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Iraq’s Shiite Muslim ruling parties and armed groups are weighing the pros and cons of armed intervention in Syria and view the advance of Sunni Islamist rebels, who have captured two Syrian cities and are now pressuring a third, as a serious threat.

Baghdad has a dark history with Syria-based Sunni fighters. Thousands of them crossed into Iraq after the 2003 US invasion, fueling years of sectarian killings before returning as Islamic State in 2013 to conquer a third of the country.

The Syrian rebels currently advancing in Syria, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, have disavowed al-Qaeda and IS and say they have no ambitions in Iraq, but Iraq’s ruling factions have little confidence in those claims.

Iraq has amassed thousands of fighters on its border with Syria from its conventional army and from the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a security agency that includes many Iranian-linked armed groups that have previously fought in Syria.

The orders so far are to defend Iraq’s western flank, rather than intervene to help Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to an Iraqi Shiite politician, a government adviser and an Arab diplomat briefed on the matter .

But the calculus could change, at least for some Iraqi factions, depending on developments, including if rebels take the major Syrian city of Homs, if Assad falls or if Shiites are persecuted, the sources said.

Iraqi government spokesman Bassem Al-Awadi said Iraq is not seeking military intervention in Syria, but described the division of Syria as a “red line” for Iraq, without elaborating.

Reuters previously reported that hundreds of Iraqi fighters had entered Syria to help strengthen Assad’s forces, joining Iraqi and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters already in the country, but there has been no mass mobilization from Iraq yet.

The country’s government, led by moderate Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, has been desperate to avoid being drawn into the spiraling regional conflict sparked by the Gaza war, and has instead tried to concentrate on reconstruction after decades of war.

“The Iraqi government’s position from the beginning has been that Iraq is not a party to this crisis,” Falih al-Fayadh, leader of the PMF, said in a televised address on Friday.

“But it is not wise for a fire to break out in your neighbor’s house while you are sleeping, reassured without thinking about what might happen,” he said.

SUDANI TRYS TO AVOID REGIONAL CONFLICTS

Iraq, led by a coalition of mainly Shiite political parties and armed groups close to Iran, is a key player in Tehran’s so-called Axis of Resistance, which also includes Hamas in Gaza and Lebanese Hezbollah.

The Israeli strikes have hit the latter two players hard, so some analysts believe that the tens of thousands of hardened fighters in Iraq’s armed formations are now the force in Iran’s network of allies best placed to intervene in Syria.

Iraq’s ruling coalition is often pulled in different directions, with some groups that have fought alongside Assad in the past and have interests in Syria more likely to rejoin, while others see such intervention as destabilizing .

Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein met with Syrian Foreign Minister Bassam Sabbagh and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi in Baghdad on Wednesday.

At a joint press conference, Hussein condemned the attacks by “terrorist entities” in Syria and Araqchi promised to provide Syria with all the support it needed.

Syrian rebel leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani himself began his fighting career with al-Qaeda in Iraq, where he was imprisoned by the US, before moving to Syria to establish the extremist group’s franchise there.

Golani split from al-Qaeda in 2016 and on Thursday urged Sudani to prevent the PMF from intervening in Syria. In a video posted online, he said the rebels wanted strategic and economic ties with Iraq once they toppled the Assad regime.

“They may claim they are in a different mood and belong to a different group, but from Iraq they look pretty much the same,” the government adviser said.