Baghdad’s national security adviser has already unbundled the 30 September disarmament deadline

Iraq’s top political leadership set 30 September as the date for Iran-aligned armed groups to disarm or face terrorism charges, including the death penalty, The National reported on 6 August — a date chosen to coincide with the agreed withdrawal of US troops, so as to strip the factions of their stated justification for holding weapons outside state control. That bundling is now coming apart. AFP reported on 24 August that a senior Iraqi official had pushed back the 30 September disarmament deadline without explanation and without offering a new date, a report picked up by FDD’s Long War Journal on 28 August. National Security Adviser Qasim al-Araji put it on the record to state broadcaster Al Iraqiya: “September 30 is the date for the international coalition to depart [Iraq], not the deadline to hand over weapons.” Zaidi, in mid-August, was still saying both — that refusers face terrorism charges and that all foreign forces leave by 1 October.

The compliance ledger is thin. Only three armed groups have announced integration into Iraq’s security forces, The National reported on 6 August, while the majority continue to resist; the hardline Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba have refused outright. The Popular Mobilisation Forces umbrella encompasses more than seventy factions; the Washington Institute put its strength at 238,000 fighters on a $3.6bn annual government budget, though that estimate is from August 2025 and comes from a publisher with a declared position on the organisation. On 14 August the Badr Organisation warned that forcing disarmament before 30 September could trigger civil war, and set three conditions: full US withdrawal, development of Iraq’s armed forces, and “removal of strategic threats.” The National reported that Iran’s Quds Force commander visited Baghdad that week seeking terms under which the factions keep their weapons without confronting the state.

What is moving legislatively is not disarmament. On 23 August PMF chairman Falih al-Fayyadh said the new law on PMF service, retirement and organisational structure would be submitted “within the next two weeks” — a clock that expires on 6 September. Bahaa al-Araji, who heads the bloc of former prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, told a press conference that his coalition has been preparing a rival draft. Zaidi, separately, has instructed officials to draft a bill giving the state exclusive control over weapons, The Arab Weekly reported, telling parliament’s security committee that uncontrolled arms were among the gravest threats to the rule of law. Michael Knights of the Washington Institute said the PMF law would lock in the status quo and make reform less likely, adding: “It is serious enough that the US threatened to tank the Iraqi economy last time the law was nearly passed.”

Assessment: Read the sequencing, not the rhetoric. A pensions-and-structure bill can pass without a weapons-control bill ever reaching a vote, and the faction that legislates first defines what “integration” means. The precedent is discouraging for Baghdad: the PMF law was withdrawn under US pressure in August 2025 and postponed again that September amid quorum failures inside the Coordination Framework itself. Two further cautions. Claims that Shia leaders have agreed to accelerate passage rest on a single anonymous Coordination Framework source via Shafaq — thin, and thinner still now that UNAMI no longer documents Iraqi politics. And the interior and defence ministries, which would have to execute any disarmament, have sat unfilled since 14 May. Badr’s second condition, meanwhile, was just handed evidence by the IRGC.