Al-Sadr tells Iran-backed groups to keep Iraq out of war

Influential Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has urged Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and allied armed groups to stop launching attacks from Iraq.

Al-Sadr warned the groups against pulling the country into another conflict and called on Baghdad to assert state control.

“Rogue militias must not give our brothers in the Gulf states a pretext to target our sacred land,” he wrote on X.

He urged all sides not to “be drawn into the schemes of the Zionist-American enemy to incite brothers to fight and kill one another”.

“Iraq and its people need peace,” al-Sadr said, calling for a region free from foreign military bases and colonial domination.