With the outbreak of this year’s war, Iraq’s balancing act between the two antagonists has collapsed, exposing a perilously fragile state One week after the United States and Israel killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and ignited a regional war, drones started flying over Basra in southern Iraq. They ...
Source: [Guardian International](https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/jul/23/iraqs-impossible-predicament-why-the-country-is-trapped-between-iran-and-the-us)