The incident nonetheless led to protests across the board in Iraq, as Sunni Arab, Kurdish and some Shia officials dismissed any suggestion their country was subject to Iranian domination.
The Association of Muslim Scholars, one of Iraq’s leading Sunni groups, issued a statement warning of “a terrible evil” from Iran, and calling on people to “deal seriously with such dangerous remarks that might cost Iraqi blood”.
The Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc also criticised the alleged remarks, and legislator Naheda al-Daini told IWPR that while Iran did have influence in Iraq, such statements were “exaggerated and provocative”.
Tehran, Dainy added, was “not entirely dominating Iraq as they said; Iraq is a strong country”.
A Kurdish member of the Iraqi parliament, Farhad al-Atrushi, said, “We will not accept any form of harm to Iraq’s sovereignty and independence”.
Ali al-Tamimi, a Shia lawmaker from the political bloc of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, told IWPR, “We reject any interference in Iraq’s affairs by any country, whether it’s Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Iran. We have not surrendered to any foreign intervention – we ejected the American occupation forces from our land, so we aren’t going to allow any others to come in.”
In the face of such protests, Ali al-Allaq, a Shia lawmaker from Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s State of Law bloc, attempted to pour oil on troubled waters by noting Iranian denials that Sulaimani had made the remarks quoted.
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