Saudi Arabia spent months trying to convince Baghdad that drone attacks targeting the kingdom had been launched from Iraqi territories but failed to persuade officials in Baghdad to acknowledge the issue.
On Monday, days before Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi is due to visit Saudi Arabia, relations between the two countries entered a new phase of public tension after the Saudi Defense Ministry said it had intercepted and destroyed several drones aimed at oil facilities in the Eastern Province and the Riyadh region.
The ministry said the “terrorist attempts” originated from Iraqi territory and were carried out by “Iranian-affiliated terrorist militias.”
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry followed with a sharply worded statement condemning what it described as the attacks “in the strongest terms,” while Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Turki al-Maliki said the kingdom “reserves the right to respond at the appropriate time and place.”
Riyadh had previously announced on May 17 that it intercepted three similar drones approaching from Iraqi airspace and targeting oil facilities. Baghdad denied any knowledge of the incident at the time, saying Iraqi air defense radar had detected no launches from within Iraqi territory.
What distinguishes the latest escalation is its timing. It comes just before al-Zaidi’s visit and two weeks after Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein made a high-level trip to Riyadh that was expected to ease tensions between the two countries.
Hussein traveled to Riyadh on July 12 at the head of a senior security and diplomatic delegation that included Iraq’s national security adviser and the head of the National Intelligence Service, following an invitation from his Saudi counterpart, Prince Faisal bin Farhan.
The two sides discussed “ways to strengthen bilateral relations and develop mechanisms for coordination and joint cooperation,” according to a statement from Iraq’s Foreign Ministry.
Hussein acknowledged that the recent regional war had cast a shadow over Iraq’s relations with neighboring countries and said Iraq had been “among the countries most affected” by attempts to undermine its ties with fellow Arab states.
But information obtained by MBN from a source familiar with the meeting paints a different picture of the discussions behind closed doors.
Saudi Frustration
The source, a senior Iraqi government official, told MBN that Saudi anger toward Iraq stemmed directly from the exchanges during the Riyadh meeting.
When Saudi officials confronted the Iraqi delegation over attacks launched against the kingdom from Iraqi territory, the Iraqi side initially responded with an unequivocal denial, insisting Baghdad had no information about such strikes and that no attacks on Saudi Arabia had originated from Iraq.
According to the source, however, the Saudi side did not stop at verbal accusations. Instead, Saudi officials presented the visiting delegation with what they described as direct evidence, including the flight paths of the drones used in the attacks.
Most significant, the source said, was evidence indicating that the drones had been launched from locations relatively close to the Saudi-Iraqi border, rather than from long-range positions in Iran or elsewhere.
The evidence, according to the source, suggested the drones originated from within Iraqi territory itself.
The source declined to describe how the Iraqi delegation reacted after being presented with the evidence.
The account closely mirrors the events that unfolded in May, when Saudi Arabia publicly announced it had intercepted drones launched from Iraq, while Baghdad denied the claim, citing the absence of any detected launches by Iraqi air defense systems.
In an interview with MBN at the time, Iraq’s then-national security adviser, Qassem al-Araji, said his government had “no evidence” regarding the attack on Saudi Arabia.
MBN later reported that Saudi Arabia had refused to receive an Iraqi investigative delegation sent to examine the incident.
Those developments, according to the sources, contributed to Saudi Arabia’s increasingly tough stance toward Iraq despite Baghdad’s efforts to strengthen ties with the kingdom.
Border Security Concerns
A Saudi source told MBN that Riyadh remains particularly concerned about Iraqi territory adjacent to the kingdom, especially the desert regions of Najaf and Muthanna provinces.
Saudi Arabia is seeking assurances from Baghdad that the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) will be kept away from those areas.
One source of concern is Al-Muhandis Company, named after former PMF deputy commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, which controls large tracts of land in the Muthanna desert along the Saudi border for agricultural and investment projects.
According to the source, the company’s presence has heightened Saudi security concerns.
As of 8 p.m. Baghdad time on Monday, the Iraqi government had not issued a direct official response to the Saudi Defense Ministry’s statement.
Kuwait, Jordan and Qatar joined Saudi Arabia in expressing support for the kingdom and affirmed its right to defend its territory.
Ihsan al-Shammari, a political science professor at the University of Baghdad, wrote on X that the drone attacks “go beyond an early attempt to derail the Iraqi prime minister’s visit to Riyadh. They threaten global energy supplies and seek to preserve the Strait of Hormuz as a bargaining chip in negotiations.”
Al-Zaidi’s Visit
During his planned visit to Riyadh on July 30, Prime Minister al-Zaidi is expected to discuss a range of economic issues, including reactivating the Iraqi oil export pipeline to Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea port of Yanbu, increasing Iraq’s production quota within OPEC, and reviving the Saudi-Iraqi Coordination Council, which includes security, political and economic ministries, according to MBN sources.
The sources said al-Zaidi also plans to assure Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that his government will not allow Iraqi territory to be used to launch attacks against Saudi Arabia or other Arab states.
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic.
