The Trump administration’s push to disarm Iraq’s Iran-backed militias by 30 September has not been realized, not for lack of pressure, but because of a longstanding contradiction in US policy. Since 2003, actions of the US explicitly framed as stabilizing Iraq have repeatedly contributed to destabilizing it. The ensuing disorder has strengthened the militias. President Trump is continuing this pattern. Like his predecessors, he has placed too much faith in the idea that American might can bend the fragmented politics of Iraq to its will in the long term.
US pressure and its limitations
The Trump administration has put significant pressure on Iraq’s government to act against the militias. It revoked Iraq’s access to some dollar shipments from its own oil sales, which have been held in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since 2003, a move intended to send a clear warning to the new Prime Minister, Ali al-Zaidi. Zaidi emerged as an acceptable candidate after Trump rejected the governing coalition’s initial choice – former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. Trump claimed that Iraq ‘descended into poverty and total chaos’ under Maliki’s previous premiership. Zaidi, by contrast, pledged to disarm militias by 30 September 2026, a deadline that has since been extended to June 2027. Washington and Baghdad hope the final US troop withdrawal from Iraq will undercut the militias’ resistance narrative and therefore increase the prospect of disarmament.
However, US pressure cannot produce a fundamental re-orientation of the Iraqi state. Any attempt by Zaidi to remove the militias from Iraqi politics would risk civil war. Washington’s leverage produces the performance of compliance in the short term rather than a rewiring of the state in the long-term. Many Iraqi powerbrokers comply just enough to evade closer scrutiny from Washington, buying time until the administration’s attention shifts elsewhere. This may explain why Qais al-Khazali pledged in June to disarm his group Asaib Ahl al-Haq (AAH): AAH has not yet handed over its weapons, and there are no tangible signs that it will.
Two further developments illustrate the limitations of US pressure.
First, unlike AAH, the militias that are particularly close to Iran, such as Kataeb Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba, have not even gone through the motions of disarming. In late July, when Iraqi troops were sent to search a Harakat al-Nujaba compound for missiles, militiamen fired warning shots and the troops were ordered to stand down.
Second, the militias’ political wings are entrenched at the highest levels of Iraqi politics. AAH’s political wing, Sadiqoon, tripled its seats in the legislature after the 2025 election. The Iranian-backed Badr Organization has been given the key portfolios of water and transport. Blocs like these are the bedrock of the Shia Coordination Framework that appointed Zaidi, limiting his room for manoeuvre.
The militia paradox
The inability of the US to force the militias to disarm reflects a longstanding contradiction in its policy: President Trump, like his predecessors, has insisted that the militias be disarmed while reinforcing the conditions in which they thrive.
This pattern dates back to 2003, when the US decision to officially disband the Iraqi army of the Baathist state created a security vacuum, which was subsequently filled in part by Shia militias such as the Badr Organization, Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and, later, AAH. In 2010, the US supported Nouri al-Maliki in the name of stability. However, his increasingly sectarian policies, including his government’s militarized crackdown on Sunni protestors, helped spark the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS). The fight against ISIS strengthened these militias and gave them political legitimacy, which was institutionalized, along with their funding, in the Popular Mobilization Forces.
Now, by choosing to start a war with Iran, the US has again acted as a destabilizing force in the region, sparking a regional conflict that includes Iraq. This has revived the ideological narrative that mobilizes Iraq’s militias just as Washington is pressing hard for them to disarm. For militias openly targeting the US and its Gulf allies, the war has brought a renewed sense of purpose and an opportunity to show they have the capacity to disrupt, including by driving a wedge between Iraq and neighbouring countries. This was seen in the tensions that arose after Saudi Arabia’s airstrikes in Iraq following alleged Iraqi militia attacks on the Kingdom’s energy infrastructure.
Meanwhile, militias such as AAH, which have launched limited attacks against US targets and pledged to disarm, can present themselves as relatively independent of Iran, while their political wings quietly consolidate power within Iraq’s institutions. Given the destruction and economic damage caused by the war, resistance to the US is likely to remain a potent narrative for the militias to draw on to mobilize popular support. The war, therefore, looks set to strengthen Iraq’s militias, not weaken them, and in this respect Trump represents continuity rather than rupture.
Looking to the future
The militias are the biggest beneficiaries of disorder in Iraq. From Baghdad’s perspective, this is another reason for the Trump administration to seek an immediate resolution to the Iran war, which risks escalating militia-driven violence in Iraq. Peace will not in itself make the militias more likely to disarm, but it is a prerequisite for generating the investment and infrastructure needed to strengthen the Iraqi state. Projects such as the Kirkuk-Baniyas pipeline cannot be rebuilt under the shadow of war. Ending the war would also undercut the resistance narrative to the US, on which the militias depend.
The Trump administration cannot disband the militias, any more than Zaidi can. What US policymakers should do is acknowledge that they have pushed for disarmament while creating the conditions in which the militias thrive. Only then can the US set a more realistic timeframe for disarmament. The 30 September deadline has now been missed, and the credibility of the US in Iraq has been undermined yet again.
Nor will degrading Iran’s military weaken Iraq’s militias. They have penetrated the Iraqi state and reshaped the landscape of post-2003 politics, with their own clients, ideological narratives and self-propelling logic. AAH’s refusal to join the ‘Islamic Resistance in Iraq’ in attacking US targets is a reflection of its dexterity, not its weakness. Nor has the US troop withdrawal abated anti-US sentiment, particularly against the backdrop of US airstrikes in Iraq in the context of the Iran war. Hostility to the US and the pursuit of wealth and power that cannot be contained by the state will drive the militias whether or not the Iranian regime survives. Having first achieved power after the 2003 US invasion, the militias look set to outlast both American pressure and Iranian control.