Iraq’s foreign-policy sovereignty is increasingly constrained by the Iran-aligned militias within the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF). The PMF’s conduct in the two US–Israel wars on Iran illustrates this, wherein the choice of their response lay not with Baghdad but with the factions and with Tehran, which is one of the measures of how far Iraqi sovereignty has been eroded.

The Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) is an umbrella body that contains dozens of armed groups. Known in Arabic as al-Hashd al-Shaabi, it was formed in 2014 from units with very different loyalties, and over time the Iran-aligned factions came to dominate, including Kata’ib Hezbollah, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq and the Badr Organisation. Most of Iraq’s Iran-backed armed groups operate inside this structure, though they also claim attacks under the banner of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI). These factions are the reason Iraq’s neutrality in the US–Israel wars on Iran has proved so fragile.

The Formation of the PMF

The PMF owes its existence to a religious ruling issued in a moment of emergency. On 13 June 2014, days after the Islamic State (IS) captured Mosul, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued a fatwa, i.e., a formal opinion in Islamic law, delivered through his representative in Karbala, which required that it was the religious duty of every non-disabled Iraqi to defend the country.[1] Although the ruling was addressed to all citizens and contained no sectarian language, the men who responded to it in practice joined existing militias. The Badr Organisation, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq and Kata’ib Hezbollah, all with long ties to Iran, re-emerged with official approval and state uniforms.[2] The government formalised the arrangement within days by setting up the Popular Mobilisation Committee, and a force raised to meet a temporary threat thereby acquired a permanence that has long outlasted the war it was created to fight.

The Iraqi Parliament gave the force legal standing two years later, but in a way that created more problems than it solved. Law No. 40 of November 2016 designated the PMF as a component of the Iraqi armed forces and placed it under the Commander-in-Chief, i.e., the Prime Minister. Yet, it said almost nothing about how that authority was to be exercised.[3] Because the law left unsettled who issued orders, who controlled the weapons and how the money was spent, it produced a paradox that has shaped Iraqi politics ever since: the PMF was absorbed into the state on paper without the state ever gaining operational command over it. An attack on the PMF is therefore, in law, an attack on the Iraqi armed forces, even though the strongest units within it take their direction from Tehran rather than Baghdad.

No government since has managed to close that gap. Since 2019, the PMF Commission, headed by its chairman Falih al-Fayyadh, has pressed for a service and retirement law that would put the force on a permanent professional footing. The draft grew from 39 to more than 100 articles.[4] The Council approved a version of the Ministers in February 2025. Still, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani withdrew it a month later under pressure from rival Shia parties and, more quietly, from Washington. One sticking point was that the law’s own retirement provision would have forced al-Fayyadh himself out.[5]

A separate and more far-reaching proposal, sometimes called the PMF authority law and first debated in parliament in March 2025, would have entrenched the force as a permanent parallel army, and it too remains unresolved. Meanwhile, the institution these laws would regulate has only grown larger: its authorised strength rose by about 95 per cent in the 2023 budget, from roughly 122,000 to 238,000 personnel, and its budget passed US$ 3.4 billion in 2024.[6] A force of that size, with its own members of parliament, is difficult for any Prime Minister to command, and especially so for one who depends on its political allies to keep his government in office.

The force’s reach is not only military but economic. In November 2022, the Council of Ministers approved the creation of the Muhandis General Company, a state-owned construction and engineering firm named after Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and owned by the PMF Commission. Analysts describe it as the PMF’s version of Khatam al-Anbiya, the engineering conglomerate through which Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) controls much of the Iranian economy, built to win state contracts without competitive tender.[7] The US sanctioned the company in October 2025.[8] Such holdings give the factions a source of revenue independent of the state budget, and so a further measure of autonomy from the government that nominally commands them.

Factions and Divided Loyalties

The PMF has never been a single body, and its internal divisions help explain its behaviour. The sharpest line runs between two camps. On one side stand the Iran-aligned resistance factions, tied to the Quds Force, the IRGC branch responsible for operations abroad. On........

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