I beg to disgree. This is the Iranian Republican Guard with Russian made weapons leading the onslaught. The #1 Iranian field commander is on the ground. We were caught flat footed but we now don’t have to spend any of our money or lives on this conflrgration. What we have is now a massive war between Shiite and Sunni and that is great!!
“This is the Iranian Republican Guard with Russian made weapons leading the onslaught.”
Iran is in the lead, but the great bulk of the troops are Iraqi, as Dangus said. Key specialty shortages have probably been liberally filled with regular Iranian military, who have dropped their Iranian uniforms though, to get units combat ready quickly, and probably many Iranian officers are sprinkled throughout command posts. Almost all the Iraqi fighter pilots were Sunni, so I’d bet that most all Iraqi planes are now flown by Iranian pilots.
Some militias in Iraq have a long relationship with Iran. The Badr Brigades and SCIRI were hosted in exile in Iran during the Sadaam administration. The Mahdi Army (Jaish Al Mahdi, or JAM) of Mookie Sadr was long trained, armed and directed by Iranian military under Gen Sulemani. They just called up their rosters, formed up and got armed.
Gen Sulemani commands that part of the Iranian military responsible for spreading the Iranian revolution outside of Iran. They raise or co-opt local militias (fifth columns) in the areas they seek to conquer, like Hizballah in Lebanon or Houthis in Yemen. The Mahdi Army sometimes even called themselves Hizballah in Iraq.