Baghdad says its new air defences are bought; it has not said what, or when

Iraq has finalised contracts for air defence systems and expects the first deliveries “very soon” as Baghdad prepares to assume full responsibility for its airspace, a government spokesman told The National on Thursday. The Abu Dhabi paper reported the suppliers as the United States, South Korea and Turkey, with systems to be deployed nationwide around oil installations and infrastructure as part of an integrated network of long-, medium- and short-range defences backed by radar and command systems. Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi has ordered the air defence modernisation plan compressed from six years to three. The 30 September end date was set in a September 2024 agreement between Baghdad and Washington to convert the coalition’s combat and advisory mission into bilateral security cooperation; Congress has appropriated more than $8.4 billion for counter-ISIS train-and-equip programmes for Iraqi forces since 2014, according to the Congressional Research Service.

What the announcement does not resolve is the gap between three weeks and three years. Qasim al-Araji, national security adviser to al-Zaidi, said the withdrawal will include the air defence systems stationed in the Kurdistan Region — Patriot and C-RAM batteries that have been central to intercepting Iranian drone and missile fire. In May, Iraq’s Deputy Army Chief of Staff for Operations, Lt Gen Saad Harbiye, told The National that Iraq was finalising the purchase of 20 air defence systems from Turkey, saying the skies had been “filled with drones” and that “new air defences against drones have become really important for Iraq.” Forbes reported in January that Iraq’s ground-based defences consist of medium-range Russian-built Pantsir-S1s, and that analysts doubted the eight Korean KM-SAM batteries on order would cover much beyond small areas around Baghdad.

Assessment: Treat the contract confirmation as an announcement, not an event: it rests on one unnamed spokesman, and a procurement with no values, no unit counts and no delivery schedule is a political message about sovereignty rather than a verifiable acquisition. The supplier list is the tell. A parliamentary Security and Defence Committee member, Karim Alaywi al-Muhammadawi, told Shafaq News the panel had asked al-Zaidi to fund purchases from South Korea, China and Russia. What emerged was the United States, South Korea and Turkey. Someone won that argument. The line to hold Baghdad to is “very soon” — and whether anything at all arrives at Erbil, the most-struck target set in the country, before 1 October.