WASHINGTON—A house exploded on March 13 in the Karrada neighborhood of Baghdad, with videos of the fiery scene widely shared across social media. The strike—almost certainly carried out by the United States, though still not publicly acknowledged—was apparently intended to kill Abu Hussein al-Hamidawi, the leader of Kata’ib Hizballah (KH), a prominent Iran-backed militia in Iraq. Reporting suggests the strike killed three individuals but Hamidawi survived with minor injuries.
While most US attacks in the ongoing campaign against Tehran have targeted capabilities and leaders inside Iran, US forces have also carried out operations in neighboring Iraq. The strike against Hamidawi was the highest-level leadership strike in Iraq since the 2020 strike that killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani. It was also the opening salvo in a protracted period of kinetic activity involving the United States, Iran-backed Iraqi militias, and now the Iraqi state. The March 31 kidnapping of an American journalist Shelly Kittleson, most likely by a militia, is yet another tangible demonstration of the fragility of Iraq’s current security environment.
As militia drones and rockets continue to wreak havoc throughout Iraq, the Iraqi government faces an uncomfortable choice: It can continue accommodating the militias and risk losing control of the Iraqi state. Or it can confront them head-on and undertake a potentially violent struggle to reestablish Iraqi sovereignty.
Militias strike
I was in Baghdad in February as the US war with Iran loomed. Most Iraqi leaders I met with there were sanguine that the militias would not attack if the United States launched strikes against Iran. It’s easy to understand why. During the twelve-day war in June 2025, the Iraqi militias stayed on the sidelines, in large part because they were directed to do so by Tehran, which wanted to limit its retaliation.
This proved wishful thinking. With Iran’s current military response designed to inflict maximum pain throughout the region, Iraq’s militias became part of an Iranian escalation intended to restore deterrence and ensure the survival of the regime. For Iraq’s most extreme militias, the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also warranted retaliation and practically demanded resistance groups to demonstrate their commitment to the cause.
Out of control
Even as some of Iraq’s militias have refrained from launching kinetic attacks, the most extreme militias—KH, Harakat al-Nujaba, and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada—quickly joined the fighting. These groups, the most ideologically driven and responsive to direction from Tehran, are also the groups that view the survival of the Iranian regime as core to their own survival. It is these groups that were primarily responsible for the more than 180 attacks against US personnel and bases in the period after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.
Since the war began, Iraqi militias have launched drone and rocket attacks throughout the country. These strikes have targeted not only US diplomatic and military sites, but also oil and gas infrastructure, Iraqi military sites, airports in Baghdad and Erbil, hotels in Kurdistan and in Baghdad, and any number of civilian and security targets. On March 12, for example, militia drone strikes killed a French military officer who was part of France’s counterterrorism mission, and a separate strike killed a Kurdish security officer. In the most dramatic escalation against the Iraqi state, the militias struck the headquarters of the Iraqi National Intelligence Service on March 21, killing one officer and damaging its communications. A drone strike on Kurdistan Regional Government President Nechirvan Barzani’s residence in Dohuk was so out of bounds that even the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps issued a statement condemning the strike.
A growing challenge
The strength of the militias is in part the fault of successive Iraqi governments, which have allowed them to penetrate the security, political, and economic institutions of the state. This strategy of accommodation has moderated the behavior of certain militias, such as the Badr Organization and terrorist-designated group Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq (AAH), which have launched limited kinetic activities while focusing on entrenching their political and economic interests. Facing increased pressure from the Trump administration, groups such as AAH and Kata’ib Imam Ali have publicly indicated support for bringing weapons under control of the state—though the terms of such a process and their true commitment to disarming remain undetermined.
However, the more ideologically driven groups remain committed to resistance ideology and to using their military power against US forces in the region and the Iraqi state. These groups remain more aligned with Tehran than to political leaders in Baghdad and have amassed sufficient military and political power to cow the levers of the Iraqi state. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani frequently refers to these groups as “outlaws,” reflecting the reality that these extreme groups continue to operate beyond the reach of the government.
Following the renewed fighting, the United States has launched regular strikes against militia sites throughout Iraq, which have yet to lessen militia activity, but have drawn a rebuke from the Iraqi government after a strike that killed seven members of the Iraqi army. On March 27, the United States and Iraq announced the launch of a new High Joint Coordination Committee, in what appears to be a hastily convened effort to defuse the tensions over recent US strikes. US strikes on militia leaders and logistics facilities may degrade militia capabilities, but they are unlikely to seriously undermine the continued role of the militias across all areas of Iraqi society. Thus far, the Iraqi government’s own efforts have been limited. Al-Sudani’s caretaker status and the Shia Coordination Framework’s gridlock over government formation put the Iraqi government in an even weaker position to confront the militias.
Time to choose
The continued existence of the militias presents the greatest risk to Iraq itself. Although Iraq’s recent prime ministers have made strides in repairing relations with Gulf and regional partners, the militia attacks on the Gulf and Jordan risk making Iraq a pariah state once again and drew a joint condemnation from most Gulf countries and Jordan. Strikes on oil and gas infrastructure imperil Iraq’s energy security and economy, as well as the recent progress the Iraqi government has made in luring major US and international energy companies. The Islamic Resistance of Iraq’s threats against Americans prompted an even sharper warning from the State Department for Americans to leave the country, and international oil companies have largely evacuated their foreign staff.
The task before the Iraqi government is perilous. Confronting the militias is akin to confronting an organization like the Sicilian mafia—groups so violent and with such deep penetration across multiple layers of society that lraq’s legitimate security services, the judiciary, and even top leaders fear for their lives. A March 3 statement by a KH facade group circulated on X openly threatened the Iraqi government, warning that any move against militia fighters would be met with force. Previous efforts to take even modest steps to rein in the militias have been met with violence and even undermined by other parts of the Iraqi state. In November 2021, for example, the militias attempted to assassinate former Prime Minister Mustafa Kadhimi by attacking his residence in the Green Zone with drones, a demonstration of how the groups can threaten the most powerful people in Iraq without ever being held accountable.
Yet, there is simply no other choice. Iraq cannot continue like this, with drones and rockets menacing the country; militias assassinating and kidnapping political leaders, activists, and journalists; and parts of the country where even the legitimate security forces refuse to enter. Iraq must take on the militias to restore its stability and to reassert its sovereignty, eliminating the Iranian Trojan horse that continues to allow Iran to use Iraq as a proxy for its conflict with the United States. For Iraq’s Shia political elite, the militias threaten the entire Shia political project and reinforce an idea that Iraqi Shia are Iran’s vanguard rather than advocates for Iraqi national interests.