The Daily Digest
Iraq's prime minister ordered a probe into the drone strike on Kurdistan Regional Government Prime Minister Masrour Barzani's office in Erbil, and the foreign minister asked Tehran for an official explanation for the attack, which the Kurdistan Region's counterterrorism service attributed to Iranian drones. The two governments discussed the attack directly and Baghdad sought Tehran's position; Iran's foreign minister answered with a warning about false-flag ploys rather than an acknowledgement. The KRG asked Baghdad to take the case to the United Nations, pressing that demand publicly while Kurdish leaders pressed Baghdad to act and Iraqi MPs called for an emergency parliament session in Erbil. The EU condemned the strikes on Barzani's office and on the Kurdistan Region security chief's residence, the UAE issued an official statement calling the strike Iranian, and US envoy Tom Barrack condemned the attack, with Moqtada al-Sadr criticising what Kurdistan24 reported as Iranian drone attacks on the region.
On the security file, Iraq's top leaders renewed their call to place weapons under state control, and Kataib Hezbollah (Iran-aligned Iraqi militia) set conditions on any disarmament talks, a set of conditions Shafaq also reported as attached to the weapons talks, while a bloc linked to the group called the effort madness and said the disarmament law will not pass. The same fight is running inside the Popular Mobilization Forces command: Al-Ahad TV (AAH — official) spent the night building the case that Falih al-Fayyadh should resign over unanswered strikes on PMF headquarters, as today's militia digest sets out, and on the ground PMF sites in Diyala were evacuated over unidentified aircraft, Iraqi forces arrested the intelligence chief of Harakat al-Nujaba (Iran-aligned Iraqi militia), according to a source cited by The New Region, and another senior Nujaba figure was detained in Dhi Qar.
On the economy, the state oil marketer SOMO is seeking safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz for Iraqi crude exports, and Baghdad is turning to non-oil revenue as the Hormuz crisis deepens. A new gas processing plant opened at the Faihaa oil field and Halfaya is processing 190 million cubic feet of gas for the grid, though Rudaw reported that more generation has so far meant more waste and the same shortages. The Oil Ministry removed Baghdad's fuel distribution director; a large fire broke out at a fuel depot near Sulaimaniyah, which Shafaq located in the Tanjaro area of Sulaymaniyah. Iran's central bank governor is in Baghdad to recover $11 billion and expand $12 billion in trade.
On the domestic front, Saudi Arabia renewed its invitation for the Iraqi prime minister to visit Riyadh, lawmakers are pushing to freeze the provincial councils again, and thousands of graduates protested in Baghdad demanding public-sector employment, Rudaw reported from the demonstration. Al-Rasheed Bank dismissed any role of its own in the fake employee payroll case, and Iraqi intelligence warned of a plot to assassinate Supreme Judicial Council head Faiq Zidan.