Saudi Arabia wants Iran-backed militia 'heads to roll' in Iraq amid talks with Tehran

Saudi Arabia wants Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi to take punitive action against Iran-backed Shiite militias that have targeted the kingdom since the start of the Iran conflict, multiple regional officials told Al-Monitor.

Tensions have escalated between the two neighbors, with Riyadh publicly acknowledging that it had conducted retaliatory airstrikes in Iraq alongside the United States last month. But as the kingdom forges defense pacts to counter threats on multiple fronts, it is also pursuing separate backchannel talks with Iran aimed at de-escalation, according to the officials, who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity.

The bulk of the attacks against Saudi Arabia since the start of the war originated from Iraq, as first reported by Al-Monitor.

“The Saudis want those responsible for attacking Saudi Arabia to be arrested and punished. Not the ones who pulled the trigger, but the ones who gave the orders. They want militia leaders to be held accountable. They want heads to roll,” one of the regional officials said.

Faiq Zaidan, the president of Iraq's Supreme Judicial Council, arrived in Riyadh Wednesday to hold talks with Saudi officials in a further bid to ease tensions with his country's powerful neighbor. Zaidan, who is often called the "king of Iraq," is widely regarded as one of the most powerful figures in Iraq, with influence that some observers say extends beyond that of the prime minister.

Since taking office in May, Zaidi has been working to loosen Iran’s grip on Iraq without provoking Tehran and its Shiite allies. It seems like a near-impossible balance to strike.

Zaidi was supposed to travel to Riyadh on July 30 to meet Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, as part of his US-backed push to forge closer ties with the Trump administration’s Gulf allies and with Iraq’s large neighbor to the north, Turkey.

The trip fell apart on July 28, when US and Saudi aircraft carried out multiple strikes targeting Iran-backed militia headquarters in eight provinces. Riyadh said the strikes were in retaliation for a wave of drone attacks carried out by “Iran-backed terrorist militias” against the kingdom’s energy infrastructure. US Central Command squarely blamed Iran, saying the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had orchestrated the attacks against Saudi oil installations and US forces in the kingdom.

On Aug. 13, a senior Iraqi military and intelligence delegation visited Saudi Arabia in a bid to staunch the damage. The week prior, on Aug. 7, Zaidi met with Saudi intelligence chief Khalid al-Humaidan in Baghdad.

There have been no reported attacks against Saudi Arabia from Iraqi soil since July 27. But how long will the militias desist? Much hinges on the broader trajectory of US-Iran deconfliction talks and, more immediately, on Iran’s next moves in Iraq. These are in turn bound up with Iran’s broader calculations about exploiting regional divisions, pitting a Saudi-Turkish-led axis against one spearheaded by Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

New Sunni-Shiite divide?

Estimates vary, but at least 20 people were killed and 32 others injured in the July 28 strikes, according to the Popular Mobilization Units’ general command. The PMU is the umbrella organization for the militias formed to combat the Islamic State in 2014. It has since evolved into a parallel power structure, wielding influence through a dizzying array of illicit networks and, in some areas, exercising more power than the government itself.

The Associated Press, citing Iraqi military officials, reported that six Iranian military advisers had been killed in the attacks. It remains unclear whether they were among the 20 fatalities confirmed by the PMU. What is clear is that the deaths are feeding the militia narrative that “Salafist Sunnis are shedding Shiite blood with America’s help and that Zaidi is complicit,” one of the regional officials said. This idea allows the militias to justify their continued existence to Iraq's Shiites, who form a majority of the country's population and were brutally suppressed by Iraq’s toppled Sunni dictator, Saddam Hussein.

“For the Iraqi militias, it’s like a win-win to keep poking the Saudis,” Michael Knights, chief production officer at the strategic intelligence platform Horizon Engage, told Al-Monitor.

Conversely, for Saudi Arabia, the Iraqi militias are easier to target than Iran and the Houthis. Victoria Taylor, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for Iraq and Iran and the director of the Atlantic Council’s Iraq Initiative, told Al-Monitor that as such, the July 28 strikes were “a signal to Iran and the Houthis that Saudi Arabia would be prepared to retaliate should the attacks on them continue. The best way to do that with less risk of escalation would be to hit the Iraqi militias. They are the lowest-hanging fruit.”

Still, Saudi officials remain adamant that they do not want the Iranian state to collapse and that they favor a negotiated solution to the Iran war.

The environment is growing ever more combustible as the Sept. 30 deadline for all non-state armed groups — a euphemism for the Iran-supported militias — to hand over their weapons or face legal consequences draws ever nearer. Zaidi, who became prime minister with Tehran and the Trump administration’s combined blessings, has vowed that the deadline will be met. He has ordered an unprecedented crackdown on corrupt officials, coupled with raids on militia premises.

The results have been mixed and sometimes embarrassing, with Harakat al-Nujaba, one of the most hard-line Iran-backed groups, recently repelling Iraqi government forces during an attempted raid, as reported by Mustafa Salim for Al-Monitor.

This week served up another humiliation for Zaidi. On Wednesday, a Baghdad court acquitted Abbas Yaqoubi, an intelligence official with Harakat al-Nujaba who had been detained only days earlier. Harakat al-Nujaba had called on the government to expel all US forces and sever ties with Saudi Arabia following the July 28 airstrikes, saying it would exact a heavy price on US and Saudi interests.

Sept. 30 is also the deadline for all US forces to withdraw from Iraq. The added conundrum for the Saudis and Zaidi alike is that Iraq has plummeted down the list of the Trump administration’s priorities.

Against this background, few, including the Saudis, believe the prime minister can bring the militias under control.

“The Saudi assessment is that the Iraqi government is not going to rein in the militias,” one of the sources said. Zaidi owes his position to a coalition of Shiite parties with varying degrees of proximity to Iran. But Iran’s influence can work to his advantage when their interests converge.

On the face of things, the signs are hardly auspicious. On Monday, Kataib Hezbollah, one of the most powerful of the Iran-backed groups, issued a statement lambasting Zaidi for his close ties with the United States. It asserted that it would only consider disarming if three conditions were met.

One is that all US forces leave Iraq and never return. Another is that Turkish forces withdraw from northern Iraq. And finally, the Peshmerga forces of the Kurdistan Region must be dissolved.

Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba and Kataib al-Shuhada are the leading members of Iran’s so-called axis of resistance.

“Resistance in Iraq is … one of the elements of this country’s power. Today, resistance has gone beyond the borders of Iran and Iraq … and has become global,” Iran’s visiting parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said on Wednesday in Baghdad.

Kataib Hezbollah’s stance is of particular consequence to Saudi Arabia. The UN Security Council's panel of experts on Yemen reported in 2024 that at least 80 Houthi fighters had received training from armed Iraqi groups in the Jurf al-Sakhr area, a major Kataib Hezbollah stronghold. The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War reported last month that the Houthis had established an operational headquarters in Jurf al-Sakhr.

Sitting at the intersection of Baghdad, Anbar and Najaf and close to the Euphrates River, the area is of immense strategic and agricultural value.

The Saudis had planned to strike Jurf al-Sakhr during the July 28 operations, but called off the strikes after Zaidi asked for time to deal with the area himself, saying the Iraqi army would handle it, three sources with knowledge of the operations told Al-Monitor.

One of those sources, who had direct knowledge of the events, said the decision was made “after consultation between regional capitals.” The source declined to elaborate.

“Jurf al-Sakhr is to Kataib Hezbollah what the Bekaa Valley is to its namesake in Lebanon,” Knights noted. “So when you are looking for a retaliatory address for some retaliatory fire, the obvious ones are Jurf al-Sakhr and the Kataib Hezbollah base on the Saudi border,” he added, even though both have been largely emptied in anticipation of such strikes.

If the Iraqi military were to attempt to move into Jurf al-Sakhr, it would likely precipitate Zaidi’s fall, a Western diplomat familiar with Iraq speculated.

Qaani steps in

The militias had been gearing up for a wave of counterattacks against Saudi Arabia in early August when Esmail Qaani, the head of the IRGC’s Quds Force, arrived unannounced in Baghdad on Aug. 10.

Qaani reportedly told militia leaders behind closed doors not to disarm yet, but instead to strike a peaceful compromise with the government before Sept. 30 rather than slide into armed confrontation with it, according to multiple news reports.

What was not reported, however, was that Qaani had warned them against further attacks on Saudi Arabia, one of the regional officials briefing Al-Monitor said. This was not only out of concern over a broader conflagration that could draw in further US intervention, but also because “they don’t want to push Saudi Arabia further into Turkey’s arms,” the source noted.

On July 30, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed a defense pact in Mecca stating that an attack against one member would be considered an attack against all. It has yet to be tested, but the agreement uniting NATO member Turkey, nuclear-armed Pakistan and the Arab world’s preeminent — if beleaguered — power, Saudi Arabia, was blessed by President Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform.

Another Saudi-led alliance for maritime security in the Red Sea, announced days earlier, is clearly aimed at deterring the Houthis.

Yet the succession of agreements has had little sway over the Houthis, who declared a maritime embargo on the Bab al-Mandeb Strait on July 20.

The Red Sea waterway has become something of a lifeline through which 80% of Saudi oil exports are moved ever since the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Since July 30, the Iran-backed group has claimed five separate attacks against Saudi Arabia, including an Aug. 9 attack on an Aramco refinery in Jazan and another on Monday against a Saudi naval vessel and its four escorts near al-Mukha.

While some analysts say the Mecca agreement is directed principally at Iran, Tehran has played down the threat.

“Iran believes the Mecca pact is mostly for show,” Vali Nasr, an Iranian-American professor of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, told Al-Monitor. Even before the accord was signed, Iranian and Saudi positions were drawing closer in the face of the UAE-Israel axis.

“Rather than viewing it as a threat to themselves, the Islamic Republic sees it as more of a useful response to balance the Israel-UAE-India bloc,” Nasr noted.

The shifting alignments may also play out in Iraq in ways that could ease the Saudi-Iraqi rift.

Of all the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia has been among the most willing to engage with Baghdad.

“The fact that there have been exchanges of security officials shows that the Saudis are willing to be measured and quite practical. The Saudis may be making serious demands, but others are not even talking to them,” the former State Department official Taylor said.

The United Arab Emirates is among those shunning Baghdad. On Aug. 18, the UAE said it had detected two ballistic missiles launched from maritime areas near its territory. Iran denied responsibility for the attack. Abu Dhabi has since suspended trade ties with the Islamic Republic.

Jared Szuba contributed to this report.