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The State Department on Monday issued a forceful statement aimed at Iraq’s government that condemned the continued existance of militant groups within Iraq that refuse cooperation with the government, including groups backed by Iran.
Militant groups within the country including most predominantly the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) continue to represent a major headache for the US government. The PMF holds major political influence within Iraq’s parliament and broader government, to say nothing of the estimated tens of thousands of forces it commands in various brigades around the country.
US frustrations with the inability of Iraq’s government to bring the PMF under full control date back years. A report from the State Department in 2022 warned that several PMF-aligned groups “continued to defy central government command and control and instigated violent and destabilizing activities in Iraq and neighboring Syria”. Some elements allied with the militant organization, such as the Kataib Hezbollah, trace their origins back to militant groups that fought US forces during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and still battle US forces today.
On Monday, State Department press secretary Tammy Bruce told reporters that it was unacceptable for any militant groups not under full control of the Iraqi government to be operating within Iraq’s borders.
“To strengthen Iraq’s sovereignty, the government of Iraq must ensure it has command and control of all security forces within its borders, to include the PMF,” Bruce said. “These forces must respond to Iraq’s commander-in-chief, and not to Iran.”
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“We are also concerned that these Iran-aligned groups within the PMF, including designated foreign terrorist organizations, engage in violent and destabilizing activities in Iraq,” Bruce continued. “We continue to urge the Iraqi government to rein in these groups and hold them accountable for breaking Iraqi law. The president has no higher priority than the safety of US personnel, and he has made it clear that the United States will defend itself, its personnel and its interests.”
Her remarks came just days after the Trump administration announced that it was sanctioning a Chinese oil company for “buying and storing Iranian crude oil from a sanctioned vessel.”
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It was an overt threat of further action against PMF-aligned groups from a Trump administration official, and one that came a year after the Biden administration authorized an airstrike in Iraq that killed a senior Kataib Hezbollah commander — and provoked a visit by Iraq’s prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani to the wounded PMF forces.
In February, it was reported that Iraq’s government was already preparing for further US action against the PMF, a small part of the broader “maximum pressure” Iran strategy put back into place by Donald Trump upon his inauguration. Pressure to deal with Iranian influence within the militant groups, including by disarming and disbanding the PMF, ramped up.
Lawmakers in Iraq’s parliament have attempted to hold off that blowback from Washington with a new set of reforms ostensibly aimed at reining in the PMF, but which experts say avoids the removal of US-sanctioned individuals from the group’s leadership structure.
Donald Trump’s previous term in the White House was marked by the most severe escalation of tensions with Iran in a decade: the killing of Revolutionary Guard commander Qassem Soleimani. His 2020 killing took place near Baghdad’s airport — a top PMF official and a Kataib Hezbollah commander were both killed in the strike as well.
