Iraq has a security force called the Popular Mobilization Forces, or PMF (known in Arabic as Al-Hashd al-Shaabi). It is officially part of the Iraqi government's military. But it also works as a major channel for Iran to influence what happens inside Iraq. This double identity is one of the biggest challenges the country faces today.

The PMF was not built from scratch. Instead, the Iraqi government took a bunch of existing militia groups and brought them under one umbrella organization. The Carnegie Endowment studied this process as early as 2017. Many of these militias already had their own beliefs, their own sources of money, and their own connections to foreign governments — especially Iran. When they became part of the official state security forces, they kept those old loyalties.

Different organizations describe the PMF in slightly different ways. Reuters calls it a state-sponsored paramilitary network. The Institute for the Study of War calls it a state security service. The Foreign Policy Research Institute says it is a legally recognized part of Iraq's security apparatus. These descriptions matter because they affect how the PMF gets government money, how it works with the regular army, and who holds it accountable when things go wrong.

The PMF played a major role in defeating the Islamic State, or ISIS, a contribution documented by the Brookings Institution. That battlefield success is the main reason the organization still has public support and respect in Iraq. It earned the PMF a level of legitimacy that would have been very hard to get through politics alone.

The complication is Iran's deep involvement with the PMF. The Institute for the Study of War says Iran has infiltrated the organization and uses it to influence decisions in Iraq. Critics accuse the PMF of being a tool Tehran uses to control Iraqi affairs. These are serious claims because they raise a basic question: when Iraq and Iran want different things, whose side is the PMF really on?

Iran-aligned groups inside the PMF have acquired weapons far more powerful than rifles. According to the Missile Threat project at CSIS, these militias have obtained short-range ballistic missiles from Iran. Having that kind of firepower inside a force that is supposed to answer to the Iraqi government raises serious questions about who is actually in charge — questions the law does not answer.

The PMF is also not a single, unified organization. It is made up of many different brigades, each with its own identity and backers. For example, the Ali El-Akber Brigade is affiliated with the Imam Hussein Shrine, a religious institution. This shows how religious organizations are built into the force's structure. Because individual brigades have their own sponsors and sometimes operate on their own, getting everyone to follow one set of orders is a constant struggle.

The PMF's reach extends into civilian life, too. Iraq's state-owned Oil Exploration Company held a seminar encouraging employees to voluntarily donate money to support the families of PMF fighters who were killed or wounded. This shows how deeply the PMF's welfare programs are woven into everyday government operations.

The organization has also caused problems for Iraq in its relations with other countries. In 2025, Iraq's Foreign Ministry summoned the Lebanese Ambassador over an issue connected to the PMF. The details of that meeting are limited, but the fact that a PMF-related issue led to a formal diplomatic complaint against another country's ambassador shows how the group can create complications beyond Iraq's borders.

The Brookings Institution flagged growing challenges to the PMF's legitimacy, structure, and influence back in 2022, and those pressures have not gone away. The organization is caught between competing demands: Iraq needs a security force that works as one, Iran wants to keep its influence, and individual militia factions may not want to give up their independence. Making the PMF an official government body answered some questions but left others open — especially the question of who is responsible when individual factions do things the government did not authorize.

What this means for Iraq's future is that the PMF is a problem no government has solved. It is both a government institution and a collection of armed groups with shifting loyalties — some more loyal to Iraq, others more aligned with Iran. The PMF's role in beating ISIS is real and important. So is the evidence that Iran uses parts of it to project power in Iraq. Iraqi leaders now have to hold the security apparatus together without pushing militia factions into rebellion or handing even more control to an outside government. The 2025 diplomatic incident with Lebanon shows the PMF's reach now creates problems far beyond Iraq, and the fact that Iran-aligned groups inside the force now have ballistic missiles adds a layer of danger that the law simply cannot fix.