Two accounts of the same night cannot both be right.
Trump said the July 29 strikes on Iraq were coordinated with the Iraqi government [2].
Iraq's presidency called the same strikes 'a flagrant violation of Iraq's sovereignty and the sanctity of its lands' [1].
Those are not compatible descriptions, and one of them comes from the country whose territory was struck.
Then there is the evidentiary question, which is sharper.
A spokesperson for the commander-in-chief of Iraq's armed forces said: 'We demand evidence and proof regarding the launch of attacks from Iraq, and no party has provided any evidence' [1].
Read that carefully. It is not a denial that attacks came from Iraqi soil. It is a statement that the government has not been shown the basis for it - a request, from the country being struck, to see the intelligence.
Iraq's National Security Council offered the closest thing to a coordination account, saying the strikes came while Baghdad was in contact with others to address Saudi and American concerns [1]. Being in contact about concerns is not agreeing to be bombed.
Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi postponed a planned trip to Riyadh [2], which is what a government does when it is not in on the plan.
The American case is real and should be stated.
CENTCOM justified the strikes as a response to more than 30 IRGC-directed drone attacks over 72 hours, and cited more than 600 attempted attacks between February and April [1].
Those drones came from somewhere, and Iran-aligned militias operating on Iraqi soil are the obvious answer. Nobody serious disputes that the Popular Mobilisation Forces contain units under Iranian direction.
What is disputed is whether Iraq was told, and whether it was shown.
The consequence is already moving.
The PMF said 20 were killed and 32 wounded across seven provinces [1]. Funerals were held on July 30 in Mosul and at Najaf's Wadi al-Salam cemetery, the largest in the world [3].
Kataib Hezbollah has now given the Iraqi government until August 6 to demonstrate it can defend Iraqi sovereignty, and called a response inevitable [3]. Hadi al-Amiri of the Badr Organization condemned 'the sinful and unjustified aggression' [1].
An armed group inside the Iraqi state has set its own government a one-week deadline - and the deadline exists because Baghdad could not say it had agreed.
