from Tehran Times
The official spokesperson for the Iraqi Commander-in-Chief, Sabah Al-Numan, said the aggression “came while the government was conducting an investigation to address the concerns raised by both the Saudi and U.S. sides regarding the targeting of Saudi Arabia.”
According to Al-Numan, the council “decided to implement a security plan to maintain control on the ground and confront any violation of Iraq’s sovereignty.”
Earlier on Wednesday, various headquarters and locations across Iraqi territory were subjected to aerial strikes, coinciding with a joint U.S.-Saudi announcement that attacks had been carried out against sites inside the country.
In a statement, the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) announced that
“at least 20 soldiers were martyred and another 32 wounded in a
preliminary toll from the terrorist attacks carried out by the joint
U.S.-Saudi aggression, which targeted several official PMF headquarters
across several Iraqi provinces.” Five members of Iran’s IRGC have also
been martyred in Iraq’s Diyala province.
Yet beneath this official narrative lies a web of inconvenient truths,
deliberate evasions, and a contempt for Iraqi sovereignty that reveals
the true calculus driving Washington and Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia blamed the PMF for recent drone attacks that targeted critical oil facilities in its eastern province, despite Yemen’s Ansarullah claiming full responsibility for the operation. The irony is that Saudi Arabia announced it had intercepted the drone attacks.
By choosing to strike Iraq, the Saudis may have opened a Pandora’s box that could backfire in ways that Riyadh and Washington had not fully anticipated.
First, the strikes have unified Iraq’s fractious political landscape against Riyadh. Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s cancellation of his diplomatic visit to Saudi Arabia on Thursday signals a significant strain in relations between the two sides. Iraqi parties have come out in a show of solidarity with the PMF...
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