Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), known in Arabic as Al-Hashd al-Shaabi, occupies an unusual position in the architecture of Middle Eastern security: a legally recognized component of Iraq's state security apparatus that simultaneously serves as a conduit for substantial Iranian influence inside the country. The organization's trajectory, from an ad hoc coalition of substate armed groups to a formalized state institution, encapsulates the central tension in Iraq's post-2014 governance.

The PMF was formed by grouping pre-existing substate forces under a single umbrella organization, a process analyzed in detail by the Carnegie Endowment as early as 2017. Rather than building a new force from scratch, the Iraqi state absorbed militias that had already coalesced, many with their own ideological orientations, patronage networks, and external ties. The result was a paramilitary network that carried its pre-existing loyalties into the formal state structure.

According to Reuters, the PMF is an Iraqi state-sponsored paramilitary network. The Institute for the Study of War more precisely characterizes it as an Iraqi state security service, while the Foreign Policy Research Institute notes it is a legally recognized component of Iraq's security apparatus. These designations matter because they determine the PMF's access to state budgets, command relationships with the regular armed forces, and accountability frameworks.

The PMF played a key role in defeating the Islamic State (ISIS), a contribution documented by the Brookings Institution. That battlefield record is the political foundation for the organization's continued legitimacy within Iraq: it earned the PMF a measure of public support and institutional standing that would have been difficult to secure through conventional politics alone.

Iran's penetration of the PMF, however, complicates any straightforward reading of the organization as a national security force. The Institute for the Study of War assesses that Iran has infiltrated the PMF and uses it to wield significant influence in Iraq. The organization is accused of serving as an instrument through which Tehran seeks to dominate Iraqi affairs. These are not peripheral allegations; they strike at the question of whose interests the PMF ultimately serves when Iraqi and Iranian priorities diverge.

The militarization of Iran-aligned factions within the PMF extends beyond small arms. Iran-backed militias operating inside Iraq's PMF have acquired short-range ballistic missiles from Iran, according to the Missile Threat project at CSIS. The presence of such capability within a nominally state-controlled force raises questions about command and control that the formal legal framework does not resolve.

The PMF's internal composition is fragmented. The Ali El-Akber Brigade, for instance, is a unit within the PMF affiliated with the Imam Hussein Shrine, illustrating how religious institutions are tied into the force's organizational DNA. Individual brigades maintain distinct identities, sponsors, and in some cases independent operational logics, making unified command an ongoing challenge.

The organization also reaches into Iraqi civilian institutions. Iraq's state-owned Oil Exploration Company held an educational seminar about voluntary donations to support the families of martyrs and wounded of the Popular Mobilization Forces, indicating the degree to which PMF-related welfare frameworks are integrated into state-owned enterprise activities.

The PMF's role has also drawn Iraq into diplomatic friction beyond its borders. In 2025, Iraq's Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Lebanese Ambassador in connection with the Popular Mobilization Forces. The specifics of that diplomatic encounter remain limited, but the fact that a PMF-related issue prompted a formal diplomatic protest against a neighboring state's envoy signals the organization's capacity to generate regional complications.

Brookings identified growing challenges to the PMF's legitimacy, structure, and influence as early as 2022, and those pressures have not abated. The organization operates at the intersection of competing demands: Iraq's need for a coherent security apparatus, Iran's interest in maintaining leverage, and the aspirations of individual militia factions that may resist full state integration. The legal formalization of the PMF answered one set of questions while leaving others unresolved, particularly around accountability for factional actions that fall outside the state's operational directives.

Looking at what this means for Iraq's trajectory, the PMF embodies a structural dilemma that no single government has resolved. The force is simultaneously a state institution and a coalition of factions with varying degrees of loyalty to the Iraqi state versus Tehran. Its battlefield contributions against ISIS are indisputable; its utility as an instrument of foreign influence is equally well documented. Iraqi policymakers face the task of maintaining security cohesion without either provoking factional defection or ceding further sovereign authority to external actors. The 2025 diplomatic incident with Lebanon suggests that the PMF's reach now generates complications that extend well beyond Iraq's borders, and the acquisition of ballistic missile capability by Iran-aligned elements within the force adds a dimension of strategic concern that the legal framework alone cannot contain.