Sunday, 2 August 2026

Drones struck sites in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah late on 1 August, and Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi ordered emergency security measures to prevent attacks on neighbouring states launched from or through Iraq. Six posts across three militia media networks reported the strikes between 21:51 and 22:30 on 1 August without agreeing on who was hit: Al-Nujaba TV, the channel of Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, said drones struck "separatist parties" headquarters in Erbil; Al-Ghadeer TV, affiliated with the Badr Organization, reported hits on "opposition headquarters" and then on "American occupation sites" in Sulaymaniyah; and Sabereen News and Unit 10,000, both Kataib Hezbollah-affiliated, reported suicide drones hitting "the American enemy" at Farmandi in Sulaymaniyah. Al-Ahad TV, Asaib Ahl al-Haq's official channel, and Sabereen News posted night footage of the same burning Sulaymaniyah site within four minutes, captioned respectively as Iranian opposition party headquarters and as American sites; no militia channel in the collected material claimed responsibility, and no caption named a perpetrator.

Al-Monitor, writing hours before the strikes, called renewed attacks in Iraq a test of Zaidi's push to disarm Iran-backed militias, while UN Secretary-General Guterres commended the government's stance and affirmed UN support for state-controlled weapons and Canada reaffirmed the same position.

The US-led coalition has begun what Washington describes as a pre-planned withdrawal from the Kurdistan Region, which Rudaw reports leaves the region exposed as Iranian attacks intensify. The US embassies in Iraq and Jordan urged Americans to prepare for possible escalation across the Middle East and to prepare for flight cancellations amid the war with Iran. Al Jazeera reports that Iranian Kurdish opposition parties based in Iraq are treading a delicate balance amid Iranian attacks — the same category of site two of the militia networks described as hit in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah.

Iraq and Turkey signed a one-year agreement on 1 August to transport and load Iraqi crude through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline to Ceyhan port at a minimum volume of 750,000 barrels per day, after Iraq's oil minister travelled to Ankara to conclude it. Zaidi called it a strategic achievement securing continued export of Iraqi oil, and AP frames the deal as boosting exports during the ongoing Hormuz closures. Shafaq News reports the Central Bank's reserves slid more than $7 billion in the first half of 2026.

An Iraqi official says roughly 4.5 million Shiite pilgrims have arrived in Iraq for Arbaeen, the first since the war, with France 24 reporting Iranian pilgrims flooding across the border and 600 media workers covering the rites in Karbala. PUKmedia reports the pilgrimage running through a heatwave that pushed temperatures to 50 degrees Celsius in eight Iraqi provinces, with Dhi Qar at 51 and Sulaimani the coolest at 42.

Six posts across three militia media networks reported drone strikes in the Kurdistan Region between 21:51 and 22:30 on 1 August, and the networks did not agree on who was hit. Nujaba's Al-Nujaba TV opened with explosions in Erbil it attributed to drones striking "separatist parties" headquarters; Badr's Al-Ghadeer TV reported drones hitting "opposition headquarters" in Sulaymaniyah, then a direct hit on "American occupation sites" there; Kataib Hezbollah-affiliated Sabereen News and Unit 10,000 reported suicide drones in flight and hits on "the American enemy" at Farmandi in Sulaymaniyah, with Sabereen alone posting the in-flight line after its own impact reports. Al-Ahad TV, Asaib Ahl al-Haq's official channel, and Sabereen News posted night footage of the same burning Sulaymaniyah site within four minutes, captioned respectively as Iranian opposition party headquarters and as American sites. No militia channel in the collected material claimed responsibility, and no perpetrator was named in any caption.

Outside the militia channels, Shafaq News reported that two drones targeted a Peshmerga headquarters in Sulaymaniyah, and Middle East Eye reported a fire in the Kurdistan Region after a drone attack — a third account of who was hit, matching neither the Kurdish-party nor the American-site version. Unit 10,000 and Al-Ghadeer TV had also posted one-line flashes of an aerial clash over Erbil within fifty-three seconds of each other the same night, naming no aircraft, participants or cause. Prime Minister al-Zaydi ordered emergency security measures and what Middle East Eye called "deterrent measures" to stop attacks launched from Iraqi soil against neighbouring states, and separately reassigned top military commanders.

Asaib Ahl al-Haq's Al-Ahad TV pressed the government over strikes its guests attribute to Saudi Arabia. At 20:21 the channel carried an official statement that "our forces renew their firm commitment not to allow Iraqi territory to be used as a launch point for aggression"; seventeen minutes earlier it had aired a segment headlined "If the military response is absent, where is the role of the Foreign Ministry?", with on-screen text asking why the Saudi ambassador was not summoned and Iraq's envoy not recalled from Riyadh. In the same hours the channel aired political researcher Hussein Shlooshi saying the factions possess weapons capable of striking Saudi Arabia and had put the ball in the government's court, alongside his line that confining arms to the state is natural in a state able to defend itself, and analyst Hisham al-Sayyab demanding a parliamentary session and referral to the UN Security Council. No faction statement in the window names Saudi Arabia as a target, and the alleged Saudi strikes appear only in these broadcasts with no outside coverage in hand.

Sabereen News published a scanned document on the evening of 1 August, captioned as an Interior Ministry Intelligence Directorate order to areas of responsibility to collect the names of Popular Mobilization headquarters and sites in the provinces. Visual review of the scan shows a memo from Directorate 615, numbered 567 and dated 1 August, marked secret and personal, citing strikes that hit some PMF headquarters and requesting MGRS coordinates, personnel numbers and the presence and general type of weapons and ammunition stores for each site. Neither the Interior Ministry nor the PMF has acknowledged or denied the memo in the material in hand, and the scan carries the channel's own watermark.

On weapons and the state, Watan TV, Badr Organization-affiliated media, ran an overnight sequence of quote cards attributed to al-Tamimi. One says confining weapons to the state is contingent on the departure of American forces and that the resistance will not surrender its arms otherwise; minutes earlier the same run carried him accusing unnamed parties of exploiting state resources through their arms inside institutions, and calling the management of the military and security ministries through acting appointments a violation of the constitution, while declaring support for Prime Minister al-Zaydi's steps and agreements. No party, ministry, official or agreement is named in any of the posts, and no other tracked faction addressed weapons centralisation or acting appointments in collected coverage.

iNEWS, aligned with Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada, aired MP Faleh al-Khazali counting 136 Turkish military penetration points in the Kurdistan Region and four Turkish bases in Mosul, and saying dozens of Israeli and American drones and warplanes cross Iraqi skies daily while silence over them amounts to treason. The figures are uncorroborated in the collected material, and Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada issued no statement of its own alongside the clip.