Anti-Americanism in Post-Invasion Iraq

The 2003 U.S.-led invasion fundamentally reshaped Iraq’s political and economic hierarchies, overturning decades of Sunni dominance and redistributing access to state resources along new sectarian lines. This study offers the first quantitative analysis of anti-Americanism in Iraq, theorizing sectarian identity and economic standing as joint predictors of attitudes towards the United States. I use four nested ordered logistic models and data from two Arab Barometer Waves (2021-2024) to assess Iraqis’ attitudes two decades after the invasion. The results show that economic deprivation and sectarian identity on their own are not enough to drive anti-Americanism. However, their interaction is—economic status substantively lowers anti-Americanism for Sunnis and marginally strengthens it among Shiites. Moreover, regional differences—most notably Baghdad’s high hostility—underline the contextual variation of anti-American sentiment in Iraq.