April 07 2025
Several of the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq are prepared to disarm for the first time to avert the threat of an escalating conflict with the US, Reuters news agency reports being told by 10 senior commanders and Iraqi officials.
The move to defuse tensions follows repeated warnings issued privately by US officials to the Iraqi government since President Trump took power in January, according to the sources, who include six local commanders of four major militias.
The officials told Baghdad that unless it acted to disband the militias operating on its soil, the United States could target the groups with airstrikes, the people added.
Izzat al-Shahbandar, a senior Shiite politician close to Iraq’s governing alliance, told Reuters that discussions between Prime Minister Mohammed Shia as-Sudani and several militia leaders were “very advanced,” and the groups were inclined to comply with US calls for disarmament.
“The factions are not acting stubbornly or insisting on continuing in their current form,” he said, adding that the groups were “fully aware” they could be targeted by the US.
Reuters said the six militia commanders it interviewed are from the Kataib Hezbollah, Nujabaa, Kataib Sayyed ash-Shuhada and Ansarullah al-Awfiyaa groups.
“Trump is ready to take the war with us to worse levels, we know that, and we want to avoid such a bad scenario,” said a commander of Kataib Hezbollah, the most powerful Shiite militia, who spoke from behind a black face mask and sunglasses.
The commanders said their main ally and patron, the Pasdaran, had given them its blessing to take whatever decisions they deemed necessary to avoid being drawn into a potentially ruinous conflict with the United States and Israel.
The militias are part of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of about 10 Shiite armed groups that collectively command about 50,000 fighters.
The Resistance group, a key pillar of Iran‘s network of regional proxy forces, has claimed responsibility for dozens of missile and drone attacks on Israel and on US forces in Iraq and Syria since the Gaza war erupted about 18 months ago.
Farhad Alaaeldin, Prime Minister Sudani’s foreign affair adviser, told Reuters the prime minister was committed to ensuring all weapons in Iraq were under state control through “constructive dialogue with various national actors.”
The two Iraqi security officials said Sudani was pressing for disarmament by all the militias of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which declare their allegiance to Iran‘s Qods Force rather than to Baghdad.
Some groups have already largely evacuated their headquarters and reduced their presences in major cities including Mosul and Anbar since mid-January for fear of being hit by air attacks, according to officials and commanders.
Many commanders have also stepped up their security measures in that time, changing their mobile phones, vehicles and abodes more frequently, they said.
The US State Department said it continued to urge Baghdad to rein in the militias. “These forces must respond to Iraq’s commander-in-chief and not to Iran,” it added.
An American official cautioned that there had been instances in the past when the militias had ceased their attacks because of US pressure, and was skeptical any disarmament would be long-term.
In the view of many, rather than true disarmament, which would require some agency to collect weapons and account for them, the groups are more likely to bury their weapons and decline to take any offensive action—for the time being.
Shahbandar, the Shiite politician, said the Iraqi government had not yet finalized a deal with militant leaders, with a disarmament mechanism still under discussion. Options being considered include turning the groups into political parties and integrating them into the Iraqi armed forces, he said.
Iraq has long struggled to balance its relationships with both the US and the Islamic Republic while coping with Iranian-backed militias on its soil. The groups sprang up across the country with Iranian financial and military support in the chaotic wake of the 2003 US invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, and have become formidable forces that can rival the national army in firepower.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told Prime Minister Sudani in a phone call March 16, shortly after the American strikes on the Houthis in Yemen began, to prevent the militias carrying out revenge attacks on Israel and US bases in the region in support of their allies, according to two government officials and two security sources briefed on the exchange, Reuters reported.
The Iraqi-based militias had launched dozens of drone and rockets attacks against Israel in solidarity with Hamas since the Gaza war began and killed three US soldiers in a drone operation in Jordan near the Syrian border last year.
Ibrahim al-Sumaidaie, a former political adviser to Sudani, told Iraqi state TV that the United States had long pressed Iraq’s leadership to dismantle the militias, but this time Washington might not take “we’re trying” for an answer.
“If we do not voluntarily comply, it may be forced upon us from the outside, and by force.”