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Fears over leadership decapitation, calls for restraint from the Iraqi government, and discouragement from Iran were behind the militias’ decision not to get involved.

Defying expectations, Iran-backed Iraqi militia groups refrained from carrying out attacks on US military facilities inside Iraq after Israel’s 13 June strikes on Iran. Yet, in the weeks following the war, a series of militia drone and rocket attacks targeted vital infrastructure and oil facilities in central and northern Iraq. Why did Iraq’s Iran-aligned paramilitary groups abstain from joining Tehran’s counter-attack on US military bases, despite earlier pledges to retaliate if Washington intervened during the Israel–Iran war, and yet unleashed violence across the country only a month later?

We argue that Iran-backed Iraqi militias chose to remain uninvolved in the Iran–Israel war because their aims are more strategic: to simultaneously redefine Iranian influence within the Iraqi state and maximise their own interests. Escalating against US or Israeli targets would have risked derailing this trajectory, diverting resources, and inviting disproportionate reprisals, including targeted leadership decapitation. Rather than becoming embroiled in open conflict, Iran-linked paramilitary factions in Iraq are intensifying their focus on contesting the upcoming parliamentary elections scheduled for November 2025. However, this restraint does not signal a rejection of violence, but rather its selective deployment – reserving violence for consolidating domestic authority, while avoiding actions that could trigger costly external retaliation.

We premise our argument on three intersecting explanations for the decision by armed groups and parties linked to the Popular Mobilization Forces, or al-Hashd al-Sha’abi – a state-backed paramilitary umbrella comprising over 200,000 recruits – against targeting US-led coalition assets and personnel in Iraq in June. These relate to intra-group assessments (such as fears over a leadership decapitation scenario like the campaign against Hezbollah and Hamas); calls for restraint from the central government of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani; and discouragement from Iran. To support our argument, we draw on discrete interviews with a number of informed interlocutors linked with the Iraqi government and Iran-backed paramilitary networks.

Despite exercising strategic restraint during the Israel--Iran conflict, Hashd factions have been accused of conducting domestic attacks in recent weeks. Following the cessation of the Israel–Iran war and the establishment of a temporary ceasefire, Iran-backed paramilitary groups moved quickly to reassert leverage through a wave of lethal, though unclaimed, attacks, most notably on oil facilities and military bases in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, starting on 2 July and ending on 28 July, which temporarily halted nearly half of the region’s production. One day before the strikes, a senior aide to Iran’s Supreme Leader warned against a potential threat posed by US forces in northern Iraq against Iran. The strikes that followed the Iranian statement coincided with fraught Baghdad–Erbil negotiations over oil exports, unsettling the talks but ultimately not preventing an agreement. Meanwhile, in Baghdad, Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH), one of Tehran’s most influential local allies, led an armed assault on the Agriculture Directorate on 27 July over a dispute with rival militia Kata’ib al-Imam Ali, underscoring intensifying intra-paramilitary competition ahead of elections.

While Iran’s role in orchestrating these incidents remains unconfirmed, assessing the likelihood and scale of Tehran’s involvement is critical, as it would underscore the persistence of Iranian influence within Iraq’s internal security and political dynamics.

When a sitting Iraqi prime minister dares to confront KH, the stakes are never low: in an unusually bold move, Sudani ordered on 9 August the removal of two commanders leading the KH-linked Hashd brigades, breaking a longstanding pattern of political caution. While the restraint shown by paramilitary groups was a welcome development, recent developments show that Iraq’s security cannot rely on just the unreliable self-restraint of militia . The focus must shift toward strengthening the state’s coercive capacity to prevent any autonomous action by armed actors, while conceding that they have gained probably irreversible political capital over years of state capture and engagement with electoral politics.

The emergence of the Kata’ib-linked electoral bloc was reflective of the group’s transforming approach to the game of electoral politics

Should the controversial Hashd restructuring law – which Sudani backs and the US opposes – pass in Iraq’s parliament, legally entrenching the organisation, reforms should be encouraged to keep rogue actors from being empowered further. The only realistic path forward still lies between the extremes of calling for the full dismantlement of the Hashd and pursuing a policy of appeasement.

To support our argument on militia restraint and its aftermath, we draw on ongoing and discrete conversations with a variety of informed interlocutors in the Iraqi government and Iran-backed paramilitary networks, and we follow this with policy prescriptions drawing on Sudani’s 9 August move against KH.

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