Baghdad Extends Weapon Surrender Deadline Amid Resistance from Iranian-Aligned Factions

The Iraqi government is advancing a plan to confiscate an estimated six million weapons currently held outside official state institutions, according to the Interior Ministry. This effort continues despite Baghdad quietly abandoning a September 30 deadline originally set for armed factions to surrender their arsenals.

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Deputy Interior Minister Hussein al-Awadi stated that the government now views the September 30 date—the initially rigid deadline aligned with the final withdrawal of US-led coalition forces—as the beginning of a regulatory process rather than a final cutoff.

A four-member committee, comprising Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi and former Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, is currently developing a revised mechanism to oversee the initiative.

Al-Awadi, speaking during a visit to Salah al-Din province, noted that the government’s focus has shifted from combating terrorism to addressing organized crime. He added that security files would be transferred to individual provinces in the coming months.

He highlighted that the ministry had achieved measurable progress in approximately 100 days since al-Zaidi assumed office.

The disarmament campaign is being pursued through negotiation rather than military force. Al-Zaidi stated in August that his administration had no intention of using military action against the factions, noting that some groups had already surrendered weapons while negotiations with others remain ongoing.

In recent days, he asserted that the withdrawal of US troops would eliminate “any justification or need for resistance in Iraq” and declared he would not tolerate “a state within the state.”

Tehran-Backed Militias at the Center

The campaign is unfolding under substantial US pressure. Washington requested a clear timetable from Baghdad in June for bringing weapons under state control, and the Trump administration has tied Iraq’s compliance to its access to dollar flows vital to its economy.

The factions central to the standoff are predominantly Shia militias established under Iranian guidance and backed by Tehran.

These groups are loosely organized under the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), an umbrella organization created in 2014 after Iraq’s most senior Shia cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a decree calling on volunteers to combat the Islamic State group.

While some PMF factions have been formally integrated into Iraq’s state security apparatus, others maintain independent command chains and continue to receive weapons, funding, and directives from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba—two of the most hardline Tehran-aligned groups, both of which have previously targeted US forces in Iraq and launched attacks on Gulf states during the ongoing Iran war—have refused to hand over what they term “resistance weapons.”

Conversely, Saraya al-Salam, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, and Kataib Imam Ali have reached an agreement with the government to surrender their weapons or regularize their operational status.

Saraya al-Salam formally separated from cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement and was integrated into the Iraqi security forces during a ceremony in Samarra in June.

Al-Zaidi, a 40-year-old billionaire businessman with no prior political or governmental experience, was approved as prime minister by parliament on May 14 as a compromise candidate following months of deadlock within the Shiite Coordination Framework.

Restricting weapons to state control was a central pillar of his government’s platform.

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