from different Arabic nationalities infiltrated Iraq through Syrian territory,” said Maliki in a press conference with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. Then he added, Damascus, “expel the terrorists, Baathists and Takfiris [extremists] who take Syria as a base to launch criminal activity inside Iraq.” Maliki appeared to have struck a personal nerve with Assad, who was himself a Baathist. As expected, Assad categorically denied the allegations and rejected any responsibility for the attack.The car bombings and the steady flow of thousands of Takfiri terrorists, whom Assad’s regime had incubated, trained, armed, and dispatched to Iraq, had left deep scars. Their primary target in Iraq was the Shia population, whom Takfiri ideology regarded as traitors and the fifth column of Islam, believing they all deserved to be eliminated. This was not merely a campaign of resistance against the Americans in the eyes of the Takfiris, but rather a war of indiscriminate annihilation and systematic genocide against the Shia population.As the Arab Spring unfolded, several Arab capitals and major cities were swept by peaceful demonstrations demanding political change. The wave of popular uprisings soon reached Syria, where growing numbers of protesters took to the streets in cities across the country, challenging the regime of Assad. Fearing for the survival of its staunch ally Assad, Iran intensified its leverage over Iraq’s Shia leadership, pressing them to stand firmly behind the Assad regime and support it against the growing uprising.The result was astonishing: The outraged Iraqi Shia political class executed a complete 180-degree reversal and became one of the strongest supporters of the Assad regime. Dismissing the brutality of Assad’s regime, Maliki squarely blamed the Syrian protesters while hosting several Syrian delegations to improve bilateral relations, open a gas pipeline, and advance other joint projects with Syria. The hypocrisy of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its Shia allies in claiming to protect the Shia from historical persecution and oppression could not have been more evident than in this moment.The big question is: How did Iran legitimize such a dramatic reversal, and what justification did it promulgate to support the criminal regime of Assad, a regime directly implicated in the killing of hundreds of thousands of their fellow Shia in Iraq? And under what pretext were Iraq’s Shia Islamist leaders able to sell their support for Assad to their Shia base, only two years after Maliki had threatened Assad over his regime’s role in sending suicide bombers into Iraq?Answering these questions requires a deep dive into the Shia view of history and an examination of how Iran has successfully manipulated and exploited that historical narrative to advance its political objectives. In fact, this lies at the very core of the Islamic Republic’s political warfare against its enemies and its public diplomacy aimed at mobilizing and sustaining support among its Shia base.The main pillar of Shiism rests on the revolution of al Husayn, the son of Imam Ali, the beloved cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, and the Prophet’s grandson through his daughter Fatima, who was married to Imam Ali. When al Husayn decided to travel from Mecca to Karbala in Iraq to confront the tyrannical and corrupt rulers of the Umayyad dynasty as he claimed, his goal was to correct the course of Islam, which he believed had been distorted under Umayyad rule. The Umayyad army fought al Husayn and his small band of family members and companions, killing nearly all of them in the Battle of Karbala.This tragic event became one of the defining narratives of Shia history, fostering a profound sense of historical grief and injustice that is reflected in the annual Ashura commemorations, during which the Shias engage in acts of chest-beating and self-flagellation to mourn al Husayn’s martyrdom. According to the Shia narrative, al Husayn’s sister Zainab was taken captive and humiliated by the Umayyads. The ordeal of captivity was deeply embedded in the Shia narrative as the ultimate humiliation and a solemn pledge that such a tragedy must never be allowed to happen again.Later, Zainab lived, died, and was buried near Damascus in Syria. Her burial site became the famous Shrine of Sayyida Zainab (Lady Zainab), which is visited each year by millions of Shia pilgrims from around the world. By maximizing the exploitation of the tragedy of Zainab, the Iranian narrative had little to do with protecting Assad. Instead, it focused on protecting the Shrine of Sayyida Zainab from falling into the hands of the Takfiris, while rallying supporters with the powerful slogan: “Zainab will never be taken captive a second time.” In a masterful act of political diplomacy and warfare, a dirty cause, the defense of Assad’s criminal regime, was transformed into the noblest of causes: the defense of the most sacred symbol in Shiism, framed as the protection of a defenseless and helpless woman, Zainab, the sister of al Husayn.The result was that millions of religious Shia followers, especially the impoverished, lined up to defend Damascus and Assad, motivated by the powerful promise of martyrdom in defense of the shrine and inspired to follow in the footsteps of al Husayn’s revolution. Never mind that those Takfiris had been hosted, trained, and facilitated by the very same Assad regime to wage war to mass murder the Shia in Iraq.A recent example of how the Islamic regime exploits the full spectrum of Shia historical grievances can be seen during the ceremony of the supreme leader’s funeral. If you listen to the regime’s commentators, you rarely hear President Donald Trump mentioned as the one responsible for killing the supreme leader. Instead, they frame the event as though the ayatollah had been killed by the Umayyads, thereby symbolically associating him with al Husayn, a narrative designed to agitate, mobilize, and consolidate their base of support.DEARBORN ISN’T A ‘WALK FOR PEACE’: HOW TEHRAN LAUNDERS THE EXTREMISM AMERICA REFUSES TO SEEA full-spectrum strategy, rooted in a deep understanding of the regime’s religious ideology and history, is the only way to defeat the regime and help liberate the Iranian people and the wider region from its menace.Regrettably, as of now, the United States is far from having the understanding necessary to meet this challenge.Entifadh Qanbar is a doctoral candidate in statecraft and strategy at the Institute of World Politics and former spokesman for the deputy prime minister of Iraq.