The US-Israel War With Iran Is Tearing Iraq Apart

Despite an ongoing ceasefire, the conflict that has shaken the Middle East is still wreaking havoc in Iraq, which has emerged as one of its most active and complex battlefields.

In recent weeks, reports have emerged of secret Israeli bases established in western Iraq as staging grounds for operations against Iran, as well as militias allied with the Islamic Republic conducting cross-border drone attacks against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Iranian Kurdish fighters, once teased by the United States and Israel as potential allies, remain positioned in Iraq’s semiautonomous north.

All of this plays out as a new government, led by a young, relatively little-known business magnate, Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, assumes control over the fragile nation of nearly 50 million people caught in a decades-long cycle of conflict.

“Iraq's position is extremely fragile because, since 2003, it has been one of the main arenas where regional and international rivalries play out,” Ali Mamouri, a research Fellow at Deakin University and a former strategic communications adviser to the Iraqi prime minister, told Newsweek. “The U.S.–Iran competition has always been present in Iraq, but the current U.S.–Israel war with Iran makes this vulnerability much sharper.”

“Reports about Israeli activity in western Iraq, militia drone operations from Iraqi territory, and the presence of Iranian Kurdish opposition groups in the north all point to the same reality: Iraq is not outside the war,” Mamouri said. “It is already part of its geography, even if the Iraqi government officially tries to remain neutral.”

Into the Fire

The situation Iraq finds itself in is particularly frustrating to officials, given the extent to which Baghdad has sought to keep itself out of the fray.

In an interview with Newsweek last October, shortly before the national election, then-Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani spoke at length about his touted accomplishment of making Iraq “the nation that has the most balanced and cordial relations with the United States and Iran,” while seeking to establish a “monopoly of weapons” in the hands of the state.

For a time, the strategy bore fruit.

While a number of militias aligned with Iran and operating under the collective banner of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq intervened in the war in Gaza that erupted in October 2023 by targeting U.S. troops and Israel, the campaign gradually came to a halt, and Iraq was spared the destructive scenes that came to define other theaters where Iran-led Axis of Resistance factions were present, namely Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Sudani also readily backed U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, a comprehensive proposal that initially held promise of de-escalating regional tensions.

Those hopes, along with Iraq’s precarious tranquility, were shattered when the U.S. and Israel launched an unprecedented joint campaign against Iran in February and killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei, who has been replaced by his son, Mojtaba, was not only the top authority in Iran but a leading religious figure for many followers of the Twelver Shiite Muslim faith adhered to by the majority of the Islamic Republic’s allies.

“Despite the number of armed groups in the country, from Kurdish to Shia paramilitaries, Iraq had succeeded in staying out of the regional war from October 2023 till February 2026,” Hamzeh Hadad, an adjunct fellow with the Center for a New American Security’s Middle East Security Program and former adviser to the president of the Trade Bank of Iraq, told Newsweek.

“However, with the killing of Iran's supreme leader, who also happens to hold a high religious title, it quickly became harder for the Iraqi government to maintain stability with certain armed groups with close relations to Iran responding with attacks on U.S. presence in Iraq,” Hadad said.

And while Iraq’s military has emerged as a capable force since the dark days of the Islamic State militant group’s (ISIS) deadly rise in the early 2010s, wielding a heavy hand to crack down on the same militias that aided in that fight against the jihadis risks even greater turmoil.

“These militias have political supporters in the government itself, they control a good portion of the Iraqi economy, are well armed and funded by Iran, and are integrated into state forces to different degrees,” Shirwan Hindreen Ali, Middle East research manager at the Armed Conflict and Location Even Data (ACLED) monitor, told Newsweek.

“Furthermore,” Ali said, “confronting them militarily carries risks of triggering an internal conflict similar to the sectarian conflict of the 2000s or the war with the Islamic State in the 2010s.”

By the Numbers

Since the outbreak of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, Iraq has suffered more than 80 dead, according to the Popular Mobilization Forces, a state-backed paramilitary force that includes a number of Iran-aligned factions-including Kataib Hezbollah, the Nujaba Movement and Kataib Seyed al-Shuhada-that often operate independently.

The figure puts it only behind Iran and Lebanon, where fellow Axis of Resistance group Hezbollah has rejoined the battle over Khamenei’s slaying, and exceeds the reported death tolls in Israel and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states that have come under Iranian missile and drone attack.

A report by TheNew York Times alleging that Israel had established a direct presence in Iraq ahead of the conflict further fueled the notion that Israel was operating directly in Iraq, where the U.S. also has a history of conducting strikes against militias.

“The report of the Israeli bases was surprising but not shocking,” Ali said. “While there was no public confirmation by the Israeli government, ACLED records 128 air/drone strike events in Iraq targeting pro-Iran groups during the active part of the current war prior to the ceasefire that were either conducted by Israel or the U.S.,” Ali said.

Iraqi militias have also played a direct hand in striking GCC states, which Tehran and its allies accuse of aiding the U.S.-Israeli war effort through their hosting of U.S. military bases.

ACLED data shared with Newsweek found more than 65 attacks or conflicts involving Iraqi militias targeted nations of the neighboring Arabian Peninsula, many of them involving Kuwait and Bahrain. Ali acknowledged in his research that the figure is likely an underestimate, however, as “Saudi assessments reportedly indicate that roughly half of the drone attacks targeting the Kingdom originated from Iraq and were carried out by Iran-backed Iraqi militias.”

A fresh set of drone strikes last week that targeted Saudi Arabia as well as the UAE’s Baraka nuclear power plant marked another escalation as the U.S. and Iran traded fire in the Strait of Hormuz despite the ceasefire announced in April.

The fallout is likely to have lasting ramifications for Baghdad’s endeavor to court GCC countries.

“It is important to note, that bilateral relations with neighboring states have been damaged because of drone attacks originating from Iraqi territory towards Gulf states,” Hadad said. “Despite Iraq's efforts to reach out to Gulf states, whether that is with hosting the 2025 Arab League Summit in Baghdad or landing large energy deals like the one with TotalEnergies and QatarEnergy, there will be less patience from regional states with the new Iraqi government, making the task at hand more difficult.”

“To make matters worse, the latest development of secret Israeli bases being exposed in Iraq, will add more pressure on the Iraqi government from the domestic side,” he added. “While there have been many violations to Iraqi sovereignty in the past, the presence of the Israeli military is a new low.”

Zaidi’s Challenge

The conditions pose a staggering challenge for any Iraqi leader, particularly for 40-year-old Zaidi, who is under pressure from multiple flanks, both foreign and domestic, to find a successful path forward.

Zaidi assumed the premiership on May 14 after emerging as the compromise candidate among rival political factions, despite Sudani’s bloc coming out of the November election with the largest share of the vote. The favored choice, especially among political forces aligned with militias, was former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, though the U.S. rejected his candidacy under threat of cutting crucial funds.

Washington has continued to exert influence in pushing Zaidi to take tougher steps in routing the influence of militias-and by extension, Tehran, which has high stakes in Iraq’s future as well.

“Just like his predecessor, the new prime minister will have negligible ability to restrain the so-called resistance factions should the war with Iran resume, given that there is no viable military solution for dismantling these groups,” Ali al-Mawlawi, director of the Horizon Advisory Group, told Newsweek.

“The key difference this time is that Prime Minister Zaidi was publicly endorsed by President Trump after being vouched for by Tom Barrack,” Mawlawi said, “meaning the optics for both sides would be particularly damaging if Iraqi territory were again used as a battleground.”

Ultimately, he argued, “all Zaidi can do realistically is hope that any future agreement between the U.S. and Iran on the cessation of hostilities explicitly includes Iraqi territory.”

Such an agreement “would create the political space for Baghdad to pursue a gradual path towards bringing all arms under state control,” Mawlawi said.

Lahib Higel, a senior analyst for Iraq at the International Crisis Group, argued that “Zaidi’s task of reigning in the Iran-backed groups will be even harder than it was for Sudani because U.S. pressure is mounting, while the groups are further emboldened after the war.”

“The best he can do is seek broad support among the Shiite parties to disarm and integrate groups that are acting outside state command,” Higel told Newsweek. “Some may embark on the process if their political survival is guaranteed. Others will refuse, in that case, confrontation may become inevitable.”

“Any prime minister will seek to avoid that outcome,” she said. “But if hostilities escalate again, the U.S. won’t hesitate to target these groups.”

Concerns over such an escalation are mounting as negotiations remain deadlocked. Trump has announced his decision to skip the wedding of his son, Donald Jr., this weekend, citing “circumstances pertaining to the Government” and his “love for the United States of America.”

Should the U.S. resume large-scale strikes against Iran, the crisis becomes all the more critical for Iraq. Iran’s network of Iraqi militia allies, one of the most key Axis of Resistance components, particularly after the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad severed geographical links to Hezbollah, will likely deepen their intervention.

“The more serious risk is that if the conflict reignites fully across Iraq's border, Iran-aligned groups in Iraq will not remain passive,” Mamouri said. “Iran's ties with Iraqi militias and political factions are deep, historical, and institutionalized. These links cannot be cut quickly, especially during wartime. In fact, war usually strengthens such alliances, because groups that see themselves as part of the same strategic camp tend to close ranks under pressure.”

“This creates a major threat to Iraq's stability,” he added. “The U.S. and Israel view these militias as part of the ‘Axis of Resistance’ and therefore as legitimate targets. Iran views them as a forward line of defense. Iraq, meanwhile, lacks the institutional strength to fully control or restrain them. This means Iraq could easily become a direct battlefield again, even if Baghdad does not want that outcome.”

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This story was originally published May 23, 2026 at 4:00 AM.