IT WAS CUTE...:

To the right of the procession towered a giant picture of the PMF's late deputy commander Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis, killed by a U.S. drone strike in January 2020 alongside Qassem Soleimani, his mentor and Iran's most powerful general.

Atop a stage to the left, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi waved at the saluting troops as they passed, flanked by top PMF leaders who had largely avoided appearing with one another in public since the fateful U.S. strike.

The spectacle was a show of force intended not just to mark an anniversary, but also to signal the paramilitaries' recovery from the setback dealt by the assassinations of Soleimani and Mohandis, and the groups' determination to push back against the U.S. military presence in Iraq.

"It was a message to those who tried to weaken and dismantle the PMF, including America," said Jaafar al-Husseini, the military spokesperson of Kataib Hezbollah, one of the Iranian-backed groups within the PMF that the U.S. accuses of targeting its forces.

"The message is that the PMF is here to stay and that it's developing in terms of equipment, training and institutionalization," Husseini told POLITICO in a rare interview in his Baghdad office, adorned with pictures of Soleimani, Mohandis and Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The PMF's military parade was closely watched by U.S. officials, who are grappling with a fresh wave of militia attacks on U.S. facilities in Iraq.

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