Iraq plans to collect millions of weapons

Iraq’s government says it intends to bring an estimated six million weapons held outside official institutions under state control, even as Iran-backed factions resist surrendering what they call “resistance weapons,” according to Euronews. The Interior Ministry has recast a previously announced 30 September deadline as the start of a regulatory process rather than an end date, with Deputy Interior Minister Hussein al-Awadi describing it as the beginning of “regulation” during a visit to Salah al-Din province.

The plan sits on top of a security architecture that Iraq has spent a decade formalising without fully consolidating. The Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) were created in 2014 after Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called for volunteers to fight Islamic State; some PMF factions were later incorporated into the state security structure, while others retained independent command and continued to receive weapons, funding and direction from Iran’s IRGC, Euronews reports. Those parallel chains of authority are now the core practical problem: the government is asking armed groups to disarm into institutions that already contain some of their rivals.

Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi has said the campaign will proceed through negotiation rather than force, and that he will not accept “a state within the state.” That choice reduces the risk of immediate intra-Shia violence, but it also turns disarmament into a bargaining process where compliance is traded for status, budgets, or legal cover. Euronews reports that Saraya al-Salam, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Kataib Imam Ali have reached an understanding with the government to surrender weapons or regularise their position, while hardline Tehran-aligned groups such as Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba have refused.

External pressure is shaping the timetable. Washington has demanded a clear schedule and linked Iraq’s compliance to access to critical dollar flows for the economy, Euronews reports, turning weapons policy into a financial-risk question for Baghdad. Al-Zaidi has argued that a US troop withdrawal would remove the justification for armed “resistance” in Iraq; for militias that have built legitimacy and income around that justification, the definition of “need” is not set in a cabinet meeting.

Baghdad is calling 30 September the beginning. The groups keeping their arsenals are calling them non-negotiable.