Wednesday, 5 August 2026

Iraq's armed factions have yet to decide how to answer the US-Saudi air strikes on Iran-aligned groups, Shafaq News reported this afternoon, hours after Kataib Hezbollah's official Al-Ittijah TV put the Islamic Resistance's deadline to respond at the day after tomorrow while the KH-affiliated Sabereen News and the Badr Organization's Al-Ghadeer TV each cited sources saying maximum alert would be lifted within hours — the countdown on one outlet, the stand-down on two, with the channel-by-channel account in the Militia Digest published beside this briefing. A member of parliament's defence and security committee said there is no evidence the attacks on neighbouring countries were launched from Iraqi territory, the first Iraqi official rebuttal of the charge that its soil was the launch pad. Al Jazeera reported the same day that Shia armed groups are defying the disarmament demand outright, and Kataib Hezbollah has told Asharq Al-Awsat it seeks to expand its 'resistance' arsenal.

Washington de-listed the Iraqi carrier Fly Baghdad today, removing sanctions it had previously imposed over links to Iran's IRGC, in Reuters's account, as Amwaj reports American forces packing up the last Iraqi air defences ahead of a withdrawal deadline.

On the economy, deputies are pushing for an emergency session on the financial crisis and delayed salaries and an investigation has been opened into the Finance Minister over the unpaid public wages, while the electricity-ministry walkout reported this morning has been followed by protests across Iraqi universities. Shafaq News, in an account it labels exclusive, puts currency in circulation past 86 billion dollars, the stock a government financial adviser cites in insisting the liquidity crisis does not mean bankruptcy.

Still on the economy, Baghdad has revived talks with Jordan and Egypt on the Basra-Aqaba pipeline, is studying a wider network to Turkey, Syria and Jordan, and an official puts restoration of the Iraq-Syria line at within three years — every route bypassing the strait through which Iraq shipped 30 million barrels last month, under a third of pre-war volumes on the monitor's count. Iraq Oil Report says the Turkey pipeline deal already sets a challenging target for Iraqi export volumes, and a thin national tanker fleet is costing the state millions in shipping revenue.

On religious tourism, Shafaq News reports that record Arbaeen crowds brought thin returns, with revenue draining away as Iran's economic collapse cut pilgrim spending — a shortfall published a day after the government's higher committee on the pilgrimage called the event's success a demonstration of security and stability, and set against the tourism ministry's vision of 10 million visitors by 2035.

In the north, Kirkuk's Kurdish parties left the door open to a unified bloc after talks today, and Turkey's government has now published the draft law to reintegrate PKK militants that Reuters trailed this morning. The Kurdistan Region's president, Nechirvan Barzani, is in Baghdad for the State Administration Coalition meeting, the ruling bloc's coordinating body due to weigh the factions' response to the strikes.

Also in the north, Christian representatives have asked the prime minister to halt land distribution in Nineveh, and the head of Nineveh's women's affairs department told KirkukNow that war forced women into breadwinning while government support remains absent.

Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq's official Al-Ahad TV aired a guest this evening breaking with the countdown its allies were running. Haidar al-Barzanji, head of the Naram-Sin Foundation for Dialogue and Development, said Iraq rejects aggression by any state but that no evidence has so far established aggression against Saudi Arabia from Iraqi territory. That aired about an hour and a half after Kataib Hezbollah's official Al-Ittijah TV said the Islamic Resistance in Iraq's deadline to respond to what it called US-Saudi aggression was nearing its end — a shortening of the morning line, which had put the deadline the day after tomorrow. Fifteen minutes before Al-Ittijah, Nujaba's official Al-Nujaba TV promoted an evening programme under the line "zero hour is approaching", and the KH-affiliated Sabereen News told the Iraqi foreign minister his hell had drawn near; none of the three named an operation, a site or a date, and no militia claimed responsibility for any action in the window. Shafaq reported in the afternoon that the resistance has yet to decide on a response.

In the militia space, the same Al-Ahad TV programming turned on the government's own security chiefs. Ahmed Adnan of the Sadiqoun Movement's General Council said Tom Barrack informed Prime Minister al-Zaydi of the date of the assault on the Popular Mobilization Forces, that Abd al-Amir al-Shammari was present when al-Zaydi passed it to PMF chairman Faleh al-Fayyad three hours before the strike, and that al-Fayyad's office notified the PMF in Nineveh only afterwards. He demanded the government hold al-Fayyad to account and parliament interrogate him, and said three days had passed with no denial; no confirmation or denial from al-Fayyad's office is in hand. In the same block, one guest attributed the targeting to American rather than Saudi desire, another blamed the Foreign Ministry and the Joint Operations Command for holding back the PMF's right of response, and a third called for the Saudi ambassador to be summoned.

Still on Al-Ahad TV, Adnan set a limit on who the anti-Saudi statement speaks for, saying it "does not represent all of the Coordination Framework of Resistance" and that confining weapons to the state is an Iraqi decision to which everyone must submit. Two other guests in the same block took different lines within seconds of him: a political researcher said the targeting was an American desire and that it was wise not to respond, and a Reconstruction and Development Coalition figure said his side is proceeding with the government on state monopoly of arms while deterrence must remain. Badr's affiliated Watan TV carried the counter-formulation about forty minutes later, airing commentator Shloushi asking whether the people's weapon is what protects the state — a single short clip, with the speaker's fuller argument not in hand.

On the diplomatic file, Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein became the shared subject of channels belonging to three factions. Al-Ahad TV reported straight his line to his Saudi counterpart that he had presented the government's policy of restricting weapons to the state; within half an hour Sabereen News reposted the quote calling him "the separatist Qachqachi foreign minister", and Al-Ittijah TV aired analyst Salah al-Amshani saying the ministry "does not represent Iraqis". Al-Kornet al-Kata'ibi (Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada — affiliated) posted an image of Hussein shaking hands with a man in Saudi dress, captioning it a meeting with "the Saudi who targeted Iraqi territory, leaving 50 people between martyrs and wounded", while Unit 10,000 (KH — affiliated) attacked his Aqaba oil pipeline talks with Jordan as "the normalization project" tied to Chevron. Rudaw reported the Basra–Aqaba pipeline talks with Jordan and Egypt separately, and press reports said an Iraqi security delegation will visit Saudi Arabia.

On the economy, three factions' channels attacked Iraqi fiscal management within seventy-five minutes and disagreed on what is wrong. Al-Ittijah TV carried Finance Committee member MP Hussein al-Daraji under the headline "the situation is tragic" saying the government will borrow domestically or abroad to secure salaries; iNEWS (KSS — affiliated) carried an economist calling the liquidity crisis fabricated; Al-Nujaba TV alleged failed companies win exceptional approvals worth hundreds of billions. The KH and KSS lines are mutually inconsistent on whether the money exists. Al-Ahad TV, alone among tracked channels, reported MPs saying more than one million ministry and state-department employees are unpaid for want of liquidity; 964 Media reported that ministries will halve spending from Sunday.

On the domestic front, Badr's affiliated Watan TV put the Sudani government's contracts in the frame twice in fourteen minutes, a line no other tracked faction's channels carried today. It reproduced a letter from MP Jabr Muhammad Kadhim al-Mutairi to the prime minister citing a Ministry of Oil reply on 49 consultants at the Karbala refinery at 57 million dollars a year plus an 18-million-dollar operating contract, and asking for a high investigative committee. The second item carried Masoud Haider calling on the judiciary, the government and the Integrity Commission to audit files worth hundreds of billions of dollars; the letter image is dated 2023, so the document is older than the post. Separately, Watan TV and Al-Ahad TV posted two minutes apart a Popular Mobilization Forces denial that an armed clash occurred with any other force in Samarra — neither naming the other force, and no source describing the incident being denied.