Caught in the Middle: Iraq's Kurdish Region Hit Over 1,000 Times in the US-Iran War

Iraq's Kurdistan Region has been hit more than 1,000 times by missiles and drones since the US-Iran war started in February 2026. Masrour Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Regional Government (the local authority that runs the Kurdish area in northern Iraq), told Al Jazeera on August 11 that his region has "paid a heavy price" in a war it did not start. The fighting has also caused trade across Kurdish territory to shrink by 70 percent Al Jazeera.

A government spokesperson, Peshawa Hawramani, said the region's losses through April add up to about $1.14 billion. Those numbers have been given to Iraq's central government in Baghdad. Hawramani also said Kurdish officials gave Baghdad the names of the groups carrying out the attacks, but no action has been taken against them Al Jazeera.

The attacks have hit many types of targets: military sites, energy facilities, the offices of Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in the region, and civilian areas. The strikes on those opposition groups point to two goals for Iran: going after groups it sees as a threat inside its own borders, and showing the US and its allies that Iran-linked forces can strike anywhere across Iraqi territory.

The war began in February 2026 and has lasted about five months. The number and spread of the strikes suggest that Iraq's Kurdish region has become a side battlefield in a larger conflict between Iran and the United States.

As of early August, Iran appeared to be following a strategy of slowly turning up the pressure without triggering an all-out war. According to Reuters reporting from August 3, Iran was working to widen pressure on the US without pushing the conflict into full-scale confrontation Reuters. This approach has had spillover effects. Over one weekend, even during a pause in US strikes, Yemen's Iran-linked Houthis attacked Saudi oil installations Reuters. Oil prices then fell more than 5 percent on August 4 after US officials suggested diplomacy could resolve the war, though it is unclear where talks are heading Reuters.

For the Kurdistan Region, the economic damage piles on top of the security threat. More than 70 percent of jobs in each of the region's four provinces are in the services sector, according to a 2021 government survey. When trade drops by 70 percent in an economy that depends on services and cross-border commerce, it cuts straight to the region's financial core. The Kurdish government was already in a weak position because of long-running arguments with Baghdad over how to share oil revenue and national budget money.

Despite the war, the Kurdish government has kept carrying out normal business. On July 29, its Council of Ministers restated the region's right to its share of Iraqi oil based on population. On August 3, Barzani asked the federal government to help carry out the Sinjar agreement, a deal meant to settle who governs and provides security in the disputed Sinjar district. The same day, the Ministry of Natural Resources set a minimum monthly pension for private-sector retirees. A weekly farmers' market in Halabja opened on August 9 to help local growers sell their produce gov.krd.

The gap between what the Kurdish region wants and what Baghdad does about it is the political fault line underneath all of this. Kurdish officials named the attacking groups for two successive Iraqi governments, and neither one acted. That puts Baghdad's claim of neutrality in a difficult light. Iraq's central government has long had to balance its security reliance on the US-led coalition against the sway Iran holds through militias that operate on Iraqi soil.

What stands out in all of this is that the Kurdish region's losses, counted through April, only cover the first three months of the war. With the conflict now in its sixth month and strikes still happening, the total cost will likely climb well past the $1.14 billion recorded so far. Whether Baghdad will act on the information Kurdish authorities have provided is still an open question, and the answer will shape the relationship between Erbil and Baghdad for years to come.