March 16, 2026

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Iraq Unable to Avoid the U.S.-Iran Crossfire

AP Photo/Hadi Mizban

For two decades, Iraq has struggled to establish its sovereignty, political and social tolerance, and economic security, as well as to reintegrate into the Arab fold after decades of isolation during the regime of Saddam Hussein. Its leaders have sought to avoid taking sides in the historic competition between Tehran and Washington to influence, and perhaps control, Iraq and the region’s geopolitics. Baghdad has walked a fine line between hosting the U.S. troops it considers vital and suppressing the remnants of the Islamic State organization (IS), while tolerating the autonomy of Iran-backed Iraqi armed groups who seek to expel U.S. forces from Iraq. Iraqi leaders have also worked to alter Washington’s decades-long harnessing of Iraq policy to the goal of weakening Iran strategically. The outcome of the war will test whether Iraqi leaders can reclaim the stability and economic progress the country had been experiencing before the war began.

Despite their best efforts, leaders in both the national government in Baghdad and the semi-autonomous Kurdish-controlled north have failed to keep the U.S.-Iran conflict out of Iraqi territory. Their neutrality in the U.S.-Iran war is being severely tested. The war broke out just as Iraqi politicians were trying to assemble a new government pursuant to the November 2025 national elections. Even in the absence of war, the government formation process has historically been influenced by U.S.-Iran competition. The war has escalated that competition and raised the stakes for the process of selecting a new Prime Minister — the post that carries executive and armed forces command authority. Further complicating Baghdad’s response to the war, the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani remains in place as a caretaker, with limited powers, until the new government is seated. His office has condemned both the U.S.?Israeli campaign against Iran and Iran’s retaliatory attacks.

Just as Lebanese Hezbollah has embroiled Lebanon in the war by joining Iran’s retaliatory efforts, Iran-backed Iraqi militias that have joined Iran’s defense effort have similarly engulfed all of Iraq, including the Kurdish north, in combat. Washington has been pressuring both the Beirut and Baghdad governments over the past two years to disarm Iran-backed groups and exercise a monopoly of armed force on their territories. But, because Iran-backed groups have fervent support among large segments of the Shia populations of their countries, Iraqi and Lebanese leaders have sought to move slowly — coaxing more than compelling — Iran-aligned armed groups to demobilize. In both cases, the refusal of armed groups to give up their weapons has caused their countries to become embroiled in the current war.

In Iraq, the pro-Iranian armed groups, most notable of which is Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH), are part of a broader, officially chartered “Popular Mobilization Force” (PMF) that is nominally part of the Iraqi national security forces. Their formal inclusion in the command structure, including drawing government salaries, has complicated Sudani’s year-long effort to force the Iran-aligned PMF groups to disarm and focus on purely political activities. The commanders of some of the Iran-aligned militias are also influential actors in the Shia-led Coordination Framework political umbrella that groups Sudani and harder-line Iraqi Shia leaders.

Within days of the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, Tehran and its Iraqi allies began striking U.S. bases in Iraq, most of which had recently finished relocating from Arab Iraq to the Kurdish-controlled north. As of late last week, the “Islamic Resistance in Iraq” — a coalition of Iran-aligned PMF groups — had launched more than 300 missile and drone attacks on an expanding target set including U.S. Embassy Baghdad, Baghdad International Airport, airports in Iraqi Kurdistan, and oil and gas sites in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR). On Saturday, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was struck for the fourth time since the war began. The mission has also faced violent protests by Iraqis opposed to the U.S. offensive against Iran. On Sunday, KH released a video of a drone attack on the U.S. Camp Victory base near Baghdad International Airport, believed to be the first time one of the group’s FPV (first-person view) drones skirted U.S. defenses.

The U.S. has retaliated against bases of Iran-aligned PMF groups as part of its war effort against Iran. U.S. strikes on pro-Iranian facilities in Baghdad on Saturday killed Rahif Qasim Abu Ali, the head of the missile unit of the Badr Organization, which has been considered one of the more moderate of the Iran-aligned groups. The attacks might also have killed top KH figure Abu Hussein al-Hemedawi, which, if true, would represent a significant blow to the group. In contrast to past U.S. retaliatory attacks on Iran-aligned militias, the Sudani government has not demanded that the U.S. strikes on them stop.

The militias have also followed Iran’s lead by attacking U.S.-allied countries in an effort to expand the war and pressure the U.S. to end the conflict. Last week, a drone targeted the United Arab Emirates (UAE) consulate in Erbil. On Thursday, a French officer was killed, and at least five soldiers were wounded, in a drone attack targeting a joint Kurdish-French base in the Makhmour area of northern Iraq. That same day, a drone struck an Italian base near Erbil in what Italy’s defense minister called the targeting of a facility hosting NATO personnel. The strike caused no injuries.

The Iraqi militias’ targeting of facilities in Kurdish-controlled territory is intended not only to pressure the U.S. but also to deter Iraqi Kurdish leaders from involvement in any U.S. plan to back Iranian Kurdish groups against Iran’s regime. Several Iranian Kurdish organizations, such as the Kurdistan Democratic Party – Iran (KDP-I), the Free Life Party (PJAK), and Komala, occupy bases along the Iraqi border and, unlike most Iranian opposition groups, are armed. Some in Washington argued for encouraging the Iranian Kurds to conduct an incursion into Iran in an effort to spark a broader opposition uprising. Trump reportedly floated that plan in an early March phone call to the two main Iraqi Kurdish leaders – Patriotic Union of Kurdistan leader Bafel Talabani and Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Masoud Barzani. Both Kurdish leaders, whose parties remain vulnerable to Iranian regime pressure, rejected Iraqi Kurdish involvement in any such plan on the grounds that doing so would violate Iraqi Kurdish neutrality in the war. Last week, the Trump team abandoned the concept as likely to “complicate” the Iran war. U.S. officials apparently heeded advice from experts that an Iranian Kurdish offensive against the Tehran regime would fuel Persian nationalism and increase support for the regime against the Kurdish minority, which constitutes only about 10 percent of the Iranian population.

The war, and in particular the virtual closure of the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint, confronts the Iraqi government with a near-term prospect of insolvency. Oil exports provide more than 90 percent of the government’s revenue. Iraq’s export volume has declined by more than 70 percent since traffic through the Strait seized up in early March, and Baghdad has few alternatives to compensate for the shortfall. An Iraq-Türkiye pipeline carries about 300,000 barrels per day of oil produced in the IKR. Iraq’s oil ministry stated Sunday that Kurdish leaders have issued major demands on Baghdad before they will allow the government to add oil produced in southern Iraqi fields to the export flow through that pipeline. Several fields have had to shut down production due to insufficient storage capacity. The country also remains dependent on Iran for electricity and gas imports to fuel Iraqi generators. The reduced supplies caused a recent nationwide blackout. If the blockage of the Strait persists into April, Iraq will have difficulty meeting its public sector payroll, which is already bloated by a system that allocates government jobs to members of all of Iraq’s factions. The government might have to choose among several painful options to cut its budget temporarily, any of which are likely to produce unrest.

Politically, the conflict has hardened divisions between Iraq’s “pro-U.S.” and “pro-Iran” factions, complicating the government formation process underway when the war began. Regional and U.S. officials hope Iraq’s leaders will select a Prime Minister who can continue to balance relations with Tehran and Washington and not widen Iraq’s polarization. As the government formation process took shape in earnest early in 2026, Sudani, the incumbent, whose party won the most seats in the November 2025 election, was passed over for a second term by the pan-Shia Coordination Framework. Sensing the U.S. might attack Iran, the coalition nominated his more pro-Iran rival, former two-term Prime Minister and State of Law bloc leader Nuri al-Maliki. However, in late January, Trump threatened to withdraw U.S. support for Iraq if Maliki was returned to office, blaming Maliki for sectarian policies that fueled the 2014 offensive by IS. A few days after the war began, the Framework bowed to Trump’s opposition by withdrawing Maliki’s nomination, throwing open the selection process. Iraqi leaders, backed by U.S. officials, might now turn to Sudani to continue as Prime Minister or select another moderate, compromise candidate to help Iraq emerge from the war neutral, stable, and advancing economically. Still, it cannot be discounted that pro-Iranian militia leaders and other actors might instead install a pro-Tehran figure willing to help Iran end the war on its terms and deter a future U.S.-Israeli attack.