Tuesday, 11 August 2026

The Iraqi government told armed factions that groups refusing to hand over their weapons before the September handover deadline will face legal action, and the Interior Ministry said drones launched from Iraqi territory without authorisation are a 'terrorist act'. The state says it has registered 6 million firearms and closed 71 'fake' PMF offices, which the Popular Mobilization Forces disavow as 'ghost' bases with no link to the force. Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani held Baghdad talks on the future of the armed groups, and Tehran urged the Iraqi factions to halt attacks on Saudi Arabia.

A spokesman for Muqtada al-Sadr said the PMF leadership failed to notify its bases of the airstrikes Washington and Riyadh carried out on Iraq, and called for an internal probe into them; parliament has formed a committee to investigate the same strikes. US President Donald Trump said Washington will demand compensation for soldiers killed by Iran-made IEDs in Iraq, and the prime minister's office says no date has been set for his rescheduled visit to Saudi Arabia.

In the militia space, three Kataib Hezbollah channels reported a second missile strike on a ship in Bab al-Mandab this morning, with Sabereen News (KH — affiliated) alone naming the vessel "the Saudi enemy ship" in captions on two damage photographs. No Iraqi group claimed responsibility in the collected material, and the desk's visual review of that imagery found no hull number, flag or landmark to fix the vessel or the location; the militia digest beside this one has the channel-level detail.

On the economy, officials put the cost of the Hormuz shutdown at $150 billion and said salary payments are threatened, and Baghdad urged Iran to reopen the strait to oil tankers as Iran's parliament speaker arrived in the capital. The Oil Ministry is turning to Jordan and Syria for new export routes, unveiling a dual pipeline plan to Faysh Khabur and Baniyas that the ministry says would expand marketing options.

In the north, Turkey's parliament passed a historic PKK peace framework bill and a limited amnesty law for PKK fighters on Monday evening, hours after opening debate on the pardon-like bill covering thousands of militants. Jailed PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan is cast as the author of the group's end, the group whose fighters are based in Iraq's northern mountains.

Still on the economy, parliament moved to regulate senior officials' salaries and recover stolen public funds as Prime Minister al-Zaidi vowed no red lines in the crackdown and international experts joined the effort to trace stolen funds. Authorities issued 34 arrest warrants over billion-dinar land graft in Anbar.

In Kurdistan, the Kurdistan Region has submitted its drone and missile damage report to Baghdad for compensation, a regional minister said, putting a federal claim on the file of attacks on the Region's energy and civilian sites. Kurdish lawmakers separately moved to block food-ration card transfers in the Article 140 disputed areas.

Three Kataib Hezbollah channels reported a second missile strike on a ship in Bab al-Mandab this morning, and Sabereen News (KH — affiliated) alone named the vessel as "the Saudi enemy ship" in captions on two damage photographs it posted. Between 08:08 and 09:08, Sabereen News and Unit 10,000 (KH — affiliated) wrote the attack as an occurrence, while Al-Ittijah TV (KH — official) hedged it as "reports of" a strike; six minutes after the photographs, Sabereen News added the two-word line "a maritime event." No Iraqi group claimed responsibility in the collected material, and the posts name no perpetrator of any nationality. Desk visual review of the imagery captioned as the targeting of the Saudi ship found a burnt and torn superstructure with smoke, but no hull number, flag or landmark to fix the vessel or the location.

In the militia space, a strike on Popular Mobilization Forces headquarters attributed to Saudi Arabia drove the evening's political programming on Al-Ahad TV (AAH — official). The channel headlined Amal al-Shuwaili calling the foreign minister's conduct shameful for smiling and shaking his counterpart's hand as if thanking him for the targeting of the Hashd, and thirteen minutes apart carried her demand that PMF salaries be double a civil employee's entitlement. In a separate late segment it broadcast a political analyst saying preparations for what he called the Saudi strike were not accidental and that Iraq must penalise Iraqis complicit in it, crediting the Sadiqoun bloc and the first deputy speaker with backing a parliamentary inquiry. The underlying strike is corroborated nowhere in the collected material, and no militia has claimed any retaliation.

On the security file, four militia-linked channels reported this morning that an improvised explosive device struck an Iraqi Army search operation in Wadi al-Shay, Kirkuk, wounding three soldiers including an officer. Sabereen News carried it first at 06:44 and Unit 10,000 two minutes later, ahead of Al-Kornet al-Kata'ibi (KSS — affiliated) and iNEWS (KSS — affiliated), which alone credited news agencies rather than reporting in its own voice. No perpetrator is named in any of the four reports, no militia has claimed responsibility, and none carries an Iraqi security-command attribution.

In the north, Al-Ahad TV ran two Kirkuk segments fifteen minutes apart late on 10 August: the Kirkuk governor saying Article 140's validity has expired while the Kurds treat it as political and want to annex the governorate to Kurdistan, and Muhammad Samaan defending Kirkuk's entry into the Union of Municipalities of the Turkic World with the prime minister's approval. Earlier the same evening the channel posted three items in half an hour quoting the governor calling Qais al-Khazali the initiator and "guarantor" of the Kirkuk political agreement](/signals/al-ahad-tv-aah-official-ran-three-posts-in-half-an-hour-quot-20260811), an agreement the posts do not describe. No other tracked channel in the collected material addressed either item.

On the domestic front, three channels reported within seven minutes this morning that the Babil provincial council had filed a judicial complaint against the sheikh of the Janabiyin over remarks the council characterised as stirring sectarianism and insulting the PMF. Sabereen News and Unit 10,000 carried it before Al-Kornet al-Kata'ibi, and two of the three ran it under breaking-news marking. All three adopt the council's characterisation; the sheikh's own words appear in none of the posts, and the collected material holds no court or council document.

Also on the domestic front, MP Mansour al-Baiji used Ansar Allah al-Awfiya's own channel to state that there is no agreement whatsoever with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, saying he had never met or sat with its leaders and was describing reality rather than hopes. The posting does not say what alleged agreement prompted the denial, and no PUK response is in hand. Separately, Harakat al-Jihad wal-Bina published its secretary-general saying some treat the blood of the Hashd as different from that of the rest of the security forces, attributing the unequal treatment to unnamed others.