Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi is confronting a political and security crisis as the government's September 30, 2026 deadline approaches for all armed factions to surrender their weapons to state control. At least one Iran-aligned paramilitary group has openly rejected the mandate, and others are splitting between compliance and defiance Al Jazeera.

The deadline, formally set in late June, requires every armed faction operating outside state authority to either integrate into Iraq's official security forces or hand over its weapons Asharq Al-Awsat. A committee has been formed to manage the absorption of these factions into state institutions, but the specific terms remain unresolved as of early July, including verification mechanisms (how the government confirms weapons are actually handed over), weapons inventories, and the legal status of fighters who integrate into the state apparatus Shafaq News.

Kataib Hezbollah, one of the most prominent Iran-aligned paramilitary groups in Iraq, explicitly rejected the government's disarmament mandate. The group pledged to retain and further develop what it calls "resistance weapons," framing its arsenal as essential to national defense rather than a challenge to state authority Al Jazeera.

Harakat al-Nujaba took a more nuanced position. The group argued that the government's push to confiscate arms should target illegal weapons causing chaos, not those held by fighters who "defended Iraq, its holy sites, and its people." That framing draws a line between criminal or unregulated weaponry and the arsenals built up during the war against ISIS, which these groups regard as legitimized by that conflict Al Jazeera.

On the other side of the divide, Saraya al-Salam, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, and Kataib al-Imam Ali have agreed to integrate into Iraq's state armed forces. Their compliance, however, does not resolve the core challenge: the groups that refuse are also among the most heavily armed and politically influential Al Jazeera.

The disarmament push was heavily driven by pressure from the United States, which is concurrently winding down its anti-ISIS coalition mission under Operation Inherent Resolve. The September 30 deadline coincides with the scheduled end of that US-led mission, tying Iraq's militia question directly to the broader trajectory of American military disengagement from the country Asharq Al-Awsat. The convergence of these two timelines is not coincidental. Washington has long viewed the consolidation of weapons under Iraqi state control as a precondition for a durable security transition, and the simultaneous expiry of both deadlines creates a single inflection point for Iraq's post-ISIS security architecture.

The economic stakes sharpen the political ones. Oil revenues account for more than 90 percent of Iraq's state budget. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, triggered by the broader war on Iran, sent Iraq's oil exports plunging to roughly 600,000 barrels per day in March, down from 3.3 million bpd. That collapse in export capacity has drastically reduced the fiscal resources available to the government at precisely the moment it needs them most, both to absorb thousands of fighters into the security apparatus and to manage the broader economic fallout Al Jazeera.

The trajectory of Iraq's disarmament debate has shifted noticeably over the past two years. In January 2024, then-Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said Iraq wanted a quick and orderly negotiated exit of US-led military forces but had not set a deadline Reuters. By November 2025, al-Sudani stated that Iraq could disarm armed factions only after the United States withdraws its forces, sequencing militia disarmament behind a full American military departure Reuters.

The current government under al-Zaidi has reversed that sequencing. Rather than conditioning militia disarmament on a US withdrawal, the September 30 deadline treats weapons consolidation as a prerequisite that runs in parallel with the coalition's exit. This inversion reflects the intensity of American pressure amid the war on Iran, but it also places the Iraqi government in a structural bind: it must compel compliance from groups that were once encouraged to arm themselves during the ISIS conflict, and it must do so while operating on a fraction of its normal oil revenue.

The broader context here is one of competing timelines and compressed leverage. The simultaneous end of the US-led coalition mission and the Iraqi disarmament deadline creates pressure on all parties to reach a settlement before external security actors depart. But the economic contraction, the unresolved technical framework, and the explicit defiance of Kataib Hezbollah all suggest that September 30 is more likely to serve as the start of a turbulent negotiation than its conclusion.