Four days ago, Iraq’s airspace had hundreds of projectiles fired from Iran flying through it towards Israel, caught in the crossfire of what many fear could be the opening salvoes of a regional war dragging in the United States.

On Monday, Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani was in Washington, DC, meeting President Joe Biden and other top US officials – a preplanned trip that took on new importance for all involved.

From the White House, al-Sudani addressed the uptick in tensions, saying he encouraged “all efforts to stop the expansion of the area of the conflict”, highlighting his fears of being dragged into a regional war involving countries that continue to have a strong influence in Iraq.

Iraqi officials say their country was among a handful that Iran told of the attack – which followed an Israeli strike on the Iranian Embassy in Damascus that killed a senior Iranian general – in advance.

Regional tensions aside, al-Sudani’s primary focus appears to be Iraq’s domestic concerns as he hopes to attract investment in Iraq’s private sector and progress on a US troop withdrawal from the country, analysts told Al Jazeera.

“[Al-]Sudani’s agenda is domestically oriented. He is seeking less American restrictions on the Iraqi banking system, more investments and enhancing security ties,” Tamer Badawi, an Iraq analyst focusing on politics and security, said.

According to Sajad Jiyad, a fellow at Century International and director of the Shia Politics Working Group, the meetings went well but the timing – so soon after Iran’s attack – limited the outcome.

“I think the Iraqi side had higher expectations of what support and agreements they could reach but those were tempered by the events preceding the meeting,” Jiyad told Al Jazeera.

“For the US, the Iran-Israel clash served to highlight the need to keep US troops in Iraq for now and that the Iraqi government needs to do more to prevent Iran and groups allied with it from using Iraq as a base of operations against the US and Israel.”