Iridium containing oxides have been continually attracting interest for studying emergent phases of matter. My talk focuses on the magnetic interactions in the iridate compounds Sr₃(Ni,Co)IrO₆, which have the highest coercive magnetic fields of up to 55 T of any materials to our knowledge. These compounds belong to a class of Ir⁴⁺ oxides in which the spin-orbit coupling, exchange interaction, crystal electric field energy scale and Hund’s rule U are within an order of magnitude. This results in the highly entangled spin-orbital J_eff = ½ state of Ir. The origin of this high coercive field is thought to be the 5d Ir⁴⁺ ion and its strong and unusual spin-orbit (S-O) coupling. However, the precise origin of the high coercive field, magnetic interactions, magnetic ordering and role of domain dynamics in these compounds are not yet understood. I present the result of our magnetization and, x-ray spectroscopy and dichroism studies to shed light on these questions.