Shafaq News
Since April 8,no confirmed attack has been recorded against US military installations inIraq. Drone activity has continued in Erbil and Al-Sulaymaniyah provinces inthe days following the ceasefire, though these targeted Kurdish security sitesand Iranian opposition camps rather than aUS positions directly.
The ceasefire,reached through Pakistani mediation between Washington and Tehran, has held on thatspecific front; however, it has not altered any of the conditions that madethose attacks possible, effective, and, according to the armed factionsthemselves, far from over.
The UnitedStates spent the 40 days between February 28 and April 8 absorbing anunprecedented tempo of drone and missile strikes on its installations,diplomatic facilities, and contractor personnel across Iraq. It responded withretaliatory airstrikes on Iran-aligned armed factions, groups formallyintegrated into the Iraqi state.
Thatcalculation -keep Iraq a manageable distraction, not a second front- shapedevery American decision in the country during the conflict. The ceasefirepreserved it, for now, but the factions, the vulnerabilities, and the politicaldysfunction that made the campaign possible are all still in place. AndBaghdad’s newly designated prime minister, a political novice with acomplicated financial biography, has 30 days to form a government capable ofnavigating what his predecessors could not.
The Campaign
When the UnitedStates and Israel launched strikes on Iran on February 28, 2026, targetingmilitary infrastructure and killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Iraq andLebanon immediately became secondary theaters of the wider war. The IslamicResistance in Iraq (IRI), an umbrella grouping of Iran-aligned armed factionsthat had already conducted more than 170 attacks on US military assets sinceOctober 2023, dramatically escalated its operations. Washington’s preferencewas clear: keep the Iraqi front contained, manageable, and below the thresholdthat would require the kind of direct, sustained military engagement that wouldconsume attention and resources needed elsewhere.
That preferencewas immediately tested. Between February 28, 2026, and the ceasefireannouncement on April 8, Shafaq News documented over 900 strikes landing on theUS logistical support center at Baghdad International Airport and the USEmbassy compound in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, causing damage andtriggering lockdowns. Air defense systems engaged repeatedly over Erbil andaround Harir Base in Iraqi Kurdistan, where the American presence issignificant. The scope of attacks expanded to energy infrastructure in northernIraq, including the Lanaz refinery in Erbil and the Sarsang oil field in Duhok.
In theKurdistan Region alone, about 650 attacks were recorded over those 40 days,with US diplomatic and military facilities among the primary targets.
The IRI’scampaign extracted concessions from the strategic environment without battlefieldvictory. It operated on a logic of attrition: not destroying American assets,but making the cost of maintaining them —in personnel, contractor presence, andpolitical capital— prohibitively high. Nowhere was this logic more precise thanat Martyr Brigadier General Ali Flaih Air Base, formerly known as Balad,located roughly 70 kilometers north of Baghdad in Saladin province.
Balad is theoperational hub of Iraq’s American-supplied F-16 fighter fleet, maintainedunder a contract worth over $252 million awarded to V2X, a Colorado-baseddefense firm formed through the merger of Vectrus and Vertex Aerospace, andrunning through late 2026. A senior security source inside the base told ShafaqNews it sustained approximately 13 drone attacks during the heightened US-Irantensions. The strikes were aimed not at the aircraft but at the contractorsresponsible for maintaining them. The F-16s remain protected in more than 35hardened underground shelters.
In an interviewwith our agency, security expert Abdul Sattar Al-Jubouri said the withdrawal offoreign contractors created a technical vacuum that Iraqi personnel cannotfill, particularly for software systems, advanced avionics, and complexcomponent overhauls.
Former IraqiAir Force officer Jamal Al-Azzawi described Iraqi teams at Balad as capable ofhandling routine maintenance, but acknowledged the gap left by the contractordepartures.
An employee ofV2X, speaking anonymously to a British outlet in March, called the base ahigh-value target with more than 200 American nationals on site, and reportedthat some Iraqi military and contract employees had been passing sensitiveoperational information to IRI-affiliated contacts in preparation for furtherstrikes.
Renad Mansour,a senior research fellow at Chatham House, described the governing dynamic thatmakes this possible: the armed factions “have one foot in the state and onefoot out of the state.” That hybrid model, simultaneously part of Iraq’s formalsecurity apparatus and operationally autonomous from it, is precisely whatallows IRI-affiliated networks to gather intelligence inside a base nominallyunder Iraqi government control.
The Ain al-AsadAir Base in western Al-Anbar province —historically the larger of the twoprincipal American installations in Iraq— is no longer part of this equation. On January 18, 2026, the United States completed a full withdrawal from thebase, handing control to the Iraqi army. What remained of the Americanfootprint before February 28 was concentrated at Erbil Air Base in IraqiKurdistan and the contractor presence at Balad. The IRI’s campaign targetedboth.
: Drone incidents reported across 14 Iraqi provinces in latest escalation
The Ceasefire
The two-weekceasefire, brokered by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, required Iranto reopen the Strait of Hormuz while the United States and Israel haltedstrikes on Iranian territory. The IRI simultaneously announced a suspension ofits operations in Iraq and across the region. Then, the Iraqi flags and Iranianflags were waved together in Tahrir Square in Baghdad.
The ceasefirefrayed almost immediately. Iran-aligned armed factions continued drone attacksnear the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center and Baghdad International Airport onthe day it took effect, prompting the US Embassy to warn American citizensagainst further possible attacks and to avoid air travel. Since the ceasefire’simplementation, the Kurdistan Region has been hit by a further 48 attacks. All,according to Shafaq News sources, directed at Iranian Kurdish opposition sitesand conducted by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps rather thanIRI-affiliated factions, bringing the documented total since February 28 to695. The ceasefire, extended at least once at Pakistan’s request, has beenviolated by both sides and functions as a negotiating framework rather than adurable agreement.
What theceasefire does not address is as significant as what it halted. Iran’s 10-pointcounter-proposal, which Tehran has framed as the basis Washington accepted,includes the withdrawal of all American forces from bases across the region. That demand, if pressed in negotiations, would eliminate the residual USpresence at Erbil Air Base and the contractor mission at Balad, both of whichBaghdad has simultaneously asked Washington to maintain.
Meanwhile, thearmed factions have made their own position explicit. Hezbollah Al-Nujaba, oneof the IRI’s most prominent constituent factions, declared this week that Iraqwould permanently remain the “striking force” of the Resistance Axis anddescribed its fighters as “martyrdom projects” on that path. “We renew ourpledge and covenant,” the group said in a statement addressed to AyatollahMojtaba Khamenei, son of the assassinated Supreme Leader, “we —the sons ofal-Nujaba— will remain your loyal soldiers.” Al-Nujaba, along with otherIRI-affiliated factions, claims hundreds of attacks on US militaryinstallations in Iraq and across the region since February 28 —a figure thatcannot be independently verified but is directionally consistent withdocumented evidence. The guns have paused. The intent has not.
: Iraq’s Islamic Resistance after Ali Khamenei
The NewGovernment
Into thisenvironment steps Ali Al-Zaidi, named prime minister-designate on April 27 aftera political deadlock that lasted more than five months following Iraq'sNovember 2025 parliamentary elections. Al-Zaidi, 40, is a businessman who hasnever held government office. His path to the nomination was shaped as much bywhat he is not as by what he is: former Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, adeeply divisive pro-Iran figure, withdrew after his candidacy ran into fierceopposition —both from some parties within the Coordination Framework (aShiite-led coalition that underpins the current parliamentary majority) itselfand from Washington, which threatened to cut all US support to Iraq if he tookoffice and suspended nearly $500 million in dollar shipments to Baghdad toreinforce the point. Al-Zaidi emerged from the wreckage of that deadlock as a consensusno one had planned for.
The US Embassyin Baghdad quickly welcomed the outcome, extending its "best wishes"to Al-Zaidi and expressing support for Iraq's sovereignty and "securityfree from terrorism" —language that functions as diplomatic shorthand forWashington's core demand: meaningful action against IRI-affiliated armedfactions operating inside the Iraqi state.
Tehran movedwith equal speed, though with markedly different emphasis. Iran's ForeignMinister Abbas Araghchi congratulated “my brother” Al-Zaidi on his designationand affirmed Tehran's "respect for Iraq's sovereignty" and supportfor "political stability, development, and enhanced cooperation"serving the interests of both peoples —a formulation that conspicuouslysidesteps the security architecture question altogether and instead frames therelationship in terms of bilateral economic and political alignment.
That bothcapitals issued congratulations within the same diplomatic window, yet inlanguages pointing in opposite directions, captures precisely the structuralbind Al-Zaidi inherits: a government whose external legitimacy depends onsatisfying patrons whose core demands are mutually exclusive.
Al-Zaidi’sbiography complicates the picture. He served as chairman of Al-Janoob IslamicBank, which faced restrictions on US dollar transactions as part of a widercrackdown on sanctions evasion, and has been linked in reports to alleged moneylaundering on behalf of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Thoseallegations remain unverified. But they frame the central question hisnomination poses: Is Al-Zaidi a genuine compromise figure capable of navigatingbetween Washington and Tehran, or a lowest-common-denominator candidate whosefinancial entanglements will limit his room to move on the question thatmatters most —the armed factions?
The next Iraqigovernment will face a set of overlapping challenges shaped by both domesticconstraints and external pressure. Washington is expected to press Baghdad tomove against Iran-aligned armed factions it designates as terroristorganizations, even as those same groups remain embedded within Iraq’s rulingcoalition and maintain close ties to Tehran.
At the sametime, Baghdad will need to rebuild relations with Gulf states that weretargeted by Iranian drones and missiles during the conflict and are now callingfor clear steps to curb the influence of armed factions operating from Iraqiterritory.
Economicpressures are also likely to weigh heavily. Disruptions to oil exports duringthe closure of the Strait of Hormuz exposed the country’s reliance on cruderevenues, which make up around 90 percent of the state's income.
Anotherunresolved issue concerns the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), astate-sanctioned paramilitary network formed during the fight against ISIS.While formally integrated into the armed forces in 2016, many of its factionscontinue to operate with significant autonomy. Their political influence,particularly within the Coordination Framework, limits the scope for anygovernment seeking to impose tighter control.
What Remains
Before February28, the attrition campaign against US installations could be framed as amanageable, if persistent, security challenge —episodic strikes, intercepteddrones, pro forma condemnations from Baghdad that no one took seriously. Fortydays of open warfare stripped that framing away and made visible what hadalways been structurally true: the United States is trying to sustain amilitary and contractor presence in a country whose government shares powerwith the armed factions attacking it.
Iraq’s airforce flies American jets, maintained by American contractors, inside a basewhere IRI-affiliated networks have been mapping personnel and passingintelligence to the factions that attacked it. The government that formallyasked the United States to leave has asked it to stay. The CoordinationFramework that nominated Al-Zaidi includes, among its constituent members, theleader of Asaib Ahl Al-Haq —a US-designated terrorist organization. Americanretaliatory airstrikes during the conflict hit Kataib Hezbollah and BadrOrganization positions —both formally integrated into the Iraqi Armed Forces—placing Baghdad in the position of explaining US strikes on its own securityservices.
Washington’spreference throughout has been to keep Iraq a secondary theater, a manageabledistraction rather than a second front. The ceasefire preserved thatpreference. But the armed factions have explicitly rejected the premise. Al-Nujaba’s pledge of permanent war, issued during an active ceasefire,addressed to a new Iranian Supreme Leader, signals that the pause is tactical,not terminal. The factions are not standing down. They are waiting.
Al-Zaidi'spredecessors, operating with deeper political experience and more stable regionalconditions, could not resolve the contradiction at the core of Iraq’s securityarchitecture. Nothing in al-Zaidi’s biography, his political base, or thediplomatic framework currently on the table suggests he has a theory of howIraq escapes the position it is in.
Written andedited by Shafaq News staff.
