Iraq weighs extending deadline as major militias rebuff disarmament
The U.S. military’s exit from Iraq closed out on Wednesday, winding down what critics have called its forever war and ending more than 23 years of U.S. military presence that the Wall Street Journal reported cost an estimated $1.7 trillion. America’s open-ended war with Iran is pushing Iraq deeper into conflict, with the U.S. exit leaving behind a country where well-armed militias are only tightening their grip, the Journal reported. On the same day, Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s deadline for Iranian-backed militias to surrender their weapons drew mixed responses, the Journal reported — some militant factions turned in arms and others said they were planning to, while major paramilitary groups refused. Zaidi and his deputies are now talking about pushing the deadline to next year.
The military exit follows an agreement between the Biden administration and the previous Iraqi prime minister to remove American troops by 2026. A Pentagon official said the U.S. was ending its official military operation but maintained intelligence, surveillance and other capabilities in the region that could be used in Iraq. The U.S. has made clear to Iraq that it was critical that Iraq retain its sovereignty and prevent attacks from within its borders by Iranian-backed militias, a senior U.S. official said.
In Baghdad’s exclusive Karrada neighborhood on a recent, seemingly peaceful day, young professionals sipped iced coffee and typed on laptops — yet many said they planned to leave, worried that insecurity and economic pressures would build without a strong U.S. presence. “If the troops were to leave, why were they here in the first place? They were here to accomplish a goal. Did they? No,” said Mustafa Al-Zaidi, a 22-year-old medical student who plans to eventually work abroad. “Will we be like Afghanistan or like Yemen and Syria?”
Zaidi, a 41-year-old businessman who never held public office before becoming prime minister in May, traveled to Washington in July and sat beside President Trump at the White House, where he announced the Wednesday deadline for the militias. “There is no justification for their existence after the 30th of September,” Zaidi said. “We don’t think we need the military there anymore,” Trump said. “We have a fantastic champion, a new champion,” the president said. “He’s young, and he’s handsome.”
Zaidi owns a bank, an insurance company and media and construction firms. His bank was banned by the Treasury Department from dollar transactions in 2024 over suspicions it helped finance Iran and its proxies. Zaidi denied knowing about such transactions, and former U.S. officials told the Journal they did not believe he had any personal involvement. Zaidi, who dresses in dark blue suits and has a bushy black mustache and cropped beard, was quickly embraced by Washington. Political analysts said he tried to balance competing interests, underscored by his visit to Tehran soon after traveling to Washington this summer. Zaidi’s selection as prime minister was a compromise. Trump warned in January he would cut off U.S. aid to Iraq if Nouri al-Maliki, a former prime minister close to Iran, was proposed for the job.
The Trump administration is counting on Zaidi to disarm the Iran-backed militias, which number in the tens of thousands and include paramilitary groups that receive funding or weapons from Iran. Iraqi military spokesman Maj. Gen. Saad Maan said some militant factions had handed in their weapons, and others were planning to do so. “The Counter-Terrorism Service, through its security and operational roles, is advancing its strategy to control weapons and consolidate them under state authority,” Sabah Al-Nu’man, a spokesperson for the commander in chief of Iraq’s armed forces, said.
Other major factions rejected the call. “These weapons are for our sovereignty, our freedom,” Kazem al-Fartousi, a spokesman for Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada — a paramilitary group the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization and that is funded and armed by Iran — said in an interview in Baghdad. A forced disarmament by the government “will not happen,” he said. Al-Fartousi said his group and other militias hold top positions in ministries, as well as dozens of seats in Iraq’s parliament, where they played a role in Zaidi’s selection in the negotiations that followed last year’s election. “The government is an outcome we helped produce,” he said. Al-Fartousi also said his organization and other armed groups often act independently of Iran and have grown this year. “The resistance factions have become stronger because they are tackling the most important event in the world, which is the U.S. war with Iran,” al-Fartousi added. “The U.S. drove us into this war.”
Iran-backed militias have long exercised influence in Iraq. But Tehran has renewed its support for the militias since the U.S. initiated its bombing campaign in Iran in February, according to current and former U.S. officials and defense experts. The flow of small arms, drones and small-diameter, short-range rockets from Iran initially slowed while Tehran focused on fighting the U.S., but ramped up this summer, a U.S. official said. Recent attacks have involved longer-range missiles and drones, the official said, hinting at a menacing weapons upgrade. Militants and Iranian forces launched more than 600 attacks on U.S. diplomatic and military facilities in Iraq in the first two months of the war, the Journal reported.
The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad now sends frequent security warnings to individual Americans and others — about two a week regard kidnapping by militants. A Journal team abruptly left Baghdad this month after Iraqi, U.S. and European officials warned of a security threat that American officials later said was a kidnapping risk by a Shiite militia. In late March, militiamen believed to be affiliated with Kataib Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, kidnapped American freelance journalist Shelly Kittleson, bundling her into a car on a busy street in Baghdad. She was released about a week later, after the group negotiated with the Iraqi government for the release of imprisoned militants, current and former U.S. officials said. “We are in a state of war launched by the American-Zionist enemy against Islam,” Abu Mujahid al-Assaf, a Kataib Hezbollah official, said in a social-media post announcing her release. This month, a drone attack that Saudi Arabia said was launched from Iraq near the border with Iran temporarily closed Saudi Arabia’s East-West oil pipeline, an increasingly vital artery since Iran disrupted shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Other attacks damaged a U.S. diplomatic and logistics hub at the Baghdad airport.
The roots of Iran’s present influence in Iraq stretch back decades. Before the militias emerged, Iran and Iraq had fought a nearly eight-year war that was estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands and ended in a stalemate in 1988. Fifteen years later, the U.S. invaded Iraq to take down Saddam Hussein, buttressed by Bush administration claims — later proven false — that the Iraqi leader was hiding weapons of mass destruction. Close to 4,500 U.S. troops and as many as 300,000 Iraqis were killed. The instability that followed the invasion created an opening for Iran to extend its influence in Iraq, whose population is predominantly Shia, the same branch of Islam followed by most Iranians. In working-class Sadr City, veterans reminisced over tea about shooting down U.S. helicopters in the early days of the 2003 U.S. military occupation.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, helped organize armed groups that attacked American troops with the aim of driving the U.S. out of Iraq, sending rockets, armor-piercing explosives and other armaments to the Iraq-based militias and dispatching its officers to train them, declassified U.S. intelligence documents show.
After winding down the initial war, the U.S. withdrew its troops in 2011. Three years later, American troops returned to battle Islamic State, or ISIS, a group of Sunni extremists who spilled into Iraq from Syria. Thousands of U.S. airstrikes helped Iraqi and Syrian forces defeat the militants, and American troops remained in Iraq. By then, the Iran-backed militias were entrenched. After helping fight ISIS, some militias were absorbed into Iraq’s political system, forming political parties that had a say in the prime minister’s selection. Militia members took influential jobs in the education ministry and the tax and customs authority.
Zaidi’s disarmament initiative has persuaded some militant groups to cooperate in the hope of having sanctions lifted. Asaib Ahl al-Haq, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, was among those that said they would work with the government. “They seem to want to go legit,” David Schenker, a former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, said. “They want to go on vacation in France with their families.”
But confronting the armed militants by force would face long odds. Iraq’s underfunded army crumbled when fighting ISIS in 2014, and the country’s U.S.-trained Counter-Terrorism Service commanded an estimated 14,000 soldiers as of 2024 — fewer than the militias. “To think that Zaidi could disarm the militias in a matter of months was an impossible request,” said Victoria Taylor, a former senior State Department official who left government this year after working on Iraq issues.
A U.S. defense official said the military was airlifting equipment and personnel out of Erbil, the last U.S. military base, in time to meet Wednesday’s deadline. Some U.S. Marines will remain to protect American diplomatic missions, along with contractors to maintain Iraq’s fleet of F-16 jet fighters and American-made tanks, according to current and former U.S. officials. The military has already removed a Patriot air defense battery stationed around Erbil, current and former U.S. officials said. The U.S. is likely to concentrate its remaining air defenses around the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the consulate in Erbil, despite continuing Iranian and militia strikes.
Some residents expressed resentment about Iran’s interference at a time when Iraq, the world’s fifth-largest oil producer, is showing signs of an economic recovery. In Baghdad, new boutiques and cafes have opened, and the government is building the capital’s tallest structure, the central bank headquarters, on the banks of the Tigris. “If something is not in Iraq’s interest, we don’t want them,” said Rahman Hussein Ahmed, a 51-year-old former fighter in a rebel group that opposed both Iran and the U.S. Militia leaders, he said, “are tools of Iranian interests.”
Iran’s influence is visible in a souvenir stall in Baghdad’s old city, where postcards feature the picture of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader who was killed in the U.S.-Israeli attack this year. Another shows Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of Iran’s Quds Force who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in 2020. At Baghdad’s airport, a portrait of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a militia commander killed in the same 2020 strike, awaits visitors outside the arrivals hall. Posters put up around the city center say, “We will make the decision,” a jab at the prime minister’s militia disarmament initiative.
The Pentagon’s Inspector General said in a report this year that U.S. support to Iraq in key counterterrorism operations had “slowed to a near halt” because of the Iran war. “These militia groups exist because Iran wants them to exist, and Iran finds continued utility in using them as a tool and a lever against the Iraqi government and the U.S. in the region,” Taylor said. “That will continue to be the case after the departure of U.S. troops,” she added.