U.S. and Saudi airstrikes kill 20 Iraq militia fighters, trigger crisis

U.S. and Saudi airstrikes killed at least 20 fighters from Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces and wounded 32 others, the PMF said, after blasts hit headquarters and other sites in seven Iraqi provinces. Iraq’s government called an emergency meeting as the strikes rattled Baghdad and raised the risk of a wider clash.

The PMF, also known as Hashed al-Shaabi, was formed in 2014 to help defeat the ISIS insurgency. Iraq formally brought it into the armed forces in 2016 as an “independent military formation,” but that label has never fully settled its identity: several of its militias still maintain ties to Iran, and many fighters remain loyal to former commanders rather than to the central chain of command.

That ambiguity is what makes the strikes so volatile. Washington and Riyadh said they were targeting Iran-backed armed groups in Iraq after attacks on U.S. forces and Saudi oil facilities. The PMF answered with its first response, calling the strikes an “extremely dangerous provocation” and accusing the two governments of violating Iraqi sovereignty and targeting state security institutions.

The result is a force that can be treated, depending on the faction, as part of Iraq’s official security apparatus or as an Iranian-aligned militia network. That split gives the PMF unusual political cover at home and makes any U.S. response harder to calibrate: a strike on one unit can be framed in Baghdad as an attack on the Iraqi state, while the same unit may be viewed in Washington as part of Iran’s regional proxy structure.

A RAND report on Jan. 24, 2023, warned that the PMF threatens both Iraqi sovereignty and U.S. policy interests because of its Iran links and the lingering loyalty many fighters show to militia commanders. In the latest escalation, the PMF said the airstrikes caused extensive damage to facilities and military equipment in addition to the deaths and injuries.

The pressure has been building for months. One 2026 account said PMF bases across Iraq had been bombarded 165 times that year, with more than 100 fighters killed and nearly 300 wounded. With state-backed units and Iran-aligned factions blurred together under one umbrella, even a localized strike now carries the risk of pulling Iraq, Iran-linked militias and U.S. forces into a broader confrontation.