{"id":137696,"date":"2026-05-30T14:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T14:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/137696\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T14:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T14:56:08","slug":"iraqs-kataeb-hezbollah-vows-to-keep-arms-amid-us-pressure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/137696\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraq’s Kataeb Hezbollah vows to keep arms amid US pressure"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Groups like Kataeb Hezbollah carried out repeated drone and rocket attacks on US interests in Iraq following the outbreak of the US-Israel war on Iran [Getty]<\/p>\n

The influential Iraqi armed group Kataeb Hezbollah pledged on Saturday to keep up its “jihadist action”, as Baghdad faces mounting US pressure<\/a> to disarm factions backed by Iran.<\/p>\n

Following the outbreak of the US-Israeli war on Iran<\/a> at the end of February, groups operating under the banner of the “Islamic Resistance in Iraq” carried out repeated drone and rocket attacks on US interests in the country.<\/p>\n

Washington, in turn, bombed facilities and bases belonging to the groups, including Kataeb Hezbollah, killing dozens of their members.<\/p>\n

Since taking office in mid-May, Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi has pledged to restrict weapons to the hands of the state.<\/p>\n

But in a statement on Saturday, Kataeb Hezbollah security chief Abu Mujahid al-Assaf said “jihadist action is today a collective duty, and we will carry it out on behalf of the brothers who have decided to abandon it”.<\/p>\n

While some factions have shown willingness to operate under state institutions<\/a>, others, like Kataeb Hezbollah, refuse to discuss disarmament under US pressure.<\/p>\n

Assaf suggested that Kataeb Hezbollah was willing to work with those other groups, and was “also prepared to pay for” weapons they no longer needed.<\/p>\n

He said his group was ready “to cooperate and play a constructive role” by supervising the transfer and storage of weapons, and receiving specialised weapons such as cruise missiles, for which “there are no experts within state agencies”.<\/p>\n

Kataeb Hezbollah insists it will not discuss its weapons so long as foreign forces remain deployed in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region as part of a US-led international coalition formed in 2014 to fight the Islamic State group.<\/p>\n

The coalition is scheduled to end its mission in the Kurdistan region by September.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, a senior US State Department official had demanded Iraq take “concrete actions” on pro-Iran armed groups, preconditioning renewed support on “expelling terrorist militias from any state institution” and cutting off payments to them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Groups like Kataeb Hezbollah carried out repeated drone and rocket attacks on US interests in Iraq following the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[14],"tags":[19147,94,2836,51,73],"class_list":["post-137696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iraq","tag-iran-backed-militias","tag-iraq","tag-kataeb-hezbollah","tag-united-states","tag-us-israel-war-on-iran"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116664112426787356","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}