ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Iraqi parliament has ordered the formation of a committee to investigate reports alleging that the Iraqi government had prior knowledge of the US-Saudi joint attacks on several bases of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in late July.
"This committee will consist of members from the security and defense committee who specialize in this field,” Sherwan Dubardani, member of the security and defense committee, told Rudaw’s Hastyar Qadir on Sunday, noting that “this order by the first deputy speaker [Adnan Faihan] also requires the approval of the Speaker of the Parliament and the Second Deputy, acting as the parliamentary presidency."
The move follows joint US-Saudi strikes in late July that killed 17 members of the PMF and injured dozens of others in strikes that targeted a number of the organization's "official headquarters in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, and five other provinces.
The US Central Command (CENTCOM) stated at the time that the "precision strikes in Iraq" were launched against "Iran-aligned terrorists that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) directed to attack U.S. forces and Saudi energy infrastructure."
The Saudi defense ministry, meanwhile, said the same day that it had launched the strikes "following reprehensible drone attacks carried out against the Kingdom by Iran-backed militias in Iraq," reaffirming "the Kingdom's determination to deter the perpetrators."
Following the attacks, US President Donald Trump told reporters that "the attack was carried out in coordination with the Iraqi government."
Faihan and other lawmakers on Sunday urged the government to adopt "political and diplomatic measures" and file complaints with international courts. They also demanded the government to document the attacks internationally and compel the "aggressor countries" to provide guarantees against further "violations of Iraq's sovereignty and security."
Faihan said he has ordered the formation of a parliamentary fact-finding committee to investigate “the measures taken in response to the aggression against Iraq.”
The PMF was established in 2014 during the Islamic State (ISIS) blitz, which saw the group seize control of large parts of northern and western Iraq.
Created in response to a religious edict, or fatwa, by Iraq's highest Shiite authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the PMF was initially an umbrella organization of roughly 70 predominantly Shiite armed groups with approximately 250,000 members.
Although it is a state-funded institution, the PMF notably includes factions widely believed to overlap with the Iran-led ‘Axis of Resistance’ which have carried out attacks against alleged US targets in the region in support of Tehran since the outbreak of the Iran war in late February, often operating under the banner of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI).
The IRI's core overlap within the PMF includes the Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, Kata'ib Hezbollah, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, and Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada armed groups.
In the aftermath of the US-Saudi strikes on PMF positions, the IRI released a statement denying involvement in attacks against Saudi Arabia, while vowing that it would respond to the targeting.
