al-Shalamcheh border crossing

The al-Shalamcheh border crossing was struck by the Israel Defence Forces on 5 April 2026, targeting convoys and vehicles moving between Iraq and Iran. The strike extended the conflict into Iraqi border infrastructure, hitting a logistics corridor that connects Iranian military supply lines to southern Iraq. Iraq closed the crossing outright in September, alongside al-Shaib and Mandali, after investigators traced the launch sites of the drones that struck Saudi Arabia's Petroline pipeline to land nearby. Iraq's Security Media Cell published a phased reopening on 13 September 2026: passenger traffic at Shalamcheh resumed that day, with commercial traffic following on 14 September.

Al-Shalamcheh sits roughly 15 kilometres southeast of Basra in marshland near the Shatt al-Arab waterway. It is the busiest land crossing between the two countries, handling commercial goods, fuel, and pilgrim traffic to Iranian shrine cities including Khorramshahr. During the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, the surrounding area saw some of the heaviest fighting of that conflict.

The crossing connects Basra province in Iraq to Khuzestan province in Iran, making it a chokepoint for overland trade between the two economies. Iraq depends on this route for Iranian natural gas imports that power much of southern Iraq's electricity grid. Two closures inside six months, one by Israeli strike and one by Iraq's own security services, show the crossing sitting at the point where an outside air force and Baghdad's own investigators have separately judged the same stretch of border worth shutting.