Al-Zaidi’s security adviser says the militia file opens only once the Americans are gone

“On 30 September, coalition forces will withdraw completely from Iraq, and this is the implementation of the agreement between the previous government and the international coalition,” al-Araji, national security adviser to Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, said in Baghdad, in remarks reported by The New Arab. On weapons, his sequencing was explicit: “The issue of regulating weapons will be discussed after the coalition forces withdraw. A comprehensive mechanism will be agreed to place all weapons under state control.” He described talks with armed factions as going “very well,” with “a positive understanding,” and named the vehicle: “The committee of the Coordination Framework, under the direct supervision of the prime minister, is continuing its work to resolve this issue.” Several Iran-aligned factions have resisted state control of their weapons, with some conditioning it on the departure of foreign forces. The date itself is separately confirmed on the record by Lt Gen Abdul Amir al-Shammari, director of the Office of the Commander-in-Chief, in a statement to the state Iraqi News Agency.

Against that, an item carried by Sunday Guardian Live in India, dated around 10 September, asserts the reverse: that al-Zaidi has issued “a firm September 30 deadline” for all non-state armed groups to disarm, dissolve or integrate into the state security apparatus, ahead of an 1 October “new chapter” free of foreign forces. That claim is single-sourced to an aggregator repackaging a war live-blog; no primary Iraqi statement supporting it surfaced, and the prime minister’s own national security adviser said the opposite days earlier. A parallel deadline has already lapsed quietly. On 20 August, Popular Mobilisation Forces chairman Falah al-Fayyadh told INA that the PMF law covering “service, retirement, and organisational structure will be submitted within the next two weeks.” That window closed around 3 September.

Assessment: The structural fact is in al-Araji’s own sentence. The body negotiating the disarmament of Iran-aligned factions is a committee of the Coordination Framework — the bloc that holds 185 of parliament’s 329 seats and whose leadership includes the parties those factions answer to. “Talks are going very well” describes an internal accommodation, not a transfer of arms to the state. Distrust the disarmament-deadline story circulating this week; it is aggregation, and it flatters a government that has not claimed it. The question worth putting to al-Zaidi’s office is narrower and answerable: has the PMF law been tabled? If it has not, someone chose not to table it in the three weeks before the coalition leaves.