A funeral ceremony held in Baghdad for Abu Haidar al-Hafaji, a commander of the Iraqi Shia faction Kata’ib Hezbollah, who was killed in an Israeli attack in Damascus, on September 22, 2024. (Photo by Murtadha Al-Sudani/Anadolu via Getty]
Iraq is bracing itself for possible US sanctions if the government does not disarm Iran-linked Iraqi armed factions and break its ties with Tehran.
There are growing calls in Washington for financial and economic sanctions against Baghdad to pressure the country to disarm and dismantle militias with strong links to Iran.
One particular focus of the US administration is on Iran-supplied drones and medium-range missiles which some of the Iran-backed factions possess, and have been used to attack Israeli targets, and US military bases in Iraq and Syria.
An Iraqi foreign ministry official, who requested anonymity, told The New Arab’s Arabic-language sister edition that Iraq was headed for a “coming political confrontation” with the US administration under President Donald Trump.
He said senior US officials had proposed a plan to “disengage Iraq from Iran”, adding that in the last fortnight Washington had sent direct messages to the Iraqi government about the necessity of dismantling and disarming the armed factions, especially the seven involved in attacks against Israel and US military sites after 7 October 2023.
The seven groups are those which form the “Islamic Resistance in Iraq” – an umbrella term for Iran-backed militias in Iraq that have launched dozens of attacks on US military bases in Iraq and Syria as well as Israeli targets, in response to Israel’s unprecedented bombardment of the Gaza Strip and massacring of civilians.
Factions involved include Kata’ib Hezbollah, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, Harakat Ansar Allah al-Awfiya, Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada, Kata’ib al-Imam Ali, and Liwa al-Tafuf.
However, the official indicated that Washington’s aim wasn’t just disarming the factions, but preventing prohibited weapons from being obtained by any Iraqi faction, even those in the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) which is formally under the Iraqi defence ministry.
These weapons include fixed-wing drones with a range of over 200km, and missiles with a range of over 80km, both of which Iran supplies to Iraq.
However, Iraq’s government will face a major challenge in addressing this issue, said the official, due to the factions’ refusal to comply (alongside other influential Shia parties).
Mahdi Taqi, leader of the “Coordination Framework” – Iraq’s ruling Shia coalition Alliance, said the US “seeks to enforce security and economic decisions which violate Iraqi sovereignty”.
“The way the resistance factions think isn’t like the way political parties think; these factions see Iraq as a country occupied by US forces, and act accordingly, and at times carry out certain security operations in a way which doesn’t align with the Iraqi [political] perspective,” he added.
He believes if Israel “resumes its attacks on the Lebanese or on the people of Gaza, this will push the resistance to renew its operations”.
An Iraqi MP, who also requested anonymity, stated that economic sanctions were anticipated rather than military action. He added that Iraq had already seen sanctions on Iraqi banks and companies accused of dealing with Iranian institutions, and the cancellation of the waiver previously granted to Iraq to import gas from Iran.
US penalties could reach imposing restrictions around the purchase of Iraqi oil, added the MP, who stressed that while disarming the factions is the overriding goal, Washington also wanted to reform Iraq’s financial system in a way that would exclude Tehran.
However, the MP said the Iraqi government “on its own is incapable of containing the factions or forcing them to give up their weapons and merge into official state institutions”.
“The issue concerned political agreements between the Shia parties and required an Iranian response, above all, for concessions to be made,” he added.
Over the past four years, US federal authorities have placed 28 Iraqi banks out of 44, and financial companies on the sanctions list, accusing them of dealing with Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the former Assad regime in Syria.
Additionally, Iraqi individuals and businessmen have been sanctioned for the same reason, along with an airline company and several transportation and tourism firms.
In mid-January Iraq’s Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein said Baghdad was trying to convince the armed factions which had targeted US forces and Israel to lay down their weapons or join the official security forces.
Commenting on the growing US pressure, Alaa Mustafa, a researcher in Iraqi politics, described Iraqi politics as “confused”.
He said despite all the “dangerous external indicators, politicians in Baghdad aren’t talking clearly about this”.
He warned that the situation “was increasingly dangerous with a bloc of around 13 US Congress members now talking about imposing sanctions on Iraq, [forms of] new economic pressure, and breaking [Iraq’s] link to Iran”.
Mustafa concluded that while “the Trump Administration hasn’t taken any serious action regarding Iraq until now, all indications are that the current months will see measures of this kind”.
This article is base don an article by Zaid Salem and Mohammed Ali which appeared in our Arabic edition on 21 February 2025. To read the original article click here.
