The Iraqi government is now treating Sept. 30 as the start of a process to regulate weapons held by armed factions, many of which are backed by Iran, rather than as the deadline for bringing those weapons under state control, according to people familiar with negotiations between the government and the factions.
The change marks a setback for Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, who has repeatedly described the Sept. 30 deadline for state control of weapons as “final and non-negotiable.” He has cast that as part of Iraq’s transition to a “new phase” that would coincide with the completion of the U.S.-led international coalition’s withdrawal from the country on the same day.
Instead, a leader in the Coordination Framework, the ruling Shiite coalition, told MBN that within the next two weeks, “all the leaders of the framework” would issue a statement announcing the formation of a committee to “regulate weapons” held by “all factions.”
Three people from different forces within the Coordination Framework said the statement would come as part of an expected agreement between Zaidi’s government and the factions that would give the latter greater “flexibility” and redefine the deadline set by the State Administration Coalition as the beginning of a lengthy process rather than an endpoint.
A Deadline Becomes a Starting Point
In June 2026, Washington asked the Iraqi government to establish a clear timetable for bringing weapons under state control and dismantling armed groups operating outside the state’s authority. Baghdad later set Sept. 30, 2026, as the deadline for factions to surrender their weapons, coinciding with the end of the international coalition’s mission.
The Coordination Framework leader told MBN that Zaidi had come under significant pressure from the factions. That prompted it to adopt a middle-ground approach, treating Sept. 30 as the “beginning of bringing weapons under state control or regulating them,” without committing to a timetable for completing the process.
He added that a four-member committee formed within the Coordination Framework — comprising former Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, Badr Organization leader Hadi al-Amiri, State of Law Coalition leader Nouri al-Maliki and Zaidi — was working on the new mechanism. The goal, he said, was to ensure that the days following the deadline pass “quietly,” without a confrontation between government forces and the factions.
The Iraqi government has not officially confirmed the sources’ account of a possible agreement on a new mechanism to regulate the factions’ weapons rather than require their surrender.
Government spokesman Haider al-Aboudi did not respond to a request for comment from MBN.
According to two people familiar with the talks, the factions are seeking guarantees that they will not be targeted, either by the United States or by the Iraqi government, in return for accepting a regulatory framework that would restrict how their weapons are moved and used but not require them to hand over the weapons.
A lawmaker close to Zaidi told MBN that the government would focus in the coming days on the withdrawal of U.S. forces, describing it as a “day of sovereignty.” The government, he said, “will not give importance to the factions issue so as not to embarrass itself,” suggesting that Baghdad wants images of the departure of the last foreign troops to dominate the news rather than images of weapons that were not surrendered.
The Dispute Over “Control” and “Regulation”
The shift comes after weeks of disagreement within the Coordination Framework over two terms whose difference appeared semantic but carried significant political implications: “bringing weapons under state control,” meaning handing them over to the state or the Popular Mobilization Forces, and “regulating” them, which would leave the weapons in the hands of the factions under agreed rules. Zaidi had insisted on the first formulation, while political forces with armed wings pushed for the second.
Haider al-Shakri, an associate fellow at Chatham House, said the government had “tried to raise the stakes and turn bringing weapons under state control from a slogan into a commitment tied to a specific deadline, but the collision occurred within the political system itself.”
“Some parties rejected the deadline and set conditions, and the government does not have the political consensus needed to move toward an open confrontation,” he told MBN.
Shakri said the developments amounted to “a retreat from the idea of a quick resolution, not necessarily from the principle of bringing weapons under state control itself — that is a separate debate.”
“The problem is that the government tried to push the issue forward but ran into the limits of its capacity and the balance of power within the state,” he said, suggesting that the government “apparently did not realize how complicated the issue was.”
The State Administration Coalition, which includes Iraq’s main Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish political forces, said in an Aug. 5 statement that any armed activity outside the state’s framework after Sept. 30 would be dealt with under the country’s counterterrorism law. That was the strongest language used by an Iraqi government-backed political grouping toward the factions since the Shiite-led Popular Mobilization Forces were established in 2014.
But the weeks that followed brought countervailing moves. Ismail Qaani, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, which Washington designates as a terrorist organization, visited Baghdad in August. He was followed by Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf on an official visit. According to sources in the Coordination Framework who spoke at the time, both carried the same message: The time was not right for the Shiite factions to surrender their weapons.
In September, Zaidi received proposals from within the Coordination Framework to extend the surrender period by one or two years. He initially rejected them, but the factions subsequently added conditions that included disarming the Kurdish Peshmerga forces, the withdrawal of Turkish troops from northern Iraq and guarantees that military bases would contain no foreign fighters.
Ali Taher, head of the Al-Bayan Center for Planning and Studies, said the government had “realized that the timetable was unrealistic, and that the domestic political context, and the role weapons play in the balance of power in Iraqi politics, require the issue to shift from bringing weapons under state control to concealing them, then regulating and managing them for an almost open-ended period at this point.”
Taher told MBN that political forces “understand that it is abnormal for weapons to exist outside the state’s control, but the Iraqi political system prefers to resolve this issue in an Iraqi way, while in the process risking exposing the country to international pressure.”
U.S. Withdrawal Takes Center Stage
Sept. 30 is also the date by which the withdrawal is to be complete of the international coalition formed in 2014 at the request of the Iraqi government to fight ISIS, which Washington designates as a terrorist organization.
Baghdad and Washington announced a two-phase plan on Sept. 27, 2024. The first phase, ending the coalition’s mission in Iraq’s provinces by September 2025, was completed with the handover of Ain al-Asad Air Base in Anbar province and the departure of most of the forces from Camp Victory near Baghdad airport. The second phase calls for ending the coalition’s military presence in the Kurdistan region by Sept. 30, 2026.
Harir Air Base, northeast of the city of Erbil, has served as a staging point for the remaining U.S. forces. Patriot missile batteries and C-RAM counter-rocket systems were deployed there to protect the troops from drone and rocket attacks by Iran-backed factions, which intensified after the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began on Feb. 28.
Iraq’s military command said Camp Stefan at Erbil International Airport would be handed over to the airport administration, while the other bases would be transferred to the Kurdish Peshmerga forces. German troops, which had been training Iraqi and Peshmerga forces, completed their withdrawal in August.
The Iraqi government is preparing to declare Oct. 1 a “new day” on which Iraq will have no foreign military presence.
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic.
