Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Iranian-backed terrorist organization Hezbollah, publicly took credit for recent gains made against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), The Washington Post reported yesterday.

In a videotaped speech delivered to followers in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Hasan Nasrallah called on the region’s traditional American allies to abandon their reliance on the United States and instead align with Hezbollah — and by implication with its sponsor Iran — to defeat the Sunni extremists.

“He who relies on the Americans relies on an illusion. You rely on someone who is stealing from you and conniving against you,” he said.

The speech was unusual in its scope, even for Nasrallah, who regularly delivers addresses in which he articulates his thoughts, typically with a focus on Lebanon and Hezbollah’s arch-enemy, Israel. In this instance, he portrayed the Islamic State as the most serious immediate threat to the region’s stability, although he also repeated the common charge that the Islamic State is working on Israel’s behalf.

According to the Post, this was also Nasrallah’s first admission that Hezbollah was sending fighters to Iraq, though “it has been known since late last year that Hezbollah sent fighters to Iraq after a Hezbollah commander was killed north of Baghdad.” Nasrallah also acknowledged that in Iraq, “all of the arms are coming from Iran.”

According to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1747, Iran is prohibited from exporting arms to other countries.

In November, the Associated Press reported that Hezbollah and other Iran-backed militias in Iraq were targeting Sunni civilians.

In How Iraq Became a Proxy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was published in the December 2014 issue of The Tower Magazine, Jonathan Spyer and Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi observed that under the command of Qassem Suleimani, leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hezbollah has been an integral part of Iran’s regional strategy.

Almost immediately, Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the IRGC—the agency tasked with the creation and use of proxy political and military forces—was sent to Baghdad. Very clearly, his task was to coordinate the Iraqi response.

His influence appears to have been decisive in shaping the Iraqi response. Predictably, it involves the use of militias and Shia sectarianism along the lines pioneered in other countries. As an Iraqi official quoted by The Guardian put it, “Who do you think is running the war? Those three senior generals who ran away? Qassem Suleimani is in charge. And reporting directly to him are the militias.” Since then, Suleimani has guided much of the fighting against the I.S., and has even been physically present at a number of key engagements.

Alongside the Quds Force leaders, there are reliable reports of dozens of IRGC and Lebanese Hezbollah advisers on the ground in Iraq. In addition, Iraqi paramilitaries deployed in Syria have been returned to Iraq in order to join the fight.

So, what is happening in Iraq today is directly analogous to what happened in Syria. The Iran-aligned, Shia-dominated government in Baghdad is being protected from Sunni insurgents through the efforts and methods of the IRGC’s Quds Force, the most effective instrument of Iran’s regional policy. This, of course, has major implications for Western policy, which at the current time is acting as the air wing for this campaign.

[Photo: MEMRITVVideos / YouTube ]