No modern state has suffered as much as Iraq in trying to define the meaning of sovereignty since 2003. Here, “sovereignty” is not a constitutional principle but a definitional trap—one that grows more convoluted as the conflict between the United States and Iran deepens, and as Iraq turns into an open arena where three actors fight on its soil while the state itself stands outside the frame.

At the very moment US forces strike Iran‑aligned militias, Iran launches attacks inside Iraq under the pretext of targeting American interests, while Iraqi proxy groups retaliate by hitting US diplomatic sites and military facilities within the country. Iraq thus becomes the only state in the region bombed by two foreign powers and used by a third, while its caretaker government—led by Mohammed Shia’ al‑Sudani—possesses neither the military capacity to respond to American or Iranian strikes nor the authority to rein in the militias supposedly integrated into its security apparatus.

This paradox has left the very notion of Iraqi sovereignty in a state of chronic clinical illness. The Financial Times quoted an Iraqi official commenting on US strikes: “They didn’t ask for our permission.” A sentence that distills the entire dilemma: a country whose territory is violated without consultation, and armed groups that behave as if they were states within the state.

The problem is not the strikes alone, but the political architecture that has rendered Iraq incapable of imposing a single definition of sovereignty. As The Washington Post notes, Iraq lives in a “gray zone” between Washington and Tehran, where no Iraqi government can take an independent decision without it being interpreted in one........

© Middle East Monitor