Iraq's September deadline undercuts armed factions' case for weapons

Shafaq News

Iraq's armed factions have always justified their weapons with a single argument that required no elaboration: foreign troops were on Iraqi soil, and someone had to be prepared to confront them. That argument will be expired on September when the US-led Coalition's mission in Iraq concludes its mission. The justification that has sustained the factions' independent military existence since 2003 will have nothing left to point at, and the sharper language now coming out of several of those groups is best understood as a response to that approaching void.

Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi's government is pursuing two tracks at once, moving to place all security and military decision-making inside formal state institutions while pressing an anti-corruption campaign aimed at recovering public funds. Either initiative alone would unsettle the balance of power inside the Iraqi state. Together, and set against a fixed timetable tied to the coalition's departure, they close the space in which the factions have operated comfortably for years.

Several armed groups have sharpened their public messaging in recent days, and the mass funeral processions in Najaf and Karbala for former Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, which drew, according to Ehsan al-Awadi, head of the Iraqi body that organized the ceremonies, around 10 million, gave them an occasion to demonstrate that their political and popular reach remains intact. Political actors read the turnout precisely that way, as evidence that forces aligned with Tehran retain a constituency that no legislative timetable can dissolve.

Malik Aziz Francis, a member of the US Republican Party, told Shafaq News that the sharpening of messaging among some factions reflects overlapping domestic and regional pressures, and that these forces understand Iraq is entering a period in which political and security priorities are being reordered. He reads the louder messaging as an attempt to preserve presence and influence at a moment when the balance of power is shifting, and as a signal of readiness should the region see renewed escalation between Washington and Tehran.

“The state's continued push on corruption, rule of law, and a monopoly on the legitimate use of force imposes a new reality on armed groups, which helps explain why some of them have raised the volume,” he said, noting that messaging is routinely used to manage crises and strengthen their hand without producing confrontation.

Political researcher Ramadan al-Badran finds the hardening entirely predictable. Pressure to dissolve or restructure these groups will always be met with harder language and possibly with confrontational moves, he told Shafaq News, because the Iran-aligned groups “have no program for dismantling themselves or dissolving into Iraqi civilian life.”

The point deserves emphasis as Iraq is not asking armed groups to accept a policy they dislike, but demanding organizations with no exit strategy to design one, on a deadline, while Iran's own regional position is under strain and every leverage it holds has become more valuable rather than less.

Al-Badran also drew out what distinguishes Iraq from other arenas where regional powers, including Lebanon where Hezbollah has a vast presence, apply leverage. Part of the challenge Baghdad faces originates inside the Iraqi environment itself and not only beyond its borders, which means the government cannot resolve it through external diplomacy alone.

“[Ali] Khamenei's funeral procession is a significant political demonstration that revealed a social constituency inside Iraq, particularly within the Shiite community, that responds to Iranian developments as its own.” The government's task, in his framing, is to unwind a long inheritance of overlapping sovereignty and internal and external influence within a very short window of time.

The weapons file has been Iraq's most intractable political problem since 2003, and it grew more complicated after 2014, when the war against ISIS produced the Popular Mobilization Forces, a coalition of predominantly Shiite armed groups that was subsequently given a formal legal framework and folded into the state's payroll and command structure on paper. The core of the problem, according to a government source, is no longer simply the existence of weapons outside official institutions but the nature of command chains and loyalties. Baghdad's position is that state ownership of weapons means little unless the decision to use them rests exclusively with the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

The government has signaled a gradual approach, built on separating certain factions from the PMF and reorganizing their relationship with the security services. The response has split the field. Asaib Ahl al-Haq, a powerful armed group with a political wing represented in parliament, and Kataib al-Imam Ali have declared their readiness to integrate into the state framework. Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba, and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada have refused to surrender their weapons. That division establishes that integration is possible, and refusal is a choice rather than an impossibility.

Political researcher Nawal al-Mousawi located the escalation in three overlapping layers. Domestically, she told Shafaq News, the factions are attempting to consolidate influence after funeral processions she described as a large and striking popular mobilization, a message tied directly to the government's timetable on weapons. Regionally, she pointed to Turkiye's expanding role and its deepening cooperation with NATO as a variable that alters the calculations of Iran-aligned forces. Internationally, she connected Iraq to the wider competition running from Russia and Ukraine through the Middle East, which places Baghdad inside a network of rivalries larger than its own politics.

“The factions are working to preserve a balance against the American role, now that the question of reorganizing armed groups has become directly entangled with the Baghdad-Washington relationship.”

Washington, for its part, is watching and intervening. Nabil Mikhail, a writer and professor of political science based in the US capital, told Shafaq News that the United States is following Iraqi and regional developments closely and wants to see the negotiating track between Washington and Tehran continue. He considers a broad military confrontation between the two unlikely in the present phase, particularly with mediation channels functioning, and identifies American priorities as preserving ceasefire arrangements and securing navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran, meanwhile, treats the Iraqi factions as one component of a regional influence system, which means any reduction in their role touches one of Tehran's more useful instruments in the region.

Where does this land? Political analyst Khalid Walid sees no clear indicators of imminent escalation, considering the factions' messaging as positioning that the government can manage. The general direction inside the state, he told Shafaq News, leans toward de-escalation and toward resolving files through understandings rather than confrontation. Positions on the weapons file, the Global Coalition withdrawal, and the reform program have become clear, and he expects the coming phase to move toward containing tensions.

Israa Najm, a member of the general assembly of the Sadiqoon Movement, the political wing of Asaib Ahl al-Haq led by Qais al-Khazali, affirmed her movement's support for al-Zaidi's government and said the anti-corruption campaign should reach anyone whose guilt is established through evidence and a judicial ruling. On the funerals, “our position was clear, our participation reflected a broad unity within the Shiite house in receiving and burying Khamenei.”

The government's advantage is that the calendar is doing argumentative work no minister could do. Once the foreign presence ends, the factions that refuse to disarm will be defending their weapons on grounds they have never had to articulate before, in front of a Shiite public that has just demonstrated it can be mobilized but has not been asked whether it wants a permanent parallel military. The risk is that a missed deadline is worse than none at all, because it establishes that the state's timetables are suggestions.

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.

Iraq's September deadline undercuts armed factions' case for weapons

Qaani holds unannounced meetings in Baghdad on armed factions’ weapons

Ammar Al-Hakim backs state weapons monopoly