Shafaq News
The American approach to Iraq's Iran-alignedarmed factions has undergone a quiet but consequential transformation. Theappointment of Tom Barrack as special envoy for Iraq and Syria, replacing MarkSavaya, signals a shift not in objectives but in the method of pursuing them. The US still wants Iran's military footprint in Iraq reduced, but it is nowtrying to achieve that through structural pressure rather than visibleinterference.
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The distinction matters because Savaya wasperceived across Baghdad's political class as a figure who reached too deeplyinto Iraqi internal arrangements. Barrack, according to analysts interviewed byShafaq news, represents a different profile: a businessman with direct ties toPresident Donald Trump, a preference for strong central states overconsociational power-sharing, and a mandate that deliberately bundles Iraq withSyria under a single envoy.
Dilshad Othman, a researcher in internationalrelations at the University of Tennessee, told Shafaq News that the UnitedStates no longer treats Iraq as a file with its own internal logic; it treatsit as a node in a broader regional security order aimed at reconfiguring thebalance of power and curtailing Iranian influence.
The apparatus Barrack inherits is alreadysubstantially built. Since early 2025, the Trump administration has operated onmultiple simultaneous tracks: diplomatic pressure on Baghdad to restrictweapons to state authority; congressional conditions tying security cooperationfunding to verifiable reductions in Iran-aligned factions' capacity; sanctionson banks and businessmen, direct warnings that Washington would not recognize agovernment that handed ministries to armed factions linked to Tehran; and,beneath all of this, a military option kept deliberately visible.
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TheCoordination Framework Moves
The Shiite Coordination Framework'sauthorization of Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi to take all necessary measures torestrict weapons to state control was presented by the alliance as a sovereignnational position. Malik Francis, a Republican politician and political analyst,told Shafaq News that Washington views these steps positively, stating that"Iraq's long-term stability requires the state to be the sole entityauthorized to carry and use weapons within legal frameworks." The welcomewas not merely rhetorical: Francis situated US support within a broader effortto strengthen Iraqi state institutions and the rule of law, and added thatconsolidating the state's monopoly on force would improve the investmentclimate and enhance foreign business confidence in the Iraqi market, aneconomic framing that signals Washington is offering something beyonddiplomatic approval.
The US Chargé d'Affaires Joshua Harris'swelcome of the CF's authorization, described as a "qualitative shift"toward Iraqi sovereignty, arrived within a diplomatic framework designed tomake that shift the only viable path. Patrick Clawson, the Morningstar seniorfellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, assessed the CF'sauthorization as consolidating an existing reality rather than representing asudden rupture. The political groundwork, he argued, had been laid over manymonths.
Asaib Ahl al-Haq's announcement —forming acentral committee to inventory weapons, personnel, and equipment and transferthem to state authority— was the first concrete institutional step any majorIran-aligned faction had taken. AAH operates Brigades 41, 42, and 43 within thePopular Mobilization Forces and maintains a parliamentary wing through theSadiqoon bloc. Kataib Imam Ali (Brigade 40 of the PMF), which also holds fiveparliamentary seats through its Khadamat bloc, followed with a paralleldecision. That two factions moved in close succession, each with namedinstitutional mandates, signals something beyond individual calculation.
The process has since moved from politicalauthorization to physical implementation. Major General Saad Maan, head of theSecurity Media Cell, announced the first practical steps in the merger process:the handover of Saraya al-Salam headquarters and weapons in Samarra, followingMuqtada al-Sadr's decision to place the force under state authority. Al-Sadr'smove —primarily a domestic political maneuver by a figure who has longmaintained distance from Iran's direct orbit— added momentum and removed oneargument for hesitation from CF-aligned factions.
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Petraeusin Baghdad
The visit by retired General David Petraeusto Baghdad in mid-May 2026, formally as a private citizen providing independentadvisory services to the White House, added a further dimension to the USpressure arrangement. After five days of meetings with senior Iraqi officials,Petraeus wrote that his interlocutors "recognized the importance ofensuring that the Iraqi Security Services have a monopoly on the use of forcein Iraq." The visit was not publicly acknowledged as official; itssignificance lay precisely in the fact that a channel allowed frank exchangewithout the formality of a diplomatic confrontation.
What Petraeus found reflected a factionallandscape in transition. Several groups, including Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada,Ansar Allah al-Awfiya, had signaled varying degrees of readiness to supportweapons restriction. The direction of travel among the pragmatic wing of theresistance ecosystem was, for the first time in years, discernibly towardaccommodation. The choice to route that assessment through a retired generaloperating outside official channels was not incidental; it reflects adeliberate American preference for pressure that is felt without being formallyapplied, credible precisely because it carries no diplomatic obligation tofollow through.
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TheHoldouts
That direction of travel does not extend toall factions, as Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba, and Ashab al-Kahf haverejected disarmament without preconditions, specifically, the completewithdrawal of US and Turkish forces from Iraqi territory.
Kataib Hezbollah remains one of the mostoperationally capable factions within the PMF; its Secretary-General AbuHussein al-Hamidawi survived a US strike in Baghdad's Karrada district in March2026 that killed three associates. The faction has publicly stated readiness torespond to the United States across all fronts if PMF leaders are targeted.
The divergence within what was presented as aunified resistance framework now exposes a structural fracture: CF-alignedfactions that contested the November 2025 elections and are seeking roles inthe next government have different incentive structures from Islamic Resistancein Iraq groups that define their weapons as existential and their strategicalignment with Tehran as non-negotiable. The former calculate thataccommodation buys political survival and economic legitimacy; the lattercalculate that disarmament eliminates their deterrence and exposes theirleadership to legal or physical targeting. Both calculations are rationalwithin their own framework.
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TheTransaction Behind the Pressure
Sources within the CF told Shafaq News of aninternal split over an American proposal that sharpens the transactionalcharacter of the disarmament process: the US would facilitate service andinvestment projects inside Iraq, implemented by American companies, in exchangefor progress on weapons restriction and factional handovers. The proposal hasdivided CF member parties, with some viewing it as a legitimate economicincentive and others resistant to what they read as a conditioned bargain.
The pattern fits a broader American operatingmode. In May 2025, Trump announced a ceasefire with the Houthis in Yemen, mediatedby Oman, under which the US halted its bombing campaign in exchange for thegroup ceasing attacks on American ships. The deal bypassed Israel and left theHouthis free to continue strikes on Israeli targets, exposing the transactionalrather than principled character of the arrangement. Trump's subsequent publicclaim of engagement with Hezbollah in Lebanon this June, occurring in the samewindow as Washington's welcome of the CF stance, follows the same logic:bilateral deals on narrow US interests, coercive pressure maintained on thebroader Iranian influence design.
Ali al-Baydar, a Baghdad-based politicalanalyst, told Shafaq News that Barrack's mandate reflects a US desire to manageIraq, Syria, Turkiye, and Iran as a single interconnected file, and that"the weapons question is one instrument within that larger arrangement,not an end in itself."
Iraqi politician Mithal al-Alusi argued thatIraq and the region need the "institutional United States" more thanthey need a presidential envoy, warning that handling Iraq through the samelens as Syria “risks misreading the country's political complexity andundermining the strategic partnership between Baghdad and Washington.”
Haitham Numan, professor of political scienceat the University of Exeter, assessed Barrack as oriented toward strong centralstates rather than consociational arrangements. This preference aligns withal-Zaidi's government program but sits uneasily with the federal and pluraliststructure Iraq has operated under since 2003.
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WashingtonCannot Answer This
Iraq's weapons restriction process hasreached a threshold it has approached and retreated from before. The differencethis time is the accumulation of external pressurث —legislative, diplomatic, financial, and military— that has raised the cost of inaction to a level that several CF-aligned factions now judge unsustainable. The Samarra handover, theCF's authorization, the Harris-al-Araji meeting, the Petraeus visit, and theeconomic incentive framework: these are the visible outputs of a sustainedpressure campaign Washington has been constructing for over a year.
Despite these developments, the campaigncannot resolve the internal fracture it has helped produce. Kataib Hezbollahand Harakat al-Nujaba's refusal is strategic and rooted in a calculation thattheir weapons are the only guarantee of their survival in anypost-accommodation environment. The CF split over the American investmentproposal signals that even among compliant factions, the terms of complianceremain contested. If al-Zaidi's government formation proceeds without resolvingthat fracture, Iraq enters the final phase of the US withdrawal agreement with abifurcated security landscape: factions nominally integrated and others openlydefiant, and no unified position capable of holding both.
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Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.