Editor’s Note: Omar Al-Nidawi is the director of programs at the Enabling Peace in Iraq Center and a nonresident senior fellow with the Iraq Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs.

By Barbara Slavin, Distinguished Fellow, Middle East Perspectives Project

Curbing the power of Iran-backed Iraqi armed factions — through disarmament, demobilization, or their removal from state institutions — has long been a cornerstone of the Trump administration’s Iraq policy and has gained additional urgency since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran.

The focus itself is welcome. Few issues pose a greater challenge to Iraqi sovereignty, regional stability, and U.S. interests than adversarial armed groups that operate outside the state while drawing billions of dollars from the federal budget. Since the U.S. overthrew the regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and empowered Iraq’s Shi’ite Muslim majority through elections, Iran-backed factions have accumulated military, political, and economic power that often rivals or exceeds that of formal institutions.

The latest war with Iran underscores the scale of the problem. From the outset, Iraqi militias joined the conflict and became targets of U.S. strikes, turning Iraq into a secondary battlefield and the only country where all sides — the United States, Israel, and Iran and its proxies — conducted military operations. Some Iraqi factions also launched attacks against military and civilian targets in Gulf states and continued doing so even after a nominal ceasefire.

Yet while Washington’s overarching goal is fairly clear, its desired end state and the mechanisms to reach it remain far less so. The administration has paired its demands with measures intended to isolate militia leaders and their financial networks, including sanctions and rewards for information on senior commanders. But beyond calls for disarmament, expulsion from state institutions, and curbing militia influence, there has been little public discussion of what success would actually look like in Iraq’s complex political environment.

The ambiguity matters. The militias are not simply armed groups operating outside the system; many are deeply embedded within it. After last year’s parliamentary elections, the militias’ political wings hold a quarter of the seats in parliament, control ministries, influence the judiciary, and command significant economic resources. It took Iraqis six months to reach consensus on an untested new prime minister, businessman Ali al-Zaidi, who serves at the pleasure of these powerful militia-aligned groups. Removing them from state institutions is therefore not a straightforward law-enforcement exercise but would require a fundamental restructuring of Iraq’s post-2003 political order.

Even as U.S. Iraq envoy Tom Barrack welcomed the selection of al-Zaidi and his government’s promises “to return all weapons to the Iraqi state,” there is no consensus inside Iraq on what bringing all weapons under state control should mean.

One vision is represented by Qais al-Khazali, the U.S. sanctioned leader of the militia Asaib Ahl al-Haq, and others who have transformed militia power into political influence. Their argument is that armed resistance served its purpose during the years of U.S. occupation, which Khazali now considers over, but that political engagement is now the more effective means of advancing their interests. Having become central players in government, these actors have little reason to fear state authority because they largely shape it. Under this approach, militias could relinquish certain capabilities, operate under formal state structures, and moderate their behavior while preserving political and economic gains accumulated over two decades.

This vision seeks to normalize the evolution of militias into conventional political actors, notwithstanding the violent and often illegal means through which many acquired power. It is broadly compatible with recent proposals by the populist Muqtada al-Sadr and has received a quick welcome from the new prime minister. It is also gaining acceptance among some non-Shi’ite political elites who increasingly view militia integration as preferable to continued confrontation, because “Qais al-Khazali today is not the Qais al-Khazali of four years ago,” in the words of Qubad al-Talabani, the deputy prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government.

Indeed, on June 2, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and another militia, the Imam Ali Brigades, said they would begin handing in their weapons to Iraqi forces. However, there were scant details about what weapons would be relinquished or when.

An opposing vision is championed by hardline factions such as Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba, Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, and Ansar Allah al-Awfiya. For these groups, the rationale for armed resistance remains intact because they reject the premise that the struggle against U.S. “occupation” has ended even as the U.S. has transitioned from a combat role and withdrawn troops to the Kurdistan region. These militia leaders have openly ridiculed factions willing to compromise, offering to buy their heavy weapons and to care for the families of their fallen fighters — a jab designed to shame and emasculate Khazali and his allies.

Between these competing visions lies the practical question of what disarmament would actually mean.

One possibility is that factions surrender heavy weapons such as missiles and drones while retaining their manpower, organizational structures, and access to state funding through the Popular Mobilization Forces, which arose to combat the Islamic State group a decade ago and are formally part of the Iraqi Armed Forces despite the allegiance of many groups to Iran. Such an arrangement might reduce the risk of regional escalation but would do little to address militia influence inside Iraq. It remains unacceptable to the most hardline factions and is unlikely to satisfy Washington, which wants designated foreign terrorist organizations expelled and defunded.

At the other extreme would be the complete disarmament and dissolution of the PMF. This is politically inconceivable for the foreseeable future. Expecting Iraq’s dominant Shi’ite political forces to dismantle one of their principal power centers voluntarily is unrealistic.

Between those poles lies a more selective approach that targets only the most active “Resistance” factions while preserving PMF units that have generally played more constructive roles, including shrine-affiliated formations and minority units. Yet this option may simultaneously be too ambitious and too limited: too ambitious because it risks destabilizing Shi’ite politics and provoking violent resistance; too limited because it would leave other powerful armed actors intact.

All options confront the same fundamental challenge: enforcement.

Kataib Hezbollah once attempted to assassinate a prime minister over far less consequential disputes. Any meaningful disarmament effort raises difficult questions about who would enforce it, with what forces, and at what risk of intra-Shi’ite violence. The problem is further complicated by front organizations, overlapping chains of command, and deliberately ambiguous political language. When factions speak of integration into the state, they are often describing very different arrangements that could reduce or enhance their influence. For instance, while the Coordination Framework, the dominant alliance of Shi’ite parties, is talking about detaching the PMF from political wings, Khazali’s Asaib Ahl al-Haq is talking about detaching itself from the PMF and placing itself directly under the commander in chief, a repositioning that could give it even more power and protection.

Moreover, removing heavy weapons from the equation would not eliminate the broader challenge. Militias do not need missiles to intimidate opponents, attack diplomatic missions, kidnap critics, launder money, or dominate local economies. Disarmament may reduce regional threats while leaving intact many of the mechanisms through which these groups exercise power inside Iraq.

Complicating matters further is Iran’s strategic calculus. As negotiations with Washington stall and the broader confrontation with Iran drags on, Tehran has little incentive to surrender assets whose value has increased following the fall of the Assad regime in Syria and setbacks suffered by Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iraqi militias remain among the most important components of Iran’s regional deterrence and power-projection network.

Meaningful progress in restoring Iraqi sovereignty will require more than pressure, sanctions, or rhetorical demands. It requires a clearly defined end state, realistic objectives, and an enforcement strategy that accounts for Iraq’s political realities. Without clarity on what disarmament means, who it applies to, and how it would be implemented, the debate over Iraq’s militias risks following the trajectory of the broader US-Iran confrontation: prolonged, frustrating, and largely inconclusive.