Wednesday, 12 August 2026

Prime Minister al-Zaidi has ordered a draft law confining weapons to the state, a step Washington has publicly backed after Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani's Baghdad talks on the future of the armed groups. Within the same day, three Popular Mobilization members were shot dead at a Saladin base, Iraqi authorities said they suspect a drone destroyed a tank ammunition stockpile in what the paper calls a "silent battle" with the militias, and an IED wounded three soldiers in Kirkuk; no party has claimed any of the three and authorities have named no attacker. An adviser to the prime minister said Iraq must not be an arena for external conflicts, and the government stood up a Desert Operations Command near the Saudi border to prevent attacks.

Al-Janoub TV, Harakat al-Jihad wal-Bina's official channel, ran a Baghdad-datelined report on what it called repeated attacks on the Popular Mobilization Forces, carrying parliamentary calls for a "deterrence equation" protecting Iraqi sovereignty. It names no attacker, location or incident date, no other tracked channel carried it, and no party has claimed the attacks it describes; the militia digest beside this one has the channel-level detail.

On the economy, the Cabinet approved a 2026–2029 government program spanning 14 sectors and referred it to parliament, an agenda the government had unveiled the previous evening. A parliamentary committee put reserves at 109 trillion dinars, enough to cover salaries for about ten months.

Still on the economy, US crude imports from Iraq fell to zero, the EIA reported, and auto sales fell 28.6% in the first half of the year, Iraqi News reported, as non-oil weakness clouded the outlook despite 10% money growth and delivery firms moved toward collapse under heavy fees.

In the north, gas sales from Khor Mor to Baghdad are testing who controls Kurdistan's gas, and the Kurdistan Region's interior minister said oil output remains low amid security threats. MPs pressed Baghdad over Kurdistan's gasoline crisis, a KDP MP in Baghdad asked for 140,000 barrels of crude a day for the Region, and the KRG said equal cost treatment could cut petrol to 450 dinars.

Still in the north, Jordan hosted Iraq, Syria and the Kurdistan Region for talks on border security, with the Peshmerga seated at the high-level military meeting in Amman. The head of the Border Ports Authority separately proposed a meeting to unify procedures for the movement of goods between Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

Al-Janoub TV, Harakat al-Jihad wal-Bina's official channel, published a Baghdad-datelined report this morning on what it called repeated attacks on the Popular Mobilization Forces, alongside parliamentary calls for a firm response and a "deterrence equation" protecting Iraqi sovereignty. The report names no attacker, no location and no incident date, and the call for a response is attributed to parliamentary figures rather than to the movement itself. No other tracked channel carried the same report, and no party has claimed responsibility for the attacks it describes.

In the militia space, Huquq bloc MP Miqdad al-Khafaji's line that the execution of the wanted Saudis should have happened 15 years ago ran on four channels across four networks inside fifteen minutes late on 11 August — Sabereen News (KH — affiliated) first, then Shabab al-Islam (Ashab al-Kahf — owned, non-official), Unit 10,000 (KH — affiliated) and Al-Nujaba TV (Nujaba — official). Three carried only that one line; Al-Nujaba TV alone added his statements that resistance weapons are "covering us", that America will not leave Iraq completely on 30 September, that Riyadh has issued no formal apology, and that the foreign minister's response to Riyadh was weak. On Al-Ahad TV (AAH — official) the same MP went further, saying he had filed a lawsuit against figures who had prior knowledge of the Saudi bombardment and putting Iraqis held in Saudi prisons at 147, one an officer sentenced to ten years. Neither the court nor the defendants are named, and no outside coverage of the lawsuit or the detainee figure is in hand.

Still in the militia space, Al-Ahad TV turned criticism inward: in its overnight "Qabl al-Ghad" programme it aired Muhammad al-Yasiri, identified on screen as affiliated with the Popular Mobilization Forces in Baghdad, calling the Popular Mobilization Commission's statement about the government warning issued before what the channel called the Saudi aggression "contradictory" and saying it contained problems. The segment ran under the banner "Targeting the Hashd — the evacuation loophole and the detention gap", in the same programme block as al-Khafaji. The Commission has not responded, and its statement itself is not in the collected window.

On the domestic front, Al-Ittijah TV (KH — official) carried Babil provincial council chairman Asaad al-Muslimawi saying the council had directed that lawsuits be filed against Adnan al-Janabi over his Jurf al-Nasr statements, and, minutes earlier, Governor Ali Turki al-Jamali saying the area had been occupied by "Chechens, Afghans and terrorist groups" and the security forces were "innocent of that". About fifteen minutes later Al-Ahad TV aired legal expert Abbas al-Aqabi saying more than one criminal provision applies to those who insult the security forces and that al-Janabi's accusations "disrupt public security". The two channels frame it differently — an administrative act already taken versus criminal exposure for the speaker — and converge on the courts within one hour; neither engages the substance of what al-Janabi alleged, and there is no independent coverage of the underlying allegations.

Also on the domestic front, Sabereen News and Al-Ghadeer TV (Badr Organization — official) published word-for-word identical text eight minutes apart reporting that the Sumud solidarity convoy of more than 350 activists from around 20 countries was barred from entering Iraq for lacking official approvals, amid what both labelled أنباء — reports in circulation — of Jordanian pressure on the Iraqi government, despite prior Turkish–Iraqi foreign ministry coordination. Sabereen alone added that the convoy meant to cross into Jordan and reach the Jordanian-Palestinian border. Neither channel named an Iraqi official, and there is no outside coverage of the convoy or the Jordanian-pressure allegation.

On the economy, MP Hiyam al-Yasiri accused an unnamed investor of obstructing Iraqi crude exports, and two channels carried her at different lengths: Watan TV (Badr Organization — affiliated) said before dawn that the investor is "controlling" the Oil Ministry's resources, while Sabereen News about seventy minutes later specified that maritime crude export is blocked and that Iraqi Transport Ministry tankers are being refused. Neither named the investor, and no ministry or company response and no outside coverage are in hand.