Iranian-backed militias in Iraq are considering the unprecedented decision of disarming in the hopes of avoiding airstrikes after the Trump administration threatened Tehran’s so-called “axis of resistance”.
It would be the first time the Iranian-backed groups operating in Iraq had disarmed, long an American demand. Doing so could further erode Iranian influence in the Middle East, after its allies of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon were devastated in a war with Israel over the past two years.
Several groups of Shia militias, which together form a coalition called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, are in talks with the Iraqi government over laying down their arms. They include Kataeb Hezbollah, one of the country’s most powerful militias, whose leader was assassinated in a US drone strike during Trump’s first term. It is a separate group from the Iranian proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“Trump is ready to take the war with us to worse levels, we know that, and we want to avoid such a bad scenario,” said a Kataeb Hezbollah commander.
The armed groups conducted drone and missile attacks on US bases after the outbreak of the Gaza war in 2023 as part of a regional response by Iranian-backed militia in support of Hamas. One attack last year killed three US soldiers in a Syrian base.
The Islamic Resistance commands an estimated 50,000 fighters, many of whom had signed up for the war against Isis during the previous decade. Iran has supplied them with heavy arms, including medium-range missiles.
American officials had told Baghdad they were prepared to conduct airstrikes in Iraq if the militias did not disarm, Reuters reported, as the US prepares for confrontation with their patrons in Tehran in the event that the current nuclear negotiations fail.
Trump has threatened Iran with military force if it does enter an agreement with the US on its nuclear programme. A previous deal that allowed for more United Nations inspections of the country’s nuclear facilities unravelled when Trump withdrew from it in his first term. Iran, which insists its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes, has agreed to indirect negotiations.
What is not immediately clear is whether the promises from the Islamic Resistance are simply a way to bide time until the threat from the Trump administration has ended. The militia had already begun emptying out their headquarters and taking more measures to protect themselves after Trump took office in January.
Kataeb Hezbollah, the most powerful militia, fought US and coalition troops after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and worked closely with the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp. Its leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, was assassinated alongside the IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani in a 2020 drone strike that almost brought the US and Iran to war.
Iran and its allies have come under immense pressure from Israel and the US over the past two years, and Trump has vowed to increase that pressure, all the more powerful after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator who was a key regional ally of Iran.
The talks are taking place as the US moves heavy bombers to an airbase in the Indian Ocean within striking distance of Iran and Yemen, where the US is conducting an aerial campaign against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.
Trump has vowed to “annihilate” them after almost two years of Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and missile and drone attacks on Israel.
Over the weekend Trump posted footage of an airstrike that targeted a gathering in Yemen, saying it was a meeting of Houthis preparing for more attacks on American ships.
“These Houthis gathered for instructions on an attack. Oops, there will be no attack by these Houthis! They will never sink our ships again!” he wrote in a post on X.
The Houthis have not acknowledged the attack, nor claimed that it was a tribal gathering of civilians, as some had suggested.
The Houthis say they will stop their attacks only when Israel stops the war in Gaza, which began after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing more than 1,100 people and kidnapping more than 200. The war has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
