Saraya Awliya al-Dam (assessed Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada front, assessed) published a five-point signed statement by military spokesman Abu Mahdi al-Ja'fari early this afternoon, carried simultaneously on its own front channel and on Al-Kornet al-Kata'ibi (Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada — affiliated), with iNEWS (Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada — affiliated) flashing the visit demand minutes later. The text demands the government review all recently concluded agreements with the United States, cancel the scheduled visit "to the Hejaz," and "expel the Saudi ambassador from Iraq immediately, and sever diplomatic and economic relations with Saudi Arabia." Its fifth point states that "should the government fail in performing its duty, the zealous Iraqi people must demand the confinement of the government's weapons in the hands of the resistance" — an inversion of the state's own formula for confining weapons to the state.
The demand that state weapons be confined to the resistance reverses the disarmament formula in which the factions themselves are the object, and it is issued by a front rather than a parent, keeping the parent unexposed.