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Why Baghdad Cannot Negotiate Away the Arsenals of Iraq’s Holdout Militias The three Iran-aligned factions that have yet to accept US-initiated integration into Iraq’s security forces, Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, sit within the wider confrontation between Washington and Tehran. Baghdad’s negotiations with them are highly unlikely to settle the question of their weapons, because those weapons form part of Iran’s position in that confrontation, and Tehran has little reason to give them up while it continues. Tehran will not be inflexible either. It has no wish to trigger sanctions, since an open Iraq serves it better than a sanctioned Iraq whose only remaining asset is militia weapons. The talks still serve Baghdad in two limited ways: they show Washington enough progress to keep US sanctions at bay, and, for now, they restrain how far the factions use their arsenals. The demands each faction has tabled, examined in turn, show how much of what they seek lies beyond the reach of the Iraqi state. Here is why the militias’ demands exceed Iraq’s current capacity, and why the factions have a vested interest in showing enough progress to avoid triggering Washington’s nuclear option: sanctions on Iraq’s oil revenues and access to dollars: thenationalcontext.com/iraqs…