Shafaq News-Washington
Iraqi PrimeMinister Ali al-Zaidi met US President Donald Trump at the White House onTuesday to advance the outline of an economic partnership, oil and gas agreements,and US involvement in pipelines that would route Iraqi crude around the Straitof Hormuz, set against Washington's central demand: measurable progress ondisarming Iran-aligned factions by September 30. That deadline coincides withthe scheduled withdrawal of the remaining US forces from Iraq, binding the twogovernments' timelines together.
: Iraq's September 30 weapons deadline leaves terms of disarmament unresolved
Al-Zaidi’svisit runs through July 18, during which more than 18 agreements are expectedto be signed, according to Shafaq News sources.
The pairingdefines al-Zaidi's position. A businessman with no prior political career, hewas installed in May as a consensus candidate after a year of post-electiondeadlock and an American veto against Nouri al-Maliki, and he arrived inWashington with a delegation of Iraqi executives, casting the trip as the startof an economic opening.
Trump backedal-Zaidi’s candidacy earlier this year and, in the Oval Office, promised aseries of deals and praised Iraq's oil potential. Both leaders said theremaining 2,500 US troops would leave by the end of September.
Since takingoffice, al-Zaidi has also mounted a public anti-corruption drive, with raidsand the arrest of dozens of current and former officials, with some leakedreports revealing that the campaign was launched with indirect US coordinationand support. Even a senior lawmaker from the Iran-aligned Badr Organization,Mukhtar al-Mousawi, told Shafaq News that the US “contributed to the success ofIraq's Dawn Crackdown anti-corruption campaign.”
: Iraq detains top officials in anti-corruption sweep: What we know so far
Washingtonattached a condition to the partnership. A senior US administration official,speaking on background before the meeting, told Shafaq News that the UnitedStates would make decisions based on Iraq's efforts “to disarm Iran-backedmilitias,” linking the economic relationship explicitly to a security outcomerather than treating the two as separate tracks.
US Secretary ofDefense Pete Hegseth told al-Zaidi that those groups were responsible for morethan 600 attacks on US personnel this spring, during the US-Israel-Iran war,adding that Iraq must assert its sovereignty and “disarm the militias,” andprogress on that demand would open the way to commercial and defense ties.
The factions atissue operate in and around the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), astate-sanctioned umbrella of mainly Shiite paramilitary groups formed in 2014to fight ISIS and since absorbed into Iraq's security payroll and its politics. Several are aligned with Tehran and revere Qassem Soleimani, the IranianRevolutionary Guard commander killed alongside Iraqi PMF leader Abu Mahdial-Muhandis in a 2020 US strike in Baghdad. Trump described Soleimani as"brilliant, but evil," and asked al-Zaidi whether killing him and"another very bad man from Iraq [al-Muhandis]" had benefited Iraq. The Iraqi PM declined to engage, saying he had not been in politics at the timeand preferring to focus on the future.
TheSecretary-General of Harakat Hezbollah Al-Nujaba, Akram Al-Kaabi, criticizedTrump's remarks, saying that Soleimani and other figures of the resistance weremore honorable than the US president's "rotten head," describingTrump as a "fool who kills children" and his administration as"criminal and evil."
The economiccomponent turns on Iraq's exposure to the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf waterwaythat has been effectively closed since the war between Iran and the UnitedStates and Israel began on February 28. Iraq ships roughly 90 percent of itsoil through the strait, and oil sales fund about 90 percent of the statebudget; production and exports fell sharply after the closure. To route aroundthat chokepoint, Iraq's cabinet approved in 2024 the Basra–Haditha pipeline, aroughly 700-kilometer line with a target capacity of 2.25 to 2.5 millionbarrels per day, designed to carry southern crude northward for export viaCeyhan in Turkiye, Baniyas in Syria, and Aqaba in Jordan. In recent months, thecabinet approved heads-of-agreement and non-disclosure accords with aconsortium that includes the US firms Chevron and TI Capital and Qatar's UCC toconduct technical and financial feasibility studies; the project remains at thestudy stage, not a signed construction deal. A parallel effort to revive theolder Kirkuk–Baniyas line, brokered by Tom Barrack, Trump's envoy to Turkiye,Syria and Iraq, was expected to feature in the visit.
Energy analyststracking the regional response to the Hormuz closure describe Baghdad'spipeline push as part of a wider scramble by Gulf producers to reducedependence on a strait Iran can disrupt, a rationale that, in Iraq's case, runsalongside rather than against the US partnership, since the same infrastructuredeepens commercial ties to Washington.
: Iraq's al-Zaidi rebalances Iran ties before Washington visit
On the securitydemand, al-Zaidi did not push back. He told reporters that armed factions wouldhave no justification to remain after September 30 and that confining weaponsto the state was a decision rather than an option, adding that the governmenthad already received arms from some groups.
Whether he canact on that pledge is where analysts locate the difficulty. Renad Mansour,director of the Iraq Initiative at Chatham House, the London-based think tank,said he expects Washington to press al-Zaidi on disarmament and that al-Zaidiwill respond that he needs intelligence, technical and armed support to attemptit. Mansour pointed to the risk the attempt itself could carry: "There isa scenario in which, if the Iraqi government starts going after these groups,they will also go after the government," he told ABC News.
VictoriaTaylor, director of the Iraq Initiative at the Atlantic Council in Washington,noted that al-Zaidi's standing as a political outsider coexists with hisdependence on the establishment that selected him, a system that disarmamentand anti-corruption measures would, in part, require him to confront.
Inside Iraq,resistance surfaced even before he began the visit. The Islamic Resistance inIraq (IRI) outlined a series of conditions, warning against any agreements thatwould “compromise Iraq's sovereignty or political independence.” Issued underthe title "Statement No. 1," the document called on Al-Zaidi'sgovernment to adhere to “national principles” while reaffirming its oppositionto the continued US military presence and normalization with Israel.
Sadiqoon bloc,the political wing of Asaib Ahl al-Haq, a faction within the IRI umbrella thathas agreed to disarm, said past visits by Iraqi prime ministers to Washingtonproduced no concrete results for Iraq, urgingAli al-Zaidi to break that pattern.
Abdul Rahman al-Jazairi, a figure in theCoordination Framework, told Shafaq News that some factions object both tosurrendering weapons and to the wider opening toward Washington, and cautionedthat US pressure could strain the ties binding Baghdad to Tehran.
Ihsanal-Shammari, who heads the Political Thinking Center, said the prime ministeris pressed at once by the US's demand and the factions' patrons. “Washingtonwants quick action, while the political factions want the prime minister toprotect their interests. His challenge is to carry out his program withoutbreaking the coalition that brought him to power.”
Abbas al-Aqabi,a specialist in legal affairs and international agreements, argued that thetrip came at Trump's invitation, spanned energy, investment, agriculture andindustry, and that confining weapons to the state was written into thegovernment's program before any US pressure, “making disarmament a domesticpolicy that aligns with Washington's demand rather than a concession to it.”
Al-Zaidi hasordered an Iraqi committee to negotiate the post-withdrawal securityrelationship with Washington, his military spokesman Sabah al-Numan said. Whether that committee inherits a disarmament already underway or one thatremains a promise is unresolved. September 30 is the point: the day US forcesare due to leave, and the day al-Zaidi set for the factions to stand down.
: Iraq PM al-Zaidi to Washington with energy deals front, “militia file” unresolved
Written and Edited by Shafaq News Staff.