Pro-Iranian terrorist groups in Iraq stop attacks on Israel due to US pressure

Iraqi authorities officially announced that pro-Iranian terrorist groups located in the country have ceased their attacks against Israel, mainly as a result of U.S. pressure and the situation in Syria.

The confirmation comes after reports spread that radical Islamist organizations backed by Iran had reached an agreement with the Iraqi government to halt attacks against the Jewish state.

Speaking to the Qatari newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, Yasser Wattout, a member of the Iraqi parliament's Security and Defense Committee, said that the United States and Israel warned Iraq that if attacks by terrorist groups did not stop, the Arab country could become embroiled in the Jewish state's conflict against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.

Wattout noted that these warnings led the government to make the decision to urge radical Islamist organizations to stop attacks.

The Iraqi official added that the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria also influenced the pro-Iranian militias to halt terrorist activities. This is because they are now unable to fire from Syrian territory, as they did previously.

Likewise, Aaed al-Halali, close to Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani, maintained that different powers, such as the United States and Iran, pressured Iraq and the militias to stop the attacks in order to avoid an escalation in the region.

A new strategy of the pro-Iranian militias?

However, Aaed al-Halali added that the halting of the attacks could be related to a strategy by which the pro-Iranian terrorists are seeking to reorganize themselves.

The last attack by the militias against Israel took place on Sept. 24.