🚨🇮🇶 Tanks rolled into Baghdad's Green Zone and gunfire broke out near the US embassy. The early word was "coup," but it looks like something else...
Wladimir van Wilgenburg recognized the pattern fast.
Iraq's counterterrorism service, the unit answering directly to the prime minister, moving on senior politicians, with at least three reportedly arrested, including prominent Sunni figures and people tied to the former PM.
Framed as an anti-corruption sweep, in the MBS mold.
But the timing is what makes it worth watching.
It lands days before Iran's foreign minister is due in Baghdad, weeks before US troops are set to leave, and right as this ambitious new prime minister moves to disarm Iran-backed militias.
His read: less a coup, more a purge and a consolidation of power, the kind Iraq last saw in 2010 as America headed for the exits.
Does Washington or Tehran have a hand in it?
He won't say for sure, but the unit doing the raiding is close to the U.S., and Iran, he notes, always knows what moves in Baghdad before it moves.
@vvanwilgenburg
