SCOOP: Israel In Iraq

President Donald Trump arrives in Beijing this week for the first state visit of his second term, without a ceasefire, a nuclear framework, or a Hormuz agreement in hand. He comes having just sanctioned Chinese companies for helping Iran target Americans. China is formally defying those same sanctions.

Also this week: an MBN scoop that beat the Wall Street Journal by two months on Israel’s secret military base in western Iraq, where Iraqi forces that stumbled onto it came under direct fire. In Beirut, a delivery worker spent a year impersonating an Iraqi intelligence colonel, meeting senior Lebanese generals and lecturing at the Staff and Command College. And Hezbollah took down an Israeli soldier with a fiber optic drone that costs less than $500. No radio signal. Nothing to jam. Israel had no answer for it.

Dalshad Hussein, Mustafa Saadoun, Rami Al-Amine, and Abubakar Siddique contributed to the Agenda this week. 

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Scoop

Israel’s Base in Iraq

An Iraqi army helicopter flies during the “Solid Will” military operation against Islamic State militants in the Anbar desert, Iraq, April 23, 2022. Reuters/Thaier Al-Sudani.

Two months before the Wall Street Journal reported it, MBN’s Mustafa Saadoun had the story.

On March 4, an Iraqi shepherd moving through the Nukhaib desert in western Iraq, a remote area between the provinces of Karbala and Anbar, reported unusual military activity to Iraqi military intelligence: armed men moving with military discipline, helicopters flying low, a deployment that did not look Iraqi. An Iraqi army force arrived at the site approximately 30 minutes later. As it approached, it came under direct fire. One soldier was killed. Two were wounded. The force that fired withdrew by helicopter.

Iraqi authorities contacted United States forces to ask whether they had engaged the Iraqi troops. The Americans denied involvement. A second Iraqi security source told MBN at the time that the almost certain assessment pointed to an Israeli force, one that had installed jamming and positioning equipment to track drones and missiles launched from Iraq and Iran.

The Wall Street Journal published its account this weekend, confirming that Israel had established a secret military base in western Iraq to support its air campaign against Iran, its special forces, and rescue teams. The newspaper’s account aligned with key points of MBN’s reporting on the day of the incident.

A senior Iraqi intelligence official confirmed the details to MBN after the Wall Street Journal report. “Yes, this information is correct,” the official said. “An Israeli force used our territory, unfortunately.”

Iraq’s National Security Adviser Qasim al-Araji, in a video interview with MBN conducted on May 8 that has not yet aired, said: “Iraqi airspace is [being] violated. American aircraft and Israeli aircraft.”

The Iraqi Security Media Cell issued a brief statement at the time of the incident acknowledging that a Karbala Operations Command force had come under airstrikes and gunfire during a search operation, resulting in one death and two injuries. It did not identify the party responsible. No official explanation has been provided since.

Read the full scoop here.

Washington Signals

The Beijing Bet

Hours before Air Force One left for Beijing, Washington sanctioned a Chinese satellite company for providing imagery used in Iranian strikes on American military facilities. The timing was not coincidental.

The sanction was the enforcement action behind a doctrine President Donald Trump signed four days earlier. On May 6, Trump signed a new counterterrorism strategy that formally places Iran’s proxy groups, including Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed group backed by Iran, Hamas, the Palestinian armed group that controls Gaza, the Houthis, the Yemen-based armed group that has attacked shipping in the Red Sea, and Iran-backed militias in Iraq, within the same legal and policy framework used against Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS.) The strategy’s message is plain: helping Iran is helping terrorism. Sanctioning the Chinese satellite company was Washington saying it meant it.

A senior White House official told MBN the logic connects directly to the Beijing summit. “The president sanctioned Chinese companies that help Iran target Americans. He is now in Beijing making that case directly to President Xi Jinping.”

Beijing responded by telling its own companies to ignore the sanctions entirely. China’s Ministry of Commerce invoked a 2021 law that instructs Chinese companies not to comply with American sanctions, ordering five oil refiners buying Iranian crude to defy United States penalties. The law has never been used at this scale. It is active now, in the middle of an American war.

Iran delivered its formal counter-proposal on May 10 through Pakistani mediators. President Trump called it “garbage” on Truth Social. Tehran is demanding that the war end across all fronts, including Lebanon, before any discussion of its nuclear program begins. Washington wants Iran to freeze its nuclear program first. Those two sequences do not overlap.

The official told MBN why Iran’s demand regarding Lebanon is unacceptable. “Iran’s demand that Lebanon be resolved before nuclear talks begin is a non-starter. The war started because of Iran’s nuclear program. That is what we are negotiating.”

The Central Intelligence Agency assessed this week, according to the Washington Post, that Iran retains roughly 75 percent of its mobile missile launchers, 70 percent of its ballistic missile stockpile, and can endure the American naval blockade for three to four more months. The official dismissed it. “This administration does not blink.”

President Trump heads to Beijing this week, asking President Xi to press Tehran toward a deal. Beijing is already asking what it gets in return.

Exclusive

The Colonel Who Wasn’t

A drone aerial view of buildings in Beirut, Lebanon, November 4, 2025. Reuters/Emilie Madi.

Lebanese security agencies hosted receptions for him. Posed for photos with him. Called him “the colonel.” He was a delivery worker.

Lebanese military intelligence detained the man a few days ago after discovering he had spent roughly a year presenting himself as the head of security at the Iraqi Embassy in Beirut, cultivating relationships across Lebanon’s intelligence services. He is being questioned at Lebanon’s Defense Ministry. According to Lebanese security information obtained after initial questioning, he spent his days on delivery shifts and his nights wearing a rank that was never his.

The access was extraordinary. He met Major General Edgar Lawandos, director general of Lebanon’s General Directorate of State Security, who posed for photographs with him. He met the deputy director general and another senior official, offering promises of assistance. He met Major General Hassan Choucair, another top security official. Several agencies hosted receptions for him. At one point, he walked into Lebanon’s Staff and Command College and delivered a lecture.

In Shiite circles, an Iraqi intelligence officer told MBN, he introduced himself as affiliated with Asaib Ahl al-Haq, an Iran-backed Iraqi militia designated by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization. Lebanese security officials say no evidence of formal membership has been established.

The tip did not come from Lebanese intelligence. It came from inside the Iraqi Embassy. Iraqi chargé d’affaires Nada Majoul reported him directly to Lebanese General Security. An Iraqi source told MBN the man was, in fact, a former embassy delivery worker married to a Lebanese woman.

Major General Lawandos called the head of Beirut’s intelligence branch to express displeasure over the arrest. President Joseph Aoun subsequently summoned Lawandos over the case. The suspect has not yet been referred to the public prosecutor.

Read the full exclusive story here

Iraq Watch

Baghdad’s Impossible Choice

Iran’s Quds Force commander arrived in Baghdad unannounced. He left behind a set of instructions that Iraqi factions did not ask for.

Esmail Qaani met with leaders of Iraq’s Iran-aligned factions on Sunday and delivered one message: Do not make concessions on weapons, do not restructure the Popular Mobilization Forces, the network of Iran-backed armed groups integrated into Iraq’s security forces, and do not respond to American pressure on the new government.

Two sources inside the Coordination Framework, the ruling Shiite coalition, told MBN that Qaani told faction leaders these files are “red lines for the Axis of Resistance.”

The sharpest instruction was delivered to Asaib Ahl al-Haq, an Iran-backed militia designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States, which holds 29 parliamentary seats and had been expecting two government positions in exchange for signaling openness to limiting its weapons. Qaani’s message, cross-checked by MBN across two sources: “Give up the two positions now. The time does not allow for handing over weapons.” One source said the movement is now “confused about its position.”

The visit has deepened an already fractured cabinet formation process. A parliamentary session scheduled for Tuesday to vote on the cabinet may be postponed due to unresolved disputes over the ministries of finance, oil, and interior. A senior Coordination Framework figure told MBN the divisions are “deeper than what is being reported.”

Washington is watching the cabinet list. The State Department told MBN it wants “actions, not words,” including expelling militia members from state institutions and cutting their government salaries.

Qaani came to hold Tehran’s line. Washington is holding its own.

Read the full story here

Lebanon Exclusive

The $500 Weapon

Hezbollah killed an Israeli soldier with a drone that costs less than $500 on AliExpress, the Chinese e-commerce platform. Israel had no effective defense against it.

The April 26 attack near the southern Lebanese town of Taybeh wounded six more soldiers. The weapon was a fiber optic-guided drone, the same technology now used on Ukrainian battlefields. Unlike conventional drones, it transmits commands through a physical wire that spools out during flight. Israeli jamming systems cannot touch it.

MBN examined Lebanese customs data and found the footprint. Fiber-optic imports rose from 83,000 tons in 2023 to 146,000 tons in 2024, a 76 percent jump during wartime. A source familiar with Lebanese customs told MBN the drones and spools could have entered in containers declared as toys, electrical tools, or telecommunications equipment. No regulations prohibit their import. Customs officers are unaware of their military applications.

The parallel to 2020 is not subtle. Tons of ammonium nitrate entered Beirut’s port under commercial cover and killed more than 200 people in the Aug. 4 explosion. Dual-use goods have a history of entering Lebanon undetected.

The Israeli military circulated an internal warning in May 2025, a full year before the Taybeh attack, about fiber-optic drones and the absence of adequate defenses. Hezbollah was already importing them.

Read the full story here

Featured Conversation

Iraq First

Iraq shares more than 870 miles of border with Iran and has a strategic partnership with the United States. Qasim al-Araji, Iraq’s National Security Adviser, sat down with MBN’s Mustafa Saadoun in Baghdad to explain how Baghdad navigates between the two.

On choosing sides: “We will not be enemies of America, and we will not stand with one side against another. Iraq acts according to one principle: Iraq first.”

On attacks launched from Iraqi territory toward Gulf states: Al-Araji acknowledged that Baghdad has arrested suspects in connection with those attacks and that investigations are ongoing. But he said Gulf governments have not yet provided Iraq with the evidence and coordinates needed to complete the legal and security process. “There is frustration between brothers,” he said. “We asked them to give us the proof.”

On Iraq’s airspace: “The Iraqi skies are being violated,” he said, describing American, Israeli, and other aircraft operating in Iraqi airspace without Baghdad’s control or full knowledge of their origins and targets.

On ISIS: Iraq has received 5,704 fighters linked to the Islamic State, the extremist group that once controlled large parts of Iraq and Syria, from Syria, representing 52 nationalities, including senior commanders. Al-Araji said managing that file is not Iraq’s responsibility alone. “This is a defense of the international community,” he said.

On the American journalist Shelly Kittleson, who was kidnapped in Baghdad in March and released after a week, Al-Araji denied that any deal was made. “We insisted on her release without preconditions,” he said.