Iran's Quds Force Commander Met Iraqi Officials in Baghdad on Aug. 10 as Sept. 30 Militia-Disarmament Deadline Approaches

A Green Zone Meeting Nobody Will Confirm

On August 10, Iran's top regional military commander flew into Baghdad. Brigadier General Esmail Qaani runs the Quds Force, the branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guard that manages relationships with armed allies outside Iran's borders. Iraqi sources told Al Jazeera and other regional outlets that he met Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi inside the Green Zone, then sat down separately with Shia political and faction leaders, including Badr Organisation chief Hadi al-Ameri^[1][2][9].

No government released a transcript. Iran published nothing about the trip. One account said Qaani was pushing for "a kind of settlement that could keep the weapons" while steering the factions away from a fight with Baghdad^[3]. That detail, like most of what happened in those rooms, rests on anonymous sourcing relayed by outlets that each have a stake in how the story reads.

The visit landed at an oddly specific moment. Iraq's government has set September 30 as the deadline for every armed group outside the state's chain of command to hand over its weapons^[4][18]. That is the exact same day the U.S.-led coalition's military mission in Iraq is due to end, under a two-phase agreement Washington and Baghdad struck back in 2024^[12][17]. One date, two very different meanings, depending on who is talking about it.

The Date That Isn't Really About the Date

Government spokesman Haider al-Aboudi put it plainly: September 30 is "the ultimate date for the surrender of weapons^[18]." Prime Minister al-Zaidi has gone further, warning that groups which refuse could face terrorism charges^[5]. Standing alongside CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper, he also called September 30 the "fixed and final date" for ending the coalition's military mission^[12].

Those two deadlines sharing a calendar day is not a coincidence. Baghdad tied them together on purpose. The armed factions have long argued they exist because foreign troops are on Iraqi soil. If the coalition mission ends on schedule, the government's logic goes, that argument runs out at the same moment^[17].

But there's a catch, and it's the fact both the factions and Baghdad's critics keep pointing to: ending the coalition mission is not the same as every American soldier going home. Reporting describes a residual U.S. presence continuing under separate bilateral arrangements, with most remaining troops concentrated in Erbil and roughly 250 to 350 personnel staying at Ain al-Asad Air Base^[10][11]. So the test Baghdad set for the militias is being measured against a withdrawal that, by most accounts, isn't complete.

Same Weapons, Different Word for Them

Not every faction is refusing. Groups including Asaib Ahl al-Haq, Saraya al-Salam and Kataib al-Imam Ali have said they accept placing their weapons under state control^[8]. The harder line comes from Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, which have not agreed to disarm^[8].

On August 18, Kataib Hezbollah spelled out its terms: a full withdrawal of U.S. forces, written guarantees that they will not come back, and Iraqi political and economic decisions made free of American influence^[7]. Four days earlier, the Badr Organisation's political office chief set out three conditions of his own — U.S. withdrawal, removal of what he called strategic threats, and real investment in Iraq's own armed forces — and warned that forcing disarmament would trigger what he called internal strife, or civil war^[6].

Much of this argument runs through a body called the Popular Mobilization Forces, or PMF. A 2016 law folded these factions into that structure, which nominally answers to the prime minister as commander-in-chief^[18]. In practice, member factions have kept their own separate chains of command. That gap is the whole argument: Iran and the factions point to the PMF's legal status to say these are recognized state forces, not outside armies. Baghdad and Washington point to the separate chains of command to say the law never actually put them under state control.

The government's own reported fallback plan doesn't look like an assault. Officials have reportedly discussed encircling militia strongholds — including Jurf al-Sakhr, a stretch of Babil Province that has sat outside federal control for more than a decade — with army and Counter-Terrorism Service units, cutting off movement and supply lines rather than storming the buildings^[2][8]. That is itself a tell: fighting inside Shia-majority areas would carry a heavy cost, and Baghdad appears to know it.

Why Iran Can't Just Watch This Happen

Set aside the legal argument for a moment and there's a blunter fact underneath it. Iraq is the largest, most heavily armed, most contiguous part of Iran's regional network of allied groups^[2][3]. After setbacks to allied factions elsewhere in the region, it may be the most important piece Tehran has left. Losing it wouldn't just cost Iran an ally — it would remove a buffer and a land route westward that Tehran has spent two decades building.

That is the steelman for why Qaani flew to Baghdad in person rather than working the phones. Iranian state media never calls these groups militias — it calls them "resistance factions," a label that implies purpose rather than lawlessness^[7]. Iran's argument, stated on its own terms, is that a country in its own neighborhood, which has been struck from Iraqi airspace before, has a legitimate interest in whether Iraq's Shia armed groups survive at a moment of open regional conflict.

Washington's incentive is more immediate. A residual American force still sits in Iraq after September 30, and it remains within range of the same drones and missiles these factions are being asked to give up^[10][11]. The United States designates Kataib Hezbollah, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Harakat al-Nujaba as terrorist groups, and it points to a record of attacks on U.S. personnel, including strikes attributed to Jurf al-Sakhr-based units earlier this year^[2]. For Washington, ending the coalition mission on schedule was the deal it made. What it wants in return is an Iraqi government that can actually protect its own territory and the people on it.

Reading the Same Trip Four Different Ways

How this story gets told depends heavily on where it's being told from. Al Jazeera's headline called Qaani's trip a visit "to discuss disarmament plan," a notably soft verb for what other outlets describe as an intervention aimed at preserving the weapons^[1]. Press TV, Iran's state broadcaster, never used the word militia at all, and framed the whole deadline as arriving "amid US pressure" — language that shifts the decision from Baghdad to Washington^[7][18].

Hawkish U.S. and Israeli-aligned outlets went the other way. The Jerusalem Post's headline said Iraq's prime minister "seeks to disarm Iran-backed militias, but Tehran wants to meddle" — a verdict delivered in the headline itself, with little room left for the view that many Iraqi Shia see these factions as domestic political actors, not foreign proxies^[14]. FDD's Long War Journal offered detailed, well-sourced reporting on the meetings themselves, but gave little weight to the factions' own stated reason for waiting: that the U.S. exit isn't actually complete^[9]. Gulf outlets like Al Arabiya and The National ran the most evenhanded sourcing, printing threats from both the government and the factions, though their recurring label for the groups — "pro-Iran" or "Iran-aligned" — does some framing of its own, since the same groups also hold seats in Iraq's parliament^[4][5][6].

What Doesn't Move, Whatever Gets Announced

Whatever each side says publicly, some things on the ground won't change on October 1 just because a deadline passed. Jurf al-Sakhr will still be outside federal control, with its weapons stockpiles still there^[2]. The split among Shia factions is real, not invented by outside pressure — some groups have already accepted state control on paper, others have not^[8]. A U.S. force numbering in the low hundreds will still sit in Erbil and at Ain al-Asad, well within reach of the weapons this whole fight is about^[10][11].

And Iraq isn't operating in isolation. In early August, Iraqi forces went on high alert after a faction deadline for retaliation over U.S.-Saudi strikes expired, a reminder that this dispute is unfolding inside a wider regional conflict, not apart from it^[20]. What happens after September 30 will depend on choices no outlet has reported yet — whether the holdout factions bend, whether Baghdad tries to enforce the deadline by force, and whether the residual U.S. presence becomes the excuse both sides reach for either way.