The Invitation

On September 20, 2014, Iraq’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations transmitted a letter to the President of the Security Council requesting that the United States “lead international efforts to strike ISIL sites and military strongholds, with our express consent.” The letter was specific. It named the enemy: the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. It named the purpose: ending attacks on Iraq, protecting Iraqi citizens, enabling Iraqi forces to regain control of Iraqi borders. It invoked international law. It emphasized “complete national sovereignty.”

Twelve years later, on March 23, 2026, a US airstrike hit a PMF command headquarters at Habbaniya air base in Anbar province, killing fifteen fighters including their Anbar commander, Saad Al Baiji. Thirty more were wounded. Two days later, a second strike hit a military clinic and engineering unit at the same base, killing seven Iraqi soldiers and injuring thirteen.

Iraq is not a party to the war between the United States and Iran. Iraq did not request these strikes. Iraq did not consent to them. Iraq’s armed forces spokesperson called them “heinous aggression that undermines the relationship between the peoples of Iraq and the United States.” Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani directed the Foreign Ministry to file a formal complaint with the UN Security Council. He summoned the US charge d’affaires in Baghdad. He convened an emergency session of the national security council. And then he authorized the Popular Mobilization Forces and all armed forces to respond “with all available means based on the principle of self-defence.”

The United States denied targeting a clinic. It did not deny targeting Habbaniya. It offered no legal basis for the strikes.

The architecture of the US military presence in Iraq rests on three legal instruments. Each is specific. Each was negotiated. None covers what happened at Habbaniya.

The first is the 2008 Strategic Framework Agreement, signed between the Bush administration and the Maliki government, establishing the broad framework for US-Iraqi cooperation --- political, economic, cultural, and security. The companion Security Agreement --- the Status of Forces Agreement --- contained the operational terms. Among them: a prohibition on using Iraqi territory to launch attacks against other countries. The clause was specifically aimed at Iran and Syria, inserted after the disclosure that US commandos had crossed into Syrian territory from Iraq in September 2008. Iraq demanded the restriction. The United States signed it.

The second is Iraq’s 2014 letter to the Security Council. The invitation that brought US forces back. It was scoped to a specific enemy --- ISIL --- and a specific purpose --- ending ISIL’s attacks on Iraq. The United States cited this consent alongside Article 51 of the UN Charter to justify Operation Inherent Resolve. The consent was real. The scope was narrow. The United States was in Iraq because Iraq asked it to be, for a defined reason.

The third is the transition agreement announced in September 2024, ending the Combined Joint Task Force --- Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq by September 2025. The counter-ISIS combat mission formally concluded. What remained was a bilateral security partnership: advise and assist, equipment acquisition, training, information sharing. Not combat operations. Not airstrikes on Iraqi military installations.

The counter-ISIS invitation expired with the counter-ISIS mission. The SOFA prohibits attacks on third countries from Iraqi soil. The bilateral partnership is advisory. Under which of these instruments does the United States kill Iraqi soldiers?

The answer requires confronting what the soldiers at Habbaniya were. The Popular Mobilization Forces are Iran-aligned paramilitaries that include Kataib Hezbollah, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, and dozens of other factions. They were formed in 2014 --- the same year as the invitation --- in response to Grand Ayatollah Sistani’s fatwa calling Iraqis to arms against ISIS. They fought. They bled. They recaptured Tikrit, Fallujah, western Mosul. And in November 2016, the Iraqi parliament passed Law 40, formally integrating the PMF into Iraq’s armed forces. Under the law, the PMF reports directly to the prime minister as commander-in-chief. Its members are required to disassociate from political and partisan organizations. It is, in law, part of the Iraqi military.

In practice, the dual status is real. Many PMF factions maintain operational loyalty to Tehran. They have launched rockets at US facilities. They have served as Iranian proxy instruments across the region. The United States has struck PMF-affiliated groups before --- in 2019, in 2021, in 2024. Each time, the legal justification was self-defense against imminent threats to US personnel.

But the March 2026 strikes at Habbaniya are different in kind. These were not responses to imminent attacks on US forces. They occurred in the context of the US-Iran war --- a conflict Iraq did not join, was not consulted about, and has explicitly condemned. The strikes hit a base hosting forces that are formally part of Iraq’s armed forces, killing personnel the Iraqi government identifies as its soldiers. The CENTCOM spokesman denied targeting a clinic but did not deny the strike itself, did not cite self-defense, and did not invoke any legal authority.

When you kill another country’s soldiers on their own soil during a war their country is not party to, and you offer no legal basis for having done so, you are not exercising an invitation. You are exercising power.

Habbaniya has hosted foreign forces before. The British built it in 1936 under Article 5 of the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930 --- an imperial agreement that gave Britain the right to maintain air bases on Iraqi territory. The RAF stationed bombers there. It was the empire’s most important base in Iraq. In May 1941, when Iraq attempted to assert sovereignty over its own airfield, the British fought a battle to keep it. They won. They stayed until 1959, when the 1958 Revolution made the invitation untenable.

The base exists because foreign powers have, for ninety years, found reasons to be on that particular piece of Iraqi soil. The reasons change. The presence adapts. Article 5 of the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty became the 2008 Strategic Framework Agreement became the 2014 counter-ISIS invitation became the bilateral security partnership became --- whatever this is. Each instrument was negotiated. Each was specific. Each, at some point, stopped covering what the foreign power was actually doing on the base.

The invitation said ISIS. The strikes said Iran. The legal instruments are specific, but the presence is fungible. A military footprint established for one purpose becomes available for another. The consent that built the footprint does not transfer to the new purpose, but the footprint does not leave when the consent expires. It finds a new justification, or it operates without one.

Iraq filed its complaint with the Security Council. The complaint will join the institutional record alongside Iraq’s 2014 invitation --- the same body that received Iraq’s consent to the US presence will now receive Iraq’s objection to what the US presence has done. Both documents are addressed to the same institution. Both are formally acknowledged. Neither will produce enforcement, because the United States holds a permanent veto on the Security Council, and the Security Council cannot act against a permanent member’s interests. The institution that validated the invitation cannot adjudicate the violation.

What remains is the position Iraq occupies: a state whose soldiers were killed on its own territory, during a war it is not party to, by forces it invited for a different purpose, under a legal framework that prohibited exactly this. A state that filed a formal complaint with the only international body empowered to act, knowing that body cannot act against the state it is complaining about.

And outside the legal architecture, the operational reality: Iraq authorized its forces to respond with all available means. Iraq’s oil exports have collapsed by over seventy percent from the Hormuz closure in a war it never joined. Iran’s missiles cross Iraqi airspace. US planes strike Iraqi bases. Both belligerents treat Iraqi sovereignty as a variable, not a constraint. Iraq summoned both the US charge d’affaires and the Iranian ambassador. It is protesting two violations of the same sovereignty simultaneously, by opposing parties in a war that is not its own.

The invitation was for ISIS. The presence remained. The purpose changed. The consent did not.

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