Iraq reopens three Iran crossings after a drone strike on a Saudi pipeline

Iraq began a staged reopening of three crossings with Iran on Sunday, a day after shutting them when Riyadh said drones launched from Iraqi territory had hit the East-West oil pipeline in the Riyadh and Medina regions. The Security Media Cell named the posts: Shalamcheh, east of Basra; al-Sheeb in Maysan; and Mandali in Diyala. Passengers started moving through al-Sheeb and Shalamcheh at 06:00 on 13 September. Commercial traffic is scheduled for Shalamcheh at 06:00 on Monday, Mandali at 06:00 on Tuesday, and al-Sheeb at 06:00 on Thursday.

Zurbatiya and al-Mundhiriya stayed open through the closure, the Border Ports Authority said. The three posts that shut were not the whole frontier. They were the ones the government chose to freeze while it ran what it called an administrative and intelligence review.

Two Iraqi security sources told AFP that drone launchers were found near al-Sheeb in Maysan. An Iraqi investigation put the origin of the attack in that province. Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi removed the Maysan operations commander, then the provincial police chief, and referred security directors for investigation. He also accepted an Iranian request for a joint inquiry. No group has claimed the pipeline strike. An alliance of Iran-backed Iraqi factions publicly denied it and offered to sit on any government committee.

Saudi Arabia had already shut the pipeline as a precaution. That line moves crude from the eastern fields toward the Red Sea and is one of the ways Gulf oil can avoid the Strait of Hormuz. A drone that takes it offline, even briefly, is therefore not a local Iraqi story. It is a second pressure point on a market that is already dealing with a blocked strait and a tanker war. Closing Shalamcheh, al-Sheeb and Mandali was Baghdad’s way of showing Riyadh and Washington that it would act on its own soil. Reopening them on a published timetable is the way it shows Tehran that trade will resume.

The crossings carry people as well as cargo. AFP photographed travellers stranded at Shalamcheh on Saturday. Sunday’s passenger window is the first relief for families who use those posts as routine roads, not as geopolitical valves. Cargo is the larger money. Dates, consumer goods and construction material move both ways. A four-day stagger from passenger traffic to the last cargo window is long enough for extra searches and short enough to keep merchants from shifting to the two posts that never closed.

The fact that still needs a public owner is the launcher site in Maysan. Until a named unit or a named commander is tied to those drones in a charge sheet, the dismissals in Maysan look like administrative shock rather than a finished case. Al-Zaidi can fire officers. He cannot, on the evidence released so far, show Riyadh that the next drone will not leave the same province.

Watch the Monday cargo line at Shalamcheh. If trucks queue and pass, the freeze is over. If the window slips, the pipeline attack is still running the calendar at the border.