Pressure is growing on the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq to hand over weapons to state authorities, or at least pretend to put their guns under state “control."
Kataib Hezbollah is the latest group to comment on what might come next. Kataib Hezbollah is a terrorist group that killed three Americans in Jordan in 2025 and has carried out attacks on the US, Israel, and other countries in the region.
In 2020, the US killed Kataib Hezbollah leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis as he drove alongside IRGC Quds Force head Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad.
Kataib Hezbollah was also behind the kidnappings of researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov and US journalist Shelly Kittelson.
Will the group really hand over its large supply of guns, missiles, drones, and other weapons?
Rudaw media in the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq noted that Kataib Hezbollah “on Saturday welcomed efforts by armed factions to surrender their weapons to the state, offering to assume responsibility of specialized military equipment and even pay for them, as Baghdad continues negotiations aimed at bringing weapons under state control.”
In a statement, Abu Mujahid al-Assaf, who Rudaw said is a spokesperson and senior security official of the armed group, “praised what he described as a decision by ‘[armed] brothers not involved in the Islamic Resistance [of Iraq]’ to end their armed activities and hand over their weapons.”
The Kataib Hezbollah spokesperson said the group could “confine weapons to the hands of the state and enhance security, stability, and civil peace.” The group says that the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) command could oversee the weapons and their transfer. The PMF is a paramilitary group. Its members get paid by the state. Kataib Hezbollah has several brigades in the PMF. As such, this would mean turning over weapons to itself. Because it is ostensibly already controlled by the PMF. Yet it carries out attacks throughout the region.
Iraq’s new Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi has said he has continued indirect talks with several Iran-aligned armed groups. Rudaw noted that the Shiite Coordination Framework told Rudaw earlier this week that indirect “discussions are underway with three to four factions operating outside the PMF structure, with a final agreement expected after the Eid al-Adha holiday, which was celebrated between Wednesday and Saturday.”
What next?
Kataib Hezbollah might claim to hand over, or do a kind of symbolic handover of “certain specialized weapons for which the state apparatus lacks specialists, such as drones, loitering munitions [suicide drones], cruise missiles, anti-armor weapons, and others.” Bizarrely, the group also said it might buy the weapons, meaning it would buy back its own weapons. This seems contrived to kind of create a form of smoke and mirrors or the equivalent of a shell company to move the weapons back and forth, laundering them.
Rudaw adds, “the proposal also included overseeing the inventory, transportation, and storage of surrendered weapons, as well as support for ‘the families of the martyrs and the wounded of those groups, as well as the mujahideen whose services will no longer be required.’”
Some other groups in Iraq have rejected handing over weapons. It remains to be seen if they will actually do it.