ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - A group of 12 Republican Congress members have directed a letter to the new Washington administration, calling for the cessation of all security assistance to Iraq and imposition of terrorist designations on several armed factions who are part of the Iraqi state security apparatus due to their affiliation with Iran.

The letter addressed to State Secretary Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor Michael Waltz was co-led by Congressman Greg Steube and Congressman Joe Wilson, who has repeatedly called on the Donald Trump administration to pursue harsher measures against Baghdad in recent weeks.

The lawmakers said that, since 2014, the US has spent around $8 billion dollars in training and equipping Iraqis to counter the Islamic State (ISIS), and provided nearly $3.5 billion in humanitarian and development aid to help the country to recover from the destruction of the militant group.

“Despite this, Iran-backed militias armed, trained, and commanded by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) continue to be legally part of the Iraqi state and security forces,” read the letter.

The Congress members highlighted the ties between Iran and Iran-aligned militias with Iraqi security forces, namely the Badr Organization, previously known as the Badr Corps, and Iraqi National Security Advisor Qasim al-Araji.

Led by Shiite political leader Hadi al-Amiri, the Badr Organization was formed and led by Iranian officers in 1982 as military arm of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

The lawmakers claimed that the decision of Barack Obama’s administration to work with Iran-backed groups as part of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in the fight against ISIS has had “disastrous” conditions on US national security, with pro-Iran armed groups carrying out at least 170 attacks against American personnel in the last two years, “leading to the injury of multiple servicemembers.”

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella network of Iran-backed armed groups, claimed hundreds of attacks against Israeli and American targets between October 2023 and October 2024 in response to the war in Gaza.

“Replacing ISIS with Iran-backed terrorist militias does not make sense and only fuels the onslaught of terror that the Iranian regime seeks to export,” the letter added.

The lawmakers suggested the names of 10 Iraqi militias to be designated as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” including Badt Organization, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada.

They also called for “ending all security assistance to Iraq as long as any Iranian-backed militia or foreign terrorist organization are legally part of the Iraqi state or funded or trained by the government of Iraq.”

Wilson has sponsored a legislation to designate the Badr Organization for years. In mid January he referred to Badr as “a sectarian extremist terrorist organization like ISIS.”

Badr Organization responded to Wilson’s remarks in a statement, calling the Congressman’s accusations “baseless and lacking of evidence,” while stressing that Badr is a “political and democratic entity” which has played a major role in building the Iraqi state and the fight against terrorism.

“We would like to emphasize that Iraq, with its rich natural resources, especially in the oil sector, does not need American taxpayers’ money as Wilson claims, and Iraq is able to manage its affairs independently. We hope that this money will be spent on extinguishing the fires in California and Los Angeles. Therefore, we call on Senator Wilson to avoid interfering in Iraq’s internal affairs and focus on addressing the internal issues in his country,” the statement added.