As Israeli jets and Iranian rockets streak across the Middle Eastern skies, Iraq finds itself caught squarely in the crossfire.
With regional titans clashing above its head, Iraq’s fragile and hard-won stability, painstakingly rebuilt over decades of conflict, now hangs precariously in the balance. Washington’s own tacit acknowledgement of Iraq’s vulnerable position was laid bare by its decision to partially evacuate embassy personnel in Iraq and allow military dependents to leave the region.
This withdrawal, prompted by intelligence indicating Israeli preparations for long-range strikes, highlighted that Iraq’s airspace would be an unwitting corridor for Israeli and Iranian operations.
Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani is now caught in a complicated bind, attempting to uphold Iraq’s security partnership with the United States while simultaneously facing intense domestic pressure from powerful, Iran-aligned Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) factions. These groups, emboldened by the Israel-Iran clash, have intensified their calls for American troop withdrawal and threaten renewed attacks against U.S. personnel, viewing them as legitimate targets and enablers of Israeli aggression.
The PMF, a powerful array of predominantly Shiite militias formalized in 2016 and nominally reporting to the prime minister as commander-in-chief of the armed forces after their pivotal role in fighting ISIS, have since presented a difficult challenge to Iraqi state sovereignty. For years, these groups, especially the hardline elements among them known as the “muqawama” or resistance factions, have demonstrated a capacity to act in opposition to Baghdad’s formal policy.
This was seen recently in their threats to arrest Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa ahead of the Arab League summit in Baghdad last month, citing an outstanding Iraqi arrest warrant for his past terrorist activities on Iraqi soil. This directly undermined the Iraqi prime minister’s attempts at rapprochement with Damascus. Moreover, one of the PMF’s hardline factions, Kata'ib Hezbollah, has been implicated in the abduction of Elizabeth Tsurkov, an Israeli-Russian academic whose release remains under negotiation, despite concerted efforts by Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein and Prime Minister al-Sudani.
The deep-seated hostility of these PMF factions toward American forces was significantly intensified by the 2020 U.S. killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and PMF commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis — a strike the U.S. justified as necessary to prevent imminent attacks that Soleimani was allegedly planning against American diplomats and military personnel in Iraq and the region. This animosity escalated further following the outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas in October 2023.
As a result, Iraq — a country uniquely navigating alliances with both the U.S. and Iran, hosting some 2,500 American troops while also having Iran-backed militias integrated into its security forces — has since witnessed a sharp escalation in both rhetoric and repeated attacks against U.S. assets and personnel. This belligerence has only amplified following Israel’s recent strikes on Iran.
“If America dares to intervene in the war, we will directly target its interests and military bases spread across the region without hesitation,” warned Abu Hussein al-Hamidawi, secretary-general of Kata’ib Hezbollah. Other PMF leaders have echoed this stance, with Akram Al-Kaabi, head of Harakat Hezbollah Al-Nujaba, asserting that the assault on Iran was “in cooperation with the American occupier” and demanding the U.S. “must be removed from Iraq.”
The Iraqi government’s ability to restrain these groups, given their power and influence within the political system, remains limited and may prove increasingly difficult in the face of a prolonged war between Israel and Iran.
This internal challenge is compounded by Iraq’s vulnerability to airspace violations. Despite recent multi-billion dollar investments aimed at modernizing its air defense systems, including plans to acquire advanced capabilities from South Korea and France and bolster early warning systems, these improvements remain incomplete.
Iraq’s current air defenses are therefore not robust enough to intercept high-speed or long-range threats, such as Israeli jets or Iranian ballistic missiles traversing its skies. Indeed, this vulnerability has manifested already, U.S. air defense systems near the American Consulate in Erbil reportedly shot down a suspected Iranian drone on June 15.
The Iraqi government’s only recourse is through diplomatic channels. Prime Minister al-Sudani himself conveyed Iraq’s “categorical rejection of the use of its territory or airspace to carry out or facilitate any acts of aggression against neighboring countries” to Steven Fagin, the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires in Iraq, and Major General Kevin Leahy, commander of the International Coalition to Combat ISIS, according to a press release from his office.
Baghdad has also formally filed a complaint to the United Nations Security Council and directly urged the U.S. to prevent Israeli overflights. However, Iraq’s leverage remains minimal.
The 2008 Strategic Framework Agreement — designed to solidify long-term diplomatic, economic, and security relations between the U.S. and Iraq — explicitly precludes the use of Iraqi territory for "attacks against other countries." But in practice, U.S. strategic interests, especially amid the current conflict, evidently override Baghdad’s theoretical control. This places the U.S. in a dilemma: not preventing Israeli overflights for attacks on Iran implicitly undermines Iraq's airspace sovereignty and risks further escalation with Tehran, yet forcefully attempting to stop them could directly entangle Washington in the conflict.
Iran, keenly aware of Iraq’s impotence, has intensified its diplomatic pressure on Baghdad. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi openly declared that Iraq “is unable to preserve and control the sovereignty of its territory in the face of aggression,” demanding Baghdad “bear its responsibility in preventing the use of its airspace for aggression against neighboring countries.” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian reiterated this stance, urging Iraq to prevent its airspace from being “misused” against Iran.
Beyond the awkwardness of being an involuntary conduit for Israeli strikes, Iraq also needs stability in Iran for its energy needs. With roughly one-third of Iraq's electricity generated by Iranian natural gas, any sustained disruption to these supplies — already threatened by damage to Iran's energy infrastructure from recent strikes — risks triggering widespread blackouts and social unrest, further weakening Baghdad's position.
Adding to Iraq's woes, President Donald Trump’s confusing signals are of no help.
While praising Israel’s strikes as “excellent” and warning Iran of “more to come,” evidently hoping to extract concessions from nuclear talks that now appear on the verge of collapse, he simultaneously claimed advanced knowledge of Israeli plans, leaving the precise nature of U.S. support deliberately ambiguous. Simultaneously, Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted on U.S. non-involvement, instead emphasizing that the priority was protecting American forces, distancing Washington from direct responsibility.
However, the U.S.'s role in helping intercept Iranian rockets during Iranian counter-attacks, and the U.S. decision to reduce its diplomatic footprint in Iraq just prior to Israel launching its attacks, have been widely interpreted, particularly by Iran and its allies in Iraq, as clear indicators of Washington's complicity.
The greatest risk is that if al-Sudani fails to restrain PMF factions and U.S. troops face sustained attacks, their focus would inevitably shift from fighting ISIS to self-defense or withdrawal. This would severely diminish their ability to support Iraqi and Kurdish forces on counterterrorism, creating a dangerous vacuum for ISIS to regroup and expand.
Internally fragile and geographically exposed, Iraq risks becoming both a battleground and casualty in the Israel-Iran conflict. A prolonged showdown poses an existential threat to its security and imperils its nascent recovery.
