New York
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Al-Zaidi on the sidelines of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York to discuss the future of bilateral relations between the two countries, amid sensitive security issues, foremost among them the question of the resistance factions and preventing attacks from being launched from Iraqi territory.
The U.S. State Department said in a statement that the two sides
“agreed on the importance of dismantling what it described as terrorist militias, preventing attacks from being launched from Iraq, and ensuring that Baghdad exercises its full sovereignty.”
The meeting comes at a highly sensitive time, with less than two weeks remaining before the scheduled withdrawal of the remaining U.S. forces from Iraq on September 30, according to media reports.
Sources revealed that the Iraqi prime minister presented a new timetable during the meeting for disarming the armed factions. It would begin with a 90-day ceasefire on attacks starting at the end of September, followed by a gradual handover of weapons to be completed by June 2027.
The issue of placing all weapons under state control, along with the future of the U.S. military presence, is expected to be a major focus of Al-Zaidi’s anticipated visit to Washington, which had originally been scheduled for July.
In this context, Al-Zaidi’s political trajectory cannot be separated from the political context that brought him to power.
While his actions consistently appear to reflect political recklessness and a lack of knowledge of politics and statecraft, one point is clear to everyone: throughout these reckless actions, he has continued to receive full support from the Coordination Framework, which decided to place the Iraqi decision-making process in the hands of the United States amid the fiercest war the region has witnessed.