Five Iran-Aligned Factions Propose Two-Year Weapons 'Freeze' as Government Signals Sept 30 Deadline Is Softening

On August 27, several Iran-aligned armed factions — including Kataib Hezbollah, Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, and Harakat al-Nujaba — floated a proposal to place their weapons in their own private storage facilities and suspend armed operations for two years, while retaining custody of the arsenals rather than transferring them to Iraqi state security forces. The US rejected the proposal, with a US official reaffirming Washington 'fully supports the disarmament of the factions and the transfer of their weapons to the central Iraqi government'; a senior Iraqi MP likewise called it 'an attempt to circumvent the principle of ending weapons outside the official security forces.' The episode coincided with National Security Advisor Qasim al-Araji publicly recasting the government's own timeline, clarifying that 'September 30 is the date for the international coalition to depart [Iraq], not the deadline to hand over weapons' and that restricting factional weapons to the state would instead proceed 'gradually' after the coalition's exit — a retreat from PM Zaidi's earlier framing of Sept 30 as a 'fixed and final' date for both. Falih al-Fayyadh (PMF Commission) and al-Araji are acting as mediators between the government and the holdout factions.