Right now in Syria, there are roughly 2,000 American troops. And one day, recently, a statement went out calling for direct attacks against them. It said that it was the beginning of: The statement came from an influential Syrian militia called the Baqir Brigade, which has around 3,000 members. And aside from threats by Islamic State, it was one of the few times a group in Syria directly threatened American troops there. So why did they make the threat in the first place? Who is the Baqir Brigade? Well, one clue to begin with, is this photo. On the right, the head of the Baqir Brigade. On the left is Qassim Suleimani, who runs all of Iran’s foreign military activities. A few years ago, Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, needed help fighting a two-front war. So, Iran came to his aid. One tactic it used was funding and training pro-Assad militias, militias like the Baqir Brigade. The militia plays up its Syrian nationalism to help downplay the fact that it’s actually guided by a foreign power. Here’s one of the group’s banners that sums up its motives. This, of course, is Syria’s president — the nationalism side of things. But these two men are not Syrian. He’s the head of Hezbollah, a Lebanese group backed by Iran. And he’s the Supreme Leader of Iran. Iran’s real goal here is to use militias to help weave influence into all aspects of Syrian society. Here’s one way it does this: This is Omar al-Hassan, the Baqir Brigade’s political leader. In this photo he’s in Syria. Now here’s another photo, except this time it’s near the capital of Iran. He’s visiting the shrine to Iran’s late supreme leader. Several militias send members to Iran to strengthen bonds with officials. They also send groups like these on educational trips around the country. This is all for ideology, but it’s also for show. It puts Iran’s influence front and center. O.K., back to the politician, Omar al-Hassan. Here he is again, this time back in Syria on a meet and greet with locals. We were able to identify exactly where the photo was taken. This was last year. The Baqir Brigade had just seized this area from Islamic State. But even if they’d wanted to seize more ground, they couldn’t. The Americans and their allies were in the way. Not far from where we located al-Hassan’s photo is a hill. Recently an image of that hill was posted on a social media account linked to the Baqir Brigade. The post was a threat against American and French troops. It said: We’ve geo-located that hill to right on the border between pro-Assad territory and territory where the U.S. and its allies operate. So it was as if to say, ‘Look how close we are. We’re watching you.’ See, while Iran was spreading its influence, the U.S. was spreading its own influence, too. The Iranians will say, ‘We were invited into Syria. The Americans were not.’ And now that Iran is nearly done helping the regime with its fights, there’s more time to focus on getting the Americans out. There’s already been a couple of times when the Baqir Brigade has come into contact with Americans. One was here, last May, when several Iranian-backed militias advanced towards an American-run base. That prompted U.S. airstrikes. “It was necessitated by offensive movement — I don’t know there were Iranians on the ground — but by Iranian-directed forces.” Then, nine months later, American troops and their allies fought off an attack by pro-regime forces. We know that the Baqir Brigade was there, too. Now overall, the U.S. says it plans to check Iran’s influence in the region. “We will track down Iranian operatives and their Hezbollah proxies operating around the world, and we will crush them.” The thing is, these militias aren’t just on the front lines. They’re recruiting deep in territory controlled by the U.S. and its allies. And they’ve got humanitarian operations going on, too. So that call for jihad? The brigade was likely sending a message from Iran that the U.S. needs to leave Syria. And that messaging hasn’t let up. In early June, there was a huge gathering with the Baqir Brigade and several other groups. The leader we saw earlier with the Iranian general? He was here. So was the politician al-Hassan. And it took place not far from the hill we located earlier, right on the border of their enemies. And the title of the gathering: on Syrian soil.