Iraq\u2019s new prime minister has met with significant resistance as he attempts to bring the Iran-backed militias in his country under state control, after intense pressure from the Trump administration to rein in the armed groups.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi came to power in late April, shortly after the United States suspended shipments of dollars to Iraq that it had earned from its own oil sales and halted funding<\/a> for the country\u2019s security services. The measures reinforced U.S. demands for a crackdown on militias that operate outside of government control and for Iraq\u2019s government to distance itself from Iran.<\/p>\n Iraq has been caught in a tug of war for years between its two main allies \u2014 the United States and Iran. At times, the two foreign powers have turned the country into a proxy battlefield.<\/p>\n And this is not the first time Iraq has tried to bring the militias under tighter government control, but previous attempts have failed.<\/p>\n Mr. al-Zaidi, a political newcomer<\/a>, ordered all armed groups last month to come under direct state authority. Some of the most powerful Iran-linked militias rejected the demand.<\/p>\n Chief among them is Kataib Hezbollah<\/a>, a group that has attacked U.S. targets in Iraq in recent months and has claimed responsibility for high-profile kidnappings,<\/a> including that of a U.S. journalist<\/a> in Baghdad this year.<\/p>\n The prime minister\u2019s directive did not call for disbanding the militias completely, as the U.S. administration has insisted. And analysts said they doubted the move would appease Washington, with one comparing it to little more than shifting a gun from one hand to another.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is more of a veneer of going after the militias,\u201d said Renad Mansour, an Iraq analyst at Chatham House, a research institute based in London. \u201cBecause the devil is in the details, and once you get to the details, it is still far from an ideal state where there is a clear and clean chain of command.\u201d<\/p>\n Iraq\u2019s Shiite Muslim majority came to power after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq toppled the dictator Saddam Hussein and ended government control by the country\u2019s Sunni Muslim minority. Successive Shiite-dominated governments over the years have forged closer ties with Shiite-majority Iran.<\/p>\n A number of mostly Shiite militias banded together in 2014 under an umbrella group known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, or P.M.F. It was intended to counter the Sunni extremist group Islamic State, which had seized large parts of Iraq.<\/p>\n Some of the militias within the P.M.F. received military and financial backing from Iran.<\/p>\n In recent years, the P.M.F.<\/a> agreed to come under the authority of the national security forces. But it has never been fully integrated, and some of its militias, including Kataib Hezbollah, continue to operate with a large degree of independence.<\/p>\n Some prominent militias have agreed to heed the prime minister\u2019s order.<\/p>\n The powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who leads a large political bloc in Parliament, said he would fully integrate his Peace Brigades militia under the authority of the Iraqi military \u201cout of concern for the public interest and in order to avoid the dangers threatening the country.\u201d<\/p>\n The groups who rejected the order are demanding that the United States stop interfering in Iraq both militarily and politically.<\/p>\n The Guardians of the Blood Brigade, a militia which has previously claimed responsibility for attacks against U.S. targets in Iraq, said any move to exert tighter control over militias \u201cmust be accompanied by real steps that guarantee Iraq\u2019s sovereignty and independence of decision-making.\u201d<\/p>\n The prime minister\u2019s efforts come at an especially sensitive time for Iraq, which for the past few years has seen economic growth owing to the relative stability of the country. It has remained mostly insulated from the wider conflicts gripping the Middle East over the past few years, which grew out of the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the war in Gaza that followed.<\/p>\n Even as other Iran-backed groups across the Middle East carried out attacks on Israel, Iraq\u2019s armed militias remained mostly on the sidelines. But that changed with the launch of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran in late February.<\/p>\n This time, Mr. Mansour said, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which oversees that country\u2019s regional proxies, moved swiftly to draw the Iran-linked Iraqi militias into the war as part of its strategy to launch counterattacks against the United States and Israel across the region.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Iraqi government suddenly lost its ability to stay out of the war,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Since late February, the militias have claimed responsibility for several attacks on U.S. interests in Iraq, including the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The strikes came in response to an airstrike that hit the headquarters of one of the militias in the first days of the war and killed three people.<\/p>\n The militias blamed the strike on the United States and Israel.<\/p>\n At the same time, Iraq was going through a precarious political transition while forming a new government, a process that the Trump administration sought to influence.<\/p>\n