One Deadline Kept

The last American troops leave Iraq on 30 September, the date Baghdad once set for disarming the Iran-backed militias. The disarmament now runs to June 2027, and what replaces the American presence is a 90-day pledge in which the militias hold fire and Washington agrees not to target them. Whether that leaves the militias weaker or stronger will first show when the window closes at the end of December.

Iraq has declared four public holidays for the departure. The prime minister's office calls 1 October a new day for the Iraqi state, and Operation Inherent Resolve ends after twelve years and 123 American dead.

The date was meant to carry a second event. Baghdad had tied the end of the American mission to bringing the militias under state control by the same day. In the final week Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi moved that deadline to 30 June 2027. His plan opens with 90 days in which armed groups hold their fire and American forces refrain from targeting them, and only then turns to a gradual handover of weapons. Zaidi says both sides have given those assurances.

Nothing the hardline factions have done points toward the handover. Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada have given no sign they will surrender their arms, and Iranian officials visiting Iraq have told the militias to keep them. Two days before the exit, Kataib Hezbollah's security chief threatened to bring down the government "by all means" if it acted against Iranian interests. Within days Washington granted a 30-day sanctions waiver for pilgrim flights between Iran and Najaf, which Baghdad had been negotiating.

The exposure is physical. The Patriot and C-RAM batteries at Erbil left with the troops. Iraq has no substantial air defence of its own and still has no defence minister, and the Kurdish regional prime minister has called the position shameful. In July American and Saudi aircraft struck militia brigade bases in four provinces. The arrangement that begins tomorrow includes an American assurance not to do that again.

What the departure does to the militias is argued both ways. Zaidi's camp, and several former American officials, say it strips the groups of the occupation they have cited for two decades to justify their arsenals and leaves them facing their own government. The opposing reading holds that the militias lose an enemy and keep their weapons while the state expected to disarm them loses its air cover.

One fact limits that second reading. On 10 September drones launched from Maysan province struck Saudi Arabia's East-West Pipeline, the kingdom's main route around a closed Strait of Hormuz, while American troops and batteries were still in Iraq. Whatever restrained the militias before today, the record gives no sign it was the Americans.

The first real evidence arrives when the no-attack window ends around 29 December. Strikes from Iraqi territory on Gulf energy or on Kurdistan inside the window would show the pledge protected American targets and little else. A quiet window followed by a first handover from any of the three hardline factions would favour Zaidi. Refusal after a quiet window settles nothing and moves the question to June.