On 2 January 2020, a US airstrike killed a high-profile commander of Iran's secretive Quds Force, Qassim Suleimani, a commander of Iran's military forces in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East. Another man, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy of the militias known as the Popular Mobilization Units and a close adviser to Suleimani, was also killed in the airstrike near Baghdad's airport. Al-Muhandis and Suleimani were killed when their vehicle was hit on the road to the airport. The Popular Mobilization had been fighting Islamic State forces alongside Iraqi government forces for years, and had increasingly come under attack themselves, with dozens of their fighters losing their lives in Iraq every year. Three days before the assassination of Al-Muhandis and Suleimani, 25 Popular Mobilization fighters had been killed by a US airstrike in Western Anbar. On 30 December 2019, Al-Baghdadiya reported the mass killing:

Suleimani's Quds Force was a division of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, widely believed to support many Iran-backed terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah. This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans, the Defence Department claimed. ‘The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world’ (BBC, 2020).

This book has looked at what those interests are and what their protection has meant for the Iraqis.