Jassim Mohammed Al-Badawi, Secretary-General of the Gulf Cooperation Council, traveled to Baghdad last week carrying a direct message: Iraqi territory must stop serving as a launching pad for drone and missile strikes against Gulf states. The visit, reported by Shafaq News in Iraq, placed the security of millions of civilians across Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait at the center of a delicate diplomatic mission.
Those civilians bear the real cost of these attacks. Drone strikes are cheap to launch, difficult to attribute, and capable of hitting airports, energy infrastructure, and other facilities that ordinary people depend on every day. When a refinery or a terminal goes offline, fuel prices rise and supply chains break. The threat is not abstract.
A government source told Shafaq News Agency that Al-Badawi arrived in the Iraqi capital on a Tuesday afternoon for an official visit focused on regional developments, with a specific emphasis on ensuring that Iraqi soil would not serve as a base for attacks on neighboring states. The framing was unambiguous: Gulf populations should not face cross-border strikes originating from a country with which they share no formal conflict.
What changed the urgency of the visit was the timing. Iraq’s Prime Minister Ali al Zaidi has been working to persuade militias to surrender their weapons, but Iran was expected to demonstrate its influence in Iraq that same week, following the funeral of Supreme Leader Ali al-Khamenei. The convergence of a GCC diplomatic push with a moment of heightened Iranian assertiveness made the mission both more necessary and more complicated.
The militias at issue, many linked to Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, have long targeted US forces and the Kurdistan Region. Their recent expansion toward Gulf states signals a deliberate strategy to make Iraq a frontline in a wider regional conflict. Iran, when facing international pressure, has a documented pattern of activating multiple proxy fronts simultaneously, multiplying its leverage across the region while keeping its own forces out of direct confrontation.
Details of what Al-Badawi achieved remain limited. Official Iraqi state media reported that he met with Judge Faiq Zidan, President of the Supreme Judicial Council, to discuss judicial and legal cooperation. The meeting also included Safia al-Suhail, Iraq’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. A separate source told Shafaq News that Al-Badawi would hold broader discussions with Iraqi officials and announce Gulf support for Iraq across multiple sectors, while stressing the need to keep Iraq off the battlefield. The gap between those stated goals and the official readout, which focused on judicial matters rather than militia activity, suggests either limited progress or a deliberate preference for quiet diplomacy.
The GCC’s approach leans on incentives. Al-Badawi’s visit emphasized Gulf support for Iraq in various fields, a carrot-based strategy that avoids public confrontation with Baghdad while signaling that cooperation carries tangible benefits. Whether goodwill and economic incentives alone can move Iraqi officials to act against groups that enjoy Iranian backing is a question the region has not yet answered.
Iraq sits in an uncomfortable position, caught between Iranian influence that runs deep through its political and military structures and Gulf neighbors whose goodwill, investment, and trade matter to its own stability and public services. Baghdad’s ability to control armed groups that answer to Tehran is genuinely constrained, not simply a matter of political will.
The broader public interest question is straightforward: can diplomatic engagement protect civilian populations from cross-border strikes, or does the structural reality of Iranian proxy networks make that protection impossible without a harder form of pressure? The answer will shape daily life across the Gulf for years to come. Further details on the visit are available at https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-901474.