Meanwhile, Qatar continued to promote its shuttle diplomacy aimed at ending the seven-month-old war between Iran and the United States. Trump once again predicted a swift surrender for Iran.

The 26-page letter by the Guards, published on Tuesday, urges Americans to use their political power to remove current leaders from office and reject US support for Israel and military intervention abroad.

While the missive was unlikely to sway US voters who may not even see the text published by Iranian media, it identifies issues that US political analysts say are working against Trump and the Republican Party ahead of November 3 congressional elections, when the opposition Democrats could retake control of one or both legislative chambers, potentially impeding Trump’s political agenda.

“Remove from power the evil, deceitful, and violent politicians who are responsible for America’s current state,” the letter said. “Make sure your politicians understand that the world has changed.”

Trump campaigned in 2024 pledging to avoid new wars, end existing conflicts and bring down inflation, but the war with Iran, which Trump launched alongside Israel, has contributed to higher global fuel prices and spread in the Middle East.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll published September 21 found just 17% of respondents approved Trump’s handling of the cost of living – the top issue Americans say will determine how they vote in November. Only 34% approved of the strikes on Iran.

Trump, who broke with Republican orthodoxy in 2016 when he called the US invasion of Iraq a major mistake, allowed the final withdrawal from Iraq on Wednesday, which was agreed in 2024 by former President Joe Biden.

The withdrawal comes 23 years after US-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein, then triggered upheaval that culminated with the rise of Islamic State.

QATARI MEDIATION

The US war in Iran has drawn in Iranian allies in the region, including the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and militias in Iraq, which Riyadh blamed for the September 10 attack that knocked the East-West Pipeline in Saudi Arabia offline.

Iran, which says its ultimate aim is to force American forces to leave the entire Middle East, casts the US withdrawal from Iraq as a triumph for its “axis of resistance” of allied armed groups across the region.

The US and Iran have not found an off-ramp from the war despite rounds of talks and several ceasefires.

Negotiations appeared to intensify during last week’s UN General Assembly meeting in New York, but have so far not yielded any agreement to reopen the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas passed before the war started in February.

Qatar has again emerged as would-be peacemaker after previously playing a supporting role in producing a June memorandum of understanding that led to a brief ceasefire. US and Iranian officials spoke separately with Qatari mediators on Monday, but it was unclear if exchanges took place on Tuesday.

“We are exchanging messages between the parties, and we’re working towards establishing a common ground in order to get into a deal that would save all of us from the repercussions of the conflict,” Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari told reporters.

Trump meanwhile repeated his position that Iran must not obtain a nuclear weapon and that the war would be over soon.

The conflict has degraded Iran’s conventional forces and damaged its already ailing economy, but Tehran has fought back with missile and drone strikes on US allies in the Gulf and by restricting oil tanker traffic in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, which has pushed up world energy prices.

“I don’t know if they are going to give up yet but they’ll give up,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday.

“They are doing very poorly,” he added.

At the United Nations General Assembly last week, Iran floated a peace proposal that would trigger a seven-day countdown to reopening the strait and a pause in fighting.

Trump on Saturday rejected the plan although Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Sunday that Washington had not officially relayed a US rejection through mediators.

Trump has cited weakening Iran’s nuclear capabilities as one of his war objectives, along with ending its ability to attack its neighbours and creating conditions for Iranians to topple their leadership.

Iran, which does not have nuclear weapons, denies seeking them. The US is nuclear-armed. Tehran says it has the right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes as a party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

(Reuters)

Iraqi security experts say the withdrawal — agreed in 2024 under President Joe Biden and carried out by Donald Trump’s administration even as it wages war against Iran — could give Tehran and its powerful allies free rein, while also allowing other US enemies to stage a comeback, including Islamic State.

“Iran stands to benefit strategically from the coalition’s departure because it removes a military presence that for years acted as a counterweight to Tehran’s influence in Iraq,” said Jasim al-Bahadli, an Iraqi security analyst specialising in studying armed Shi’ite groups aligned with Iran.

He predicted that the pro-Iranian militia groups would not only portray the departure as a victory for their movement, but also “seek to translate that momentum into greater influence over security and political decision-making”.

Abu Mojtaba al-Yasiri, a commander in the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an ‌umbrella group of Iran-backed armed factions, described the US withdrawal as “a historic victory for the Iraqi Islamic resistance groups and honorable Iraqis, and a crushing defeat for the American project”.

“On September 30, we will celebrate the turning of a black page in Iraq’s history and the failure of the occupation to impose its will on our country,” he told Reuters. “Iraq has proven that its sovereignty cannot be secured by foreign forces, but by the resistance and the will of its people.”

NOT READY

While the eventual departure of US forces is broadly popular among Iraqis, those who worry about the strength of the Iran-backed groups fear the withdrawal is premature.

“We believe Iraq is still not fully ready to take over the security file at this time,” Abdulrahman al-Zobaie, a Sunni tribal leader in Fallujah, once a bastion of anti-American resistance, told Reuters.

“All Iraqis aspire to full sovereignty, and no Iraqi would dispute that. But I believe that the (US-led coalition) leaving in this way and creating a vacuum is what all Iraqis fear.”

American forces invaded Iraq in 2003 to topple Sunni Muslim dictator Saddam Hussein, and went on to occupy the country, install a Shi’ite-led government and fight a years-long counterinsurgency before withdrawing at the end of 2011.

They returned less than three years later to help Iraqi forces defeat the Sunni militant group Islamic State in a major war from 2014 to 2017.

Around twice as many Americans died in “Operation Iraqi Freedom” as in the parallel war in Afghanistan, which ended with an abrupt US withdrawal in 2021.

In recent years, Iraq has been the only country to maintain close political and military alliances with both the United States and Iran, which sometimes used Iraqi territory as a proxy battlefield.

The United States killed a top Iranian commander, Qasem Soleimani, with a strike on Baghdad Airport in 2020. Iran’s allies repeatedly fired on US bases, sometimes drawing reprisals.

In this year’s war against Iran, 7 of the 18 US service members listed as killed were in Iraq, the last an army sergeant who died during the controlled detonation of a drone at a base near Erbil in July.

VICTORY FOR IRAN’S AXIS

Iran, which says its ultimate aim is to force American forces to leave the entire Middle East, casts the US withdrawal from Iraq as a victory for its “axis of resistance” of allied armed groups across the region.

“Lasting security will prevail in Iraq” once the Americans leave the country and the region, the deputy chairman of the National Security Commission of Iran’s Parliament, Amir Hayat Moqaddam, said on Monday.

Iran “welcomes the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and will undoubtedly support it,” he told Iran’s parliamentary news service. “Resistance groups are currently taking action, sometimes targeting and confronting American troops.”

Washington has accused Iran-backed militia groups in Iraq of playing a role in the wider Middle East conflict by launching attacks on neighbouring countries at the direction of Tehran, most recently hitting a major Saudi oil pipeline this month. The Baghdad government says it is trying to curb their influence.

NEW LIFE FOR ISLAMIC STATE?

Some Iraqi security officials, both in the federal government and the semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region, say the US pullout also risks giving new life to Islamic State fighters, who, despite the defeat of their self-proclaimed caliphate nearly a decade ago, retain a sleeper cell network.

At their height, the fighters occupied a third of Iraq and killed thousands of people, including hundreds they videotaped themselves gunning down inside a former US military base.

A lack of US intelligence, logistical support and drones will give Islamic State a chance to regroup, said Kurdish commander Sirwan Barzani.

“For more than two weeks, we have noticed movement by (Islamic State) sleeper cells, after it was announced in the general media that there will be an official withdrawal of the international coalition from Iraq by the end of September,” he said. “This has boosted, in my opinion, the morale” of the fighters.

Iraqi security forces said a suspected Islamic State cell was preparing suicide attacks to coincide with the pullout. The plot highlighted concerns that the militant group remains capable of exploiting security gaps despite years of military setbacks, said four Iraqi security and army officials.

Islamic State “is seeking to send a message that the group is still powerful and capable of launching bloody attacks,” said Colonel Khalid al-Bayati, a senior security official in the strategic oil town of Kirkuk.

(Reuters)

“U.S. forces began launching strikes against Iran at 8:00 p.m. ET today (0000 GMT),” U.S. Central Command said in a statement.

“The strikes are a powerful response to yesterday’s attempted Iranian attacks on U.S. forces based in the Middle East.”

Earlier on Wednesday, a drone hit a U.S.-owned gas storage tanker at Egypt’s Mediterranean port of Damietta, British maritime security firm Ambrey said in an initial assessment, while U.S. and Saudi forces launched strikes against Iran-aligned groups in eastern Iraq and Iran fired missiles at U.S. troops in Jordan.

A statement from Egypt’s petroleum ministry confirmed a fire at the port but made no mention of a drone attack. It was not immediately clear who was responsible.

The latest strikes in Iraq and Egypt threatened to draw more Middle Eastern countries into the conflict, after the Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen last week declared a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia.

The U.S. strikes in Iran on Wednesday followed President Donald Trump’s vow earlier in the day to retaliate against Iran for firing on U.S. troops.

“So it’s our turn,” Trump told reporters at the White House, promising to “hit them very hard” even as he again said Washington would continue to aim for a peace deal with Tehran.

Iran confirmed overnight that it had fired on U.S. bases in Jordan and at ships in the Strait of Hormuz, and also spurned an Omani proposal to jointly manage the strait, a critical global shipping route for oil and gas.

The war began in February, when the U.S. and Israel launched a bombing campaign in Iran that Trump said would last only a few weeks. A temporary ceasefire agreement in June collapsed amid renewed fighting over the strait, which Iran says it now controls.

Oil prices shot up on Wednesday in one of the sharpest spikes of the five-month war. Brent crude futures rose more than 8% to push the benchmark well above $90 a barrel, reversing much of a plunge earlier this week when Trump had unexpectedly halted U.S. strikes.

‘DEATH TO AMERICA’ SHOUTED IN IRAQ

The joint U.S.-Saudi attacks marked the first time Riyadh has publicly joined strikes alongside Washington.

Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces, powerful Iran-backed paramilitary groups incorporated into the Iraqi security forces, said at least 20 members were killed and 32 wounded in U.S.-Saudi strikes targeting several bases across Iraq.

Iraqi men shouted “Death to America!” as they carried the bodies of slain fighters in body bags.

Washington and Riyadh said they struck Iran-backed armed groups in Iraq in retaliation for drone attacks on Saudi oil targets launched from Iraq.

After the joint attacks, Saudi Arabia’s defense minister met with Vice President JD Vance in Washington on Wednesday to urge the Trump administration not to escalate the conflict further by attacking Yemen’s Houthis and carrying out additional strikes against the Iran-aligned militias in Iraq, two sources told Reuters.

One of the sources added that such escalation would open the door to “major unknown risks.” The White House and Saudi embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

U.S. officials have privately cautioned that resuming major combat operations against Iran would carry risk given the negative impact on stocks of munitions.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, estimated this week that the U.S. military has fewer than 1,000 Patriot interceptor missiles and fewer than 250 THAAD interceptors — two key air defense systems.

Though Iran denies its forces have directed strikes from Iraqi territory, Iranian newspaper Hamshahri reported that four Iranian Revolutionary Guards advisers had been killed in the strikes on Iraq.

IRAQ’S DANGEROUS RIFT

The strikes on Iraq expose a dangerous rift in that volatile country. The Shi’ite-led government is one of the few in the world to balance close military and diplomatic ties with both Tehran and Washington, but those divided loyalties are a constant source of tension and frequent domestic unrest.

The office of Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, who took power just two months ago, urged the parties involved to avoid escalation and said he wanted to keep the country out of regional conflicts.

The Iraqi presidency denounced the strikes on the paramilitaries as “an unacceptable attack and a flagrant violation of Iraq’s sovereignty”, while also calling for a halt to attacks by armed groups against Iraq’s neighbours.

The deep ties between Iran and Iraq, the two biggest Shi’ite-majority countries, are on display this week as hundreds of thousands of Iranian religious pilgrims head to shrines in Iraq for an annual observance of mourning for martyrs.

Hours before launching the attacks on Iraq, the U.S. military said its air defences had averted a surprise Iranian attack on U.S. troops in the region.

Jordan’s military said it had shot down five Iranian missiles. U.S. bases in Jordan have lately become primary Iranian targets, where three U.S. service members were killed this month in the worst U.S. losses since March.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had fired several ballistic missiles at U.S. military installations in Jordan, and had struck three tankers that were attempting to transit through the Strait of Hormuz along an unauthorised route.

(Reuters)

On April 25, Kuwait’s army said two drones launched from ​Iraq had targeted ​two northern border posts, causing ​damage.

Its air defences also dealt with a wave of Iranian drones on April 8 that targeted vital infrastructure.

While hostilities during the conflict have largely been scaled down since a ceasefire came into effect in April, drones have been launched from Iraq towards Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

(Reuters)

At least 30 other people were wounded in the strikes on a headquarters of the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq’s Euphrates valley province of Anbar, according to medical officials who said some were in serious condition and the death toll could rise. Reuters filmed ambulances bringing the wounded to hospital in the regional capital Ramadi during the night.

The dead included the PMF’s operations commander in the province, Saad al-Baiji. Later on Tuesday, a large crowd of angry mourners carried his coffin and portraits through the streets of Baghdad.

Two security sources said the strikes had hit the PMF headquarters during a meeting attended by senior commanders.

A separate airstrike hit a residence belonging to the PMF’s leader Falih al-Fayadh in the northern city of Mosul. He was not present at the building which he uses only during visits to the city, according to the two security sources. A PMF statement said its office in the city was destroyed and one fighter wounded there.

Such damaging strikes against the PMF create political difficulty for Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al‑Sudani, who has to walk a careful line maintaining the support both of Washington and of factions in the Shi’ite-majority country that are aligned with Iran.

Sudani ordered an emergency meeting of the Ministerial Council for National Security to be convened, said a statement from the Iraqi military’s joint operations command.

The statement said the 15 PMF fighters were killed in a “U.S.-Zionist airstrike”, the first time Iraq’s military has blamed Israel alongside the United States for bombing the PMF.

The PMF, known in Arabic as Hashd al-Shaabi, is an umbrella group of mostly Shi’ite paramilitary factions that was formally integrated into Iraq’s state security forces and includes several groups aligned with Iran.

Tehran-backed armed groups have launched attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and the U.S. embassy since the United States and Israel launched their war on Iran on February 28. Washington has had an influential presence in Baghdad since its 2003 invasion that overthrew dictator Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim, and replaced him with Shi’ite-led governments friendly with Iran.

The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has spilled across Iran’s borders, with Tehran launching strikes on Israel and Gulf Arab states hosting U.S. military installations, while Israel has carried out attacks in Lebanon following cross-border fire by Iran-aligned Hezbollah.

(Reuters)

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Navigation through the Strait of Hormuz — a chokepoint for around 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies — has been severely affected by unprecedented military activity, the oil ministry said in a letter dated March 17 and seen by Reuters. Most Iraqi crude exports transit the Strait, and the disruptions have caused storage capacity to reach its limits, the letter said.

International oil prices settled at their highest level in nearly four years on Friday, as the three-week-old U.S.-Israeli warwith Iran escalated.

“The international partners were unable to nominate tankers to lift crude, preventing exports despite the state oil company SOMO being ready to load shipments,” the letter said.

“Based on the situation, the ministry ordered a full shutdown of production at affected concession areas, with no compensation arising from the measure under contract terms.”

The ministry said the scale-back would be reviewed periodically depending on regional developments and invited companies to urgent talks to agree on essential operations, costs and staffing under the force majeure conditions.

Iraq’s Oil Minister Hayan Abdel-Ghani said crude production at Basra Oil Company has been cut to 900,000 barrels per day (bpd) from 3.3 million bpd after exports from the country’s southern ports were halted, according to a ministry statement on Friday. The produced quantities were being pumped to operate refineries, the ministry statement said.

The drop ​in production and exports is set to strain Iraq’s already fragile finances ‌as ⁠the state relies on crude sales for nearly all public spending and more than 90% of its income.

The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran has already spilled beyond Iran’s borders, as Tehran has responded by hitting Israel and Gulf Arab states hosting U.S. military installations, and Israel has launched fresh attacks in Lebanon after the Iran-aligned militia Hezbollah fired across the border.

(Reuters)

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UAE authorities said debris from an intercepted ballistic missile killed one Pakistani national in Abu Dhabi’s Bani Yas area, while a drone struck an oil facility in the port of Fujairah for a second consecutive day and a fire broke out at Abu Dhabi’s Shah gas field. UAE airspace was temporarily closed.

Rockets and at least five drones targeted the US embassy in Baghdad in what Iraqi security sources described as the most intense assault on the compound since the war began. Two US officials said no injuries had been reported.

Iran also continued overnight missile strikes on Israel, underscoring that Tehran retains the capacity for long-range attacks despite more than two weeks of sustained US and Israeli bombardment. The Israeli military said it was targeting “Iranian regime infrastructure” across Tehran and Hezbollah sites in Beirut, a day after announcing detailed plans for at least three more weeks of war.

‘Nobody expected that. We were shocked’

Trump said Iran’s strikes against Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait had caught him off guard. “They weren’t supposed to go after all these other countries in the Middle East. Nobody expected that. We were shocked,” he said on Monday.

However, Trump had been warned before the war that striking Iran could trigger a broader regional conflict including Iranian attacks on Gulf capitals, particularly if Tehran perceived those countries as condoning or actively supporting the US bombardment, according to a US official and two sources familiar with US intelligence reports. He was also briefed that Iran would likely seek to close the Strait of Hormuz, two other sources said.

No coalition yet

Trump voiced frustration at a White House event on Monday after several allies rebuffed his call to send warships to escort oil tankers through the strait, through which 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas flows. “Some are countries that we’ve helped for many, many years. We’ve protected them from horrible outside sources, and they weren’t that enthusiastic. And the level of enthusiasm matters to me,” he said.

Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan and Australia all said they had no immediate plans to dispatch ships. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Berlin lacked the necessary mandate from the UN, the EU or NATO, and noted that Washington and Israel had not consulted Germany before launching the war.

The head of the International Maritime Organization warned that naval escorts would not fully guarantee the safety of ships attempting to transit the waterway, the Financial Times reported. Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf dismissed reports that Tehran was running low on missile launchers. “They say that our firepower has decreased, but our offensive power, experience, and accuracy have increased,” he said on state television.

Trump has suggested China, which relies on Iranian crude, should help reopen the strait, and indicated he may delay a planned trip to Beijing by “a month or so” if he does not receive support.

Oil and inflation fears

Oil prices rose more than 5% on Tuesday, reversing some of the previous session’s losses, as supply concerns deepened. The Reserve Bank of Australia raised its cash rate for a second consecutive month, citing the risk that geopolitical developments could worsen an already difficult inflationary environment. “The Board is clearly worried that recent geopolitical developments could take a bad situation and make it much worse,” said Abhijit Surya, senior economist at Capital Economics.

(Reuters)

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Provincial officials said earlier that operations at the refinery would be suspended until a fire caused by a drone strike on Saturday was extinguished.

Officials at the Kurdistan region’s ministry told Reuters earlier that work would remain suspended until the extent of the damage is assessed.

(Reuters)

“U.S. citizens choosing to remain in Iraq are strongly encouraged to reconsider in light of the significant threat posed by Iran-aligned terrorist militia groups,” the embassy said.

(Reuters)

Read more:

US embassy in Iraq’s Baghdad hit in missiles attack, security sources say