Zaidi tells the UN the state is ‘moving in the right direction' on weapons, not that it has arrived

Ali Faleh al-Zaidi, who arrived in New York on Monday 21 September, delivered Iraq’s address to the 81st General Assembly on Friday, his first at the podium since parliament endorsed him in May. “We are determined to ensure that the state alone holds the authority to decide on matters of war and peace, and that weapons and instruments of force remain exclusively in the hands of its constitutional institutions,” he said, in the text carried by 964media’s English service. On the practical steps, his tense was different: the measures to bring weapons and war-and-peace decisions under state control are “moving in the right direction,” he told the hall, in the version reported by AP and carried by Asharq Al-Awsat. He said the end of the coalition mission this month would shift Iraq’s relations with its partners “from military cooperation to economic partnership,” and pitched the Development Road project directly: “Here from the United Nations we say to the world: invest with Iraq,” per The National, which also reported his call for energy links with Turkey, Jordan and Syria.

The deadline has not moved. Zaidi first called 30 September “fixed and final” on 12 August, after meeting CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper, in remarks carried by Al Jazeera. Lt. Gen. Abdul Amir al-Shammari, who runs the Office of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, told the Iraqi News Agency the date marks the start of “a new chapter of relations and cooperation”; national security adviser Qasim al-Araji has confirmed the same month. The mechanics are visible. On Thursday 24 September, Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed Hussein Bahr al-Uloom and US Chargé d’Affaires Steven Fagin signed the transfer of the Diplomatic Support Centre on the west side of Baghdad airport — once part of the Victory Base complex, repurposed during the 2011 withdrawal, and, in AFP’s framing, repeatedly targeted by Iran-backed groups during the 2026 war. The announcement came from the Iraqi foreign ministry; no US embassy statement appeared in any version retrieved.

What is not visible is the residual footprint. A US official told AP the pullout would complete by 30 September but declined to say how many troops remain or where they redeploy. The last documented accounting is a Defense Department inspector general report to Congress, reported by Stars and Stripes, placing US forces at the end of March 2026 across five sites: Erbil Air Base, the Erbil Diplomatic Support Center, Harir Air Base, Camp Dahuk and the Baghdad Embassy Complex. Al-Asad in Anbar was handed to Lt. Gen. Abdul Amir Rashid Yarallah in January. The 2024 Baghdad–Washington agreement also covers removal of US air defence systems in Erbil. On 21 September, five days before Zaidi spoke, the KRG announced the folding of Units 70 and 80 into a single Peshmerga Ministry structure, with no forces to remain outside it, per Al Jazeera Arabic.

Assessment: Read the verb tenses, not the applause. Zaidi asserted the principle of a state monopoly on force in the present indicative and its implementation in the progressive — a distinction his domestic audience will parse faster than his New York one. The Congressional Research Service judged in its standing assessment that his ability to rein in Iran-aligned groups “may be limited and contingent,” and the CFR tracker put the militia-disarmament deadline in the same month as the withdrawal. Two things to watch rather than assume: whether Harir is actually empty on 30 September, and whether the defence and interior ministries — postponed at the May swearing-in, when parliament confirmed 14 of 23 ministers — are still vacant when the Americans go.