On October 4, Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi condemned the trampling of American flags during Sovereignty Day celebrations, and his government announced arrests. Less than twenty-four hours later, an account carrying statements by Akram al-Kaabi, the leader of Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, published a video showing Kaabi walking over US and Israeli flags. The footage was undated. Its release after the government’s warning, however, was a public challenge to the prime minister’s authority.
Days earlier, forces under a US-led coalition had completed their departure from Iraq, ending Operation Inherent Resolve in the country. The troops who left were not occupation forces: Baghdad had invited the coalition to help defeat Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in 2014 and negotiated its departure. Ending that presence was an exercise of Iraqi sovereignty, but it did not establish Baghdad’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force.
The government secured the withdrawal of foreign partners before securing obedience from armed factions within its own institutions. That sequence leaves Baghdad with less leverage against Iran’s allies inside of Iraq. The Iraqi government removed a military counterweight while preserving the political and economic networks that allow Iran to influence Iraqi decisions. Iraq’s sovereignty now faces a different test: whether Baghdad can control those networks without that backing.
Power through the state
Iran’s influence rests partly on an arrangement that puts Iraqi resources behind forces Baghdad cannot reliably command. Kataib Hezbollah and Asaib Ahl al-Haq maintain formations within the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) while retaining ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force. Their fighters draw public salaries. Their leaders operate through overlapping military, political, and commercial networks. Formal inclusion in the security apparatus has given them state legitimacy, resources, and protection without requiring their submission to the commander in chief. These hybrid actors can invoke official status when seeking funds and factional autonomy when resisting orders.
Their political reach makes coercion more durable. Asaib Ahl al-Haq’s Sadiqoun movement holds seats in parliament. The Badr Organization has built influence within the Interior Ministry. Party networks shape senior appointments, contracts, and local security, while armed control of checkpoints and border routes generates revenue. In 2025, the US Treasury accused the Muhandis General Company, a conglomerate controlled by Kataib Hezbollah, of subcontracting Iraqi government contracts to gain illicit funds and helping supply the Quds Force with weapons. It also identified a Kataib Hezbollah intelligence network serving Iran. Those allegations show how access to state institutions can sustain a separate chain of command and operations in a gray area.
The PMF is not a single Iranian instrument. Its factions have different patrons, constituencies, and interests, and many of its fighters helped defeat ISIS. Nor does every decision by an Iran-aligned group originate in Tehran. Iran benefits from partners that can block unwanted policies without controlling the entire government. These groups’ domestic roots make them harder to dislodge than a foreign garrison. A prime minister challenging their privileges must confront actors whose votes, jobs, and armed followers help sustain the governing coalition.
A holiday without a settlement
Baghdad designated October 1 as Sovereignty Day and declared a public holiday around the coalition’s departure. The celebrations offered a politically useful measure of success: Foreign troops had left. Yet at the same time, Baghdad deferred a much harder measure of success. It moved the deadline for bringing weapons under state control from September 2026 to June 2027. Kataib Hezbollah denied reaching a disarmament understanding with Zaidi, and Quds Force Commander Esmail Qaani welcomed the withdrawal as an opening for the resistance’s continued role. The same event that Baghdad presented as restored authority was being recast by factions determined to preserve their own.
Days before the withdrawal, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba threatened airport sit-ins after Baghdad placed restrictions on Iranian flights at Iraqi airports, in line with recent US sanctions. Meanwhile, Kataib Hezbollah urged Iraqis to break “the US siege on Iran” by purchasing more Iranian goods. Such demands show how the various militias can harness their resistance rhetoric to put direct political pressure on Baghdad over its trade and transport policies. The Iraqi government eventually negotiated a sanctions exemption for flights bound for Najaf, Iraq’s holiest city and a major pilgrimage site for Shias worldwide. Granting this waiver was an astute move by the Trump administration, as it undercut the narrative that Washington is uniformly anti-Shia.
Withdrawal does remove an argument for the militias’ need to retain weapons. It gives Baghdad grounds to demand that factions honor their claims to defend national sovereignty. But some factions have added to their conditions, expanding them to include ending US influence over Iraqi financial decisions. Kaabi’s video walking on the US flag exposed that the militias’ resistance to the United States can outlast the presence of US soldiers. The video’s significance was in the commander’s public defiance of the government, not in whether Iraqis showed respect for a foreign flag. Baghdad’s authority depends on enforcing its laws consistently, including against those protected by armed organizations.
The cost of losing a counterweight
Successive prime ministers tried to preserve room between Washington and Tehran. Haider al-Abadi retained US military training, and Mustafa al-Kadhimi pursued ties with Iran while attempting to curb militias. Coalition intelligence, logistics, and military support gave Iraqi security institutions resources outside factional control. Politically, the relationship supplied an option that prime ministers could preserve or deepen when bargaining with Iran and its allies. Its value lay less in any US promise to protect individual politicians than in sustaining an alternative to security ties shaped by Iran’s allies.
US power, however, also helped create the problem. The 2003 invasion opened space for Iran and the armed networks that grew within Iraq’s new political order. Militias continued to expand during the coalition mission. In 2020, Kadhimi’s forces raided militias, but most detainees were soon released. Washington’s confrontation with Tehran also exposed Iraq to retaliation and gave factions a rallying cause. Yet removing a flawed counterweight does not resolve the imbalance it helped contain. Officials facing threats, dismissal, or obstruction now have fewer sources of support. Bilateral defense ties and American financial influence appear to have survived the withdrawal, but neither automatically replaces the access, reassurance, and daily cooperation that a deployed force provided.
The US withdrawal risks changing the balance of power. The consequences reach beyond security. For example, Iraq’s dependence on Iranian gas gives Tehran influence over Iraq’s electricity supply. In response to the changing balance of power, Baghdad should widen its options; it can do so, for example, by doubling down on the electricity links that it has been making with Gulf states for years. Such projects require protection from political interference as well as financing, which can also come from Iraq’s Gulf partners. However, Gulf nations need confidence that agreements with Baghdad will survive pressure from the armed factions. Iran’s war with the United States and Israel makes Iraq’s ability to restrain armed actors even more consequential: Groups pursuing their own regional agendas can expose the country to conflicts the government seeks to avoid.
Authority after the withdrawal
A sovereign Iraq needs forces under one command and institutions that can enforce such an arrangement. Heavy weapons must enter state arsenals, with independent inspections to confirm that factions have surrendered their rockets and drones. Baghdad should tie public salaries to verified personnel lists and obedience to lawful orders, while auditing militia-linked contracts and restoring control over border revenues. Those steps require protection for the officials carrying them out. Announcing disarmament without changing the incentives and safeguards around it only leads to another missed deadline because security reforms need a political base among groups that value state salaries and stable commerce more than permanent confrontation. Integrating fighters while preserving their commanders’ private chains of loyalty would merely transfer the problem into new uniforms.
Foreign partners can support that effort through sustained training, intelligence cooperation, and investment that reduces dependence on Iranian energy. Broad economic punishment would leave Iraqis poorer without necessarily weakening armed networks. Support should strengthen institutions answerable to Baghdad and deny resources to commanders operating outside their authority.
Iraq retains the right to choose its security partners. But it is fiction that the departure of US forces alone delivers independence. Sovereignty will become substantive when the government can enforce its decisions against armed actors who currently claim the privileges of the state while refusing its discipline.
Yerevan Saeed is a nonresident senior fellow with the Iraq Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs. Saeed is the Barzani scholar-in-residence in the Department of Politics, Governance & Economics at American University’s School of International Service, where he also serves as director of the Global Kurdish Initiative for Peace.
Image: Members of Iraq's Iran-allied Popular Mobilization Forces stand in Baghdad's Tahrir Square, during a procession marking the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. Photo by DPA/Picture Alliance via Reuters.