22JUN

Iraq reopens its last Iran crossing

1 min read

13:56UTC

Iraq completed the staged reopening of its three Iranian border crossings on Thursday 17 September, finishing with al-Sheeb in Maysan province. No group has been formally named over the drone launches from the same province.

← Back to Spark spread now feeds the winter deficit Jump to analysis ↓

EconomicAssessed

Key takeaway

Baghdad reopened the Maysan crossing while the drone inquiry there has still named nobody.

Iraq completed the staged reopening of its three Iranian border crossings on Thursday 17 September, finishing with al-Sheeb in Maysan province⁠¹. The Security Media Cell had published the phased schedule on 13 September, and it has now run to completion without interruption.

The same province is where the drone launches originated, and no Iraqi government statement or wire report reached this week has named a group over them. An Iraq-Iran joint inquiry into the launch platforms continues and has published no finding. That silence is the operative fact rather than a gap in the reporting: as long as no state-attributable actor is formally named, no government in the region is obliged to respond to one, and the crossings can reopen on a commercial timetable instead of a security one.

Traffic through al-Sheeb matters chiefly to the towns on either side of it, but the sequencing tells you what Baghdad thinks the risk is. A government expecting an attribution that forces its hand does not finish reopening a border in the province the drones flew from.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Iraq closed three border crossings with Iran, at Shalamcheh, al-Sheeb and Mandali, after investigators traced the drones that struck Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline to launch sites in Iraq's Maysan province, which borders Iran. Iraq has now finished reopening all three, in stages, finishing with al-Sheeb, the crossing closest to the investigation site, on 17 September. The staged reopening let Iraq run security and technical checks at each crossing before letting trade and travel resume, rather than reopening everything at once and risking another incident.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Iraq's Security Media Cell staged the reopening deliberately rather than reopening all three crossings at once: passenger traffic at al-Sheeb and Shalamcheh resumed first on 13 September, Shalamcheh's commercial traffic followed a day later, Mandali came next, and al-Sheeb's commercial traffic, the crossing nearest the Maysan launch sites investigators traced the Saudi pipeline drones to, was held back until last on 17 September.

That sequencing reflects where the security review actually originated: al-Sheeb sits closest to the governorate under investigation, so it needed the longest technical and administrative clearance before Baghdad judged it safe to fully reopen for commercial traffic.

Sources:The Hans India

Mentions:Iraq →Saudi Arabia →Iran →Baghdad →Petroline →

First Reported In

Update #179 · Russia and China kill Iran's UN monitor

The Hans India· 21 Sept 2026

Read original →

Causes and effects

Caused by

Iraq reopens Iranian border crossings in stages

Iraq's 13 September published reopening schedule culminated in this week's completion.

Occurred 13 Sept 2026

Read story →

This Event

Iraq reopens its last Iran crossing

Baghdad reopened the border in the same province whose drone launches remain formally unattributed, which is what keeps the escalation contained.

Different Perspectives

Cross-border power traders

The France-Germany day-ahead spread flipped from a EUR 17.20 German premium on 1 August to a EUR 4.15 French premium on 3 August, the same day French curtailment peaked. They cannot yet attribute the flip to curtailment alone, since a like-for-like overnight comparison shows French nuclear output rising while wind fell and demand returned on the weekday step.

EDF

River-cooling limits took 7.6 GW, 12 per cent of its fleet, offline on 3 August, the highest curtailment since the heatwave began, with an easing forecast to 4.3 GW on 4 August and 3 GW after. It manages the cut as a recurring seasonal constraint, expecting it to lift with river temperature, not repair.

Gasunie

TTF, the Dutch hub it operates, drifted to roughly EUR 55 to 58 per MWh across the window, staying inside its recent range through both the German spark reversal and the French curtailment. It reads a flat hub price as evidence that neither event this window carried enough weight to move the fuel leg on its own.

German gas-fired generators

Record German solar of 18,761 MW on 2 August pushed the clean spark spread to minus 18.48 EUR/MWh, a loss-making day, before it returned to plus 16.20 on 3 August. They now price dispatch against post-solar residual load rather than wind alone, since the sign flipped inside 48 hours on unchanged fuel and carbon costs.

European Commission (DG Energy)

Its implementing-measures register logged transposition notices from only Portugal and Slovakia against Wednesday's Article 94 deadline for Directive (EU) 2024/1788, with 25 states silent. It expects the register to fill only gradually, since filing routinely lags legislating and any infringement track against non-notifying states runs on a slower clock than the deadline itself.

Spain's LNG terminal operators

Spain's 9,145 GWh terminal inventory is the largest single stock in the EU LNG network, an option value that can reroute cargoes wherever the winter strip pays best rather than a cavern gas obligation tied to a fixed date. That flexibility matters more as Germany's cavern shortfall pushes more of the winter security question onto import infrastructure.