Iraq's National Security Council convened an emergency session Tuesday and authorized the Popular Mobilization Forces — the umbrella for Iran-backed Shia militias formally incorporated into Iraq's security apparatus — to "respond to any attacks on Iraqi territory." The language was precise in its imprecision. It did not name the attacker. It did not need to. [1]

The authorization followed a day that cracked the already strained fiction of the US-Iraqi security partnership. Seven Iraqi soldiers were killed near an army medical center in Anbar province during what US Central Command described as strikes against "Iran-aligned militia positions." Baghdad says the dead were regular army personnel, not militia fighters. The distinction matters: killing Iraqi soldiers on Iraqi soil, with or without a militia nexus, is an act the Iraqi government cannot publicly absorb. [2]

Then came Erbil. Six Iranian ballistic missiles struck a Kurdish Peshmerga headquarters on the outskirts of the city, killing at least three Peshmerga fighters and wounding eleven. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued a statement calling the strikes a "targeting error" — an explanation that satisfies no one, least of all the Kurdish Regional Government, which now finds itself hit by both sides of a war it did not join.

The PMF authorization is the hinge. The Popular Mobilization Forces number roughly 150,000 fighters organized into dozens of brigades, several of which are directly commanded by IRGC advisors. They have been integrated into Iraq's formal military structure since 2016, when they were instrumental in the campaign against the Islamic State. They draw salaries from Iraq's defense budget. They answer, in theory, to the prime minister.

In practice, the most powerful brigades — Kataib Hezbollah, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, Badr Organization — take operational direction from Tehran. The NSC authorization gives these units legal cover under Iraqi law to engage American forces. Whether Baghdad intended this as a genuine green light or a political gesture to manage domestic fury is, for the American soldiers at Al-Asad, Al-Harir, and Erbil, an academic distinction.

US airstrikes have hit PMF positions in at least seven Iraqi governorates since the war began, according to open-source tracking. The strikes have targeted weapons depots, command nodes, and convoy routes. Each strike generates Iraqi casualties that generate Iraqi political pressure that generates authorizations like Tuesday's.

The coalition that the United States built to fight ISIS is now the architecture through which Iraq may authorize attacks on American forces. The irony is not lost on anyone in Baghdad. It is simply not enough to stop the escalation.

-- Yosef Stern, Jerusalem