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Why Are Iraqi Protesters Targeting Iranian Buildings?
(Al Jazeera) Arwa Ibrahim - As anti-government protests continue from Baghdad to the mainly Shia south, some Iraqi protesters have focused their anger on official Iranian facilities. Renad Mansour, director of the Iraq Initiative at Chatham House, said the attack on the Iranian consulate in the Shia holy city of Najaf on Wednesday had been building since the Iranian consulate was attacked in Basra in 2018. Protesters also scaled the concrete barriers of the Iranian consulate in Iraq's Shia holy city of Karbala on Nov. 4. Ihsan al-Shimmary, a political science professor at the University of Baghdad, said, "What happened in Najaf reflects the growing condemnation among protesters and the wider population towards what they regard as Iranian intervention in the country's internal affairs. With the incidents taking place in two Shia holy cities, they reflect a change among Iraq's Shia population towards Iran and its plummeting popularity."