ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The government of newly appointed Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi is moving toward bringing the arms of Iran-aligned armed groups in Iraq under state control, several officials from the ruling Shiite Coordination Framework, which backed Zaidi to office, told Rudaw on Tuesday. Meanwhile, a senior commander from one of the armed factions said the push aims to address arms proliferation but not to “disarm” these groups.
Amer al-Fayez, head of the Tasmim alliance, one of the 12 parties that make up the Coordination Framework, confirmed that “indirect discussions are underway between the government and certain armed groups that operate outside the umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Forces [PMF].”
He added that “the first phase of the sought agreement - halting their attacks on alleged American targets in the region - has been implemented,” noting that “the second phase is to restrict weapons to the hands of the state.”
According to Fayez, the talks involve three to four armed groups that operate outside the PMF framework, and there is currently an understanding to integrate them into state authority, with a final agreement expected after the Eid al-Adha holiday, which will be observed from Wednesday to Saturday.
He further stressed that this is strictly an internal Iraqi matter and was not pursued under foreign pressure.
The PMF was established in 2014 during the Islamic State group (ISIS) blitz, which saw the group seize control of large parts of Iraq’s north and west.
Created in response to a religious edict, fatwa, by Iraq’s highest Shiite authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the PMF was initially an umbrella organization of roughly 70 predominantly Shiite armed groups, with approximately 250,000 members.
While the PMF is a state‑funded institution, it includes factions widely believed to overlap with the Iran-led ‘Axis of Resistance,’ which have, since the outbreak of the Iran war in late February, carried out attacks against alleged US targets in the region in support of Tehran, often operating through shadow groups under the banner of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI).
The IRI emerged in the immediate aftermath of the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, with its core overlap within the PMF including Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, Kata’ib Hezbollah, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, and Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada armed groups.
In early April, the IRI claimed that it had carried out more than 750 attacks against alleged US-linked assets in Iraq and the region since the beginning of the Iran war and up to that point. However, in recent weeks those attacks have seen a drastic decline.
Commenting on the ongoing discussions between the Zaidi-led government and the Tehran-aligned armed groups, Ahmed al-Issawi, a senior member of the Hikmah Movement led by influential Iraqi Shiite cleric and politician Ammar al-Hakim, told Rudaw on Tuesday that “one of the issues being discussed is controlling heavy weapons so that they remain in the hands of the state.”
Another aspect of the talks is “determining the nature of the relationship between these groups and the government,” Issawi added.
Meanwhile, Aqeel al-Rudaini, the spokesperson for the Nasr Coalition led by former Iraqi prime minister and prominent Coordination Framework figure Haider al-Abadi (2014 - 2018), explained to Rudaw that “what exists right now is a dialogue about controlling weapons, not laying them down, so that these armed groups can subsequently be accommodated within a new security institution that will be established later.”
In his inaugural address before the Iraqi parliament in mid-May, Iraqi Prime Minister Zaidi vowed security reform, including through “confining weapons under state control,” adding that he would enhance the capabilities of security forces and consolidate citizens’ “confidence in democracy.”
For his part, Kadhim al-Fartousi, spokesperson for the Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada armed group, told Rudaw on Tuesday that “there is a desire to settle this issue between the government and some of the Shiite [armed] forces, but the accurate expression is ‘arms control,’ not ‘disarmament’.”
He further maintained that “these weapons exist to counter the aggression of the occupiers, and currently, Iraq cannot prevent the violation of its sovereignty by the US and the Zionist [Israeli] entity.”
Hastyar Qadir contributed to this article from Erbil, Kurdistan Region.