On September 30, when the last few remaining American troops completed their withdrawal from Iraq, the Iraqi state, the ruling Coordination Framework, and Iran-aligned armed factions celebrated Iraq’s “regaining” of its sovereignty. The government declared a three-day official holiday, and state institutions held celebrations marking the occasion, which Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi described as “a great national achievement of which all Iraqis are proud.”
This was the fourth time an Iraqi government has declared the country’s achievement of sovereignty and celebrated it officially. The first occasion, and the only genuine one, came with the end of the American military occupation of Iraq on June 28, 2004, when U.S. civilian administrator Paul Bremer transferred sovereignty to the first Iraqi government formed after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime, headed by Ayad Allawi. That government requested that the United Nations authorize American troops to remain in Iraq – no longer as an occupying force, as they had been previously, but as part of a multinational force whose assistance Iraq needed to establish security. This arrangement was based on UN Security Council Resolution 1546, adopted in June 2004.
This extensive regional expansion of the factions’ activities, and their tangible impact on global energy supplies, has prompted Washington to take a firm position on their disarmament, amid pressure from Gulf states to the same end.
From that transition onward, Iraqis gained an increasingly greater say in managing their country, although American influence remained strong because of the presence of more than 100,000 U.S. troops who protected the emerging political order and fought terrorist organizations. This influence steadily declined as security improved and American forces gradually withdrew. On June 30, 2009, when U.S. troops withdrew from Iraqi cities to bases outside them, the Iraqi government, then headed by Nouri al-Maliki, declared the occasion “National Sovereignty Day.” Public celebrations of sovereignty were organized for the second time. Maliki described this partial withdrawal as a “national holiday,” expressing his aspiration to achieve “the greater milestone at the end of 2011, when we will witness the final withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq.”
The completion of that withdrawal on Dec. 31 of the same year provided a third occasion for official Iraqi celebrations of sovereignty. The government called it “Iraq Day,” and Maliki, addressing a crowd gathered before him in Baghdad, declared: “It is a holiday for all Iraqis, the dawn of a new day… Iraq has become free, and you are its masters.”
And now, 17 years later, the Iraqi state once again declares its full independence.
This Iraqi tendency toward excessive celebration reflects two things. The first is the scarcity of genuine achievements in economic development, public services, and institution-building, which drives Iraq’s ruling elite to emphasize symbolic “achievements” rooted in ideological illusions rather than positive material realities. The second is the growing influence of Iranian political discourse, promoted by pro-Tehran armed factions amid what appears to be their increasing dominance of the country’s political and public spheres.
On the surface, the latest withdrawal of American troops from Iraq appears to be a victory for the armed factions and, consequently, for Iran. Yet the reality suggests that this supposed victory may be temporary and could ultimately undermine these groups’ own dominance. For the first time, the withdrawal has placed the dismantling of these factions seriously on the political agenda.
Although the government programs of four successive administrations since 2018, all approved by parliament, have included explicit provisions calling for weapons to be restricted to state control – a formal and euphemistic expression for dismantling the armed factions – nothing has been achieved in this regard. Quite the opposite has happened. The factions have grown stronger, extending their influence into the economy and politics, including the selection of prime ministers. They have also gone so far as to jeopardize Iraq’s foreign relations, as happened with the Gulf states, whose oil facilities were attacked by these groups on Iran’s behalf as Tehran sought to reduce global oil supplies to pressure the United States.
This extensive regional expansion of the factions’ activities, and their tangible impact on global energy supplies, has prompted Washington to take a firm position on their disarmament, amid pressure from Gulf states to the same end.
In an open confrontation free of constraints, Washington possesses sufficient military and financial tools to dismantle these factions. The American administration, however, does not enjoy the luxury of using these tools freely and directly because of the factions’ hybrid nature. On the one hand, they are part of the Iraqi state, through the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), which provide them with official cover. Washington regards Iraq as a friendly state and does not want to lose it to Iran. On the other hand, these factions are important instruments of the Islamic Republic, the United States’ fierce regional adversary, which uses them to target America and its other allies in the region.
With the Iraqi state, which Washington nurtured and protected after 2003, unable to disentangle Iraq’s interests from Iran’s conflicting interests, the United States finds itself relatively constrained in the pressure it can exert in Iraq.
It is these constraints that led Washington to accept a nine-month extension of the deadline for dismantling the factions, moving it to June 2027 instead of the end of September, immediately following the American withdrawal, as Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi had promised during his visit to the White House last July.
But can Zaidi, a Washington ally who relies heavily on American support, accomplish next June what he has failed to accomplish this October? Most likely not, if he continues along his current, fruitless path: negotiating with the factions themselves to reach some kind of deal acceptable to both Washington and Tehran.
It is hardly logical to expect the factions to negotiate an agreement that would substantially weaken them and threaten their influence by stripping them of their heavy weapons, their most important instruments of power. Even if the government managed to reach such an agreement, who could guarantee that new factions would not emerge, unbound by a deal they had neither negotiated nor signed?
In fact, neither Zaidi, as a prime minister seeking to consolidate his position, nor the Iraqi state, surrounded by challenges and difficulties, stands to benefit from ignoring the elephant in the room: Iran.
The Iraqi government needs to negotiate with Iran, the principal sponsor of the armed factions and the ultimate decision-maker regarding their fate, and conclude a state-to-state agreement to end Iranian support for armed factions of any kind, whether existing or future ones.
The government will not be able to bring Iran to the negotiating table on this issue without strong backing from the Coordination Framework, the ruling parliamentary coalition with close ties to Tehran. Such support is unlikely to materialize unless the Framework comes under severe pressure.
This is where American instruments of pressure should be deployed selectively and intelligently to achieve a shared Iraqi-American interest: establishing a genuine state monopoly over weapons in Iraq.
Iraqi law explicitly criminalizes the possession of weapons by militias and the formation of armed groups. It is time for the government to enforce this law.
Instead of threatening Iraq with sweeping financial sanctions that would have broad consequences and amount to collective punishment – such as halting dollar transfers, which would paralyze Iraq’s financial system and leave the state unable to pay its employees’ salaries – Washington should use carefully targeted financial and political sanctions to pressure the parties of the Coordination Framework. These sanctions should be aimed at their most prominent figures and affiliated institutions.
If properly coordinated and progressively intensified, such sanctions would threaten the Framework’s continued grip on power, pushing it to make serious concessions in order to preserve its monopoly on government.
Such sanctions would also enjoy considerable popular support among a broad and diverse Iraqi public angered by the Coordination Framework’s corruption and poor governance. They would give ordinary Iraqis the sense that America is not targeting them.
In parallel, the government should launch its own legal measures against the armed factions. Iraqi law explicitly criminalizes the possession of weapons by militias and the formation of armed groups. It is time for the government to enforce this law.
These measures cannot succeed on their own without American and regional pressure on Iraq. Washington and its allies should insist that Iraqi follow the rule of law. This is especially true now that the armed factions have turned Iraq into a threat to regional security in support of Iran’s war effort.
Without a serious commitment to pursuing these two parallel tracks, external and domestic, Iraq will witness, at best, only a temporary and calculated reduction in the armed factions’ activities as they wait for the American storm under Trump to pass. The U.S. and its allies do not have the luxury of allowing them to succeed.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MBN’s editorial stance.
