The deadline and what it covers: The military mission of the US-led coalition in Iraq ends on 30 September 2026. Baghdad and Washington reached a final agreement on the timetable on 12 August, and Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi has called the date final and irreversible. What replaces the coalition is a bilateral security partnership under the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement, with a US advisory and enabling presence in place of a multinational combat command.
A second process has been attached to the same date. The State Administration Coalition, the multi-bloc arrangement that sustains the government, authorised treating weapons held outside state authority after 30 September under the Anti-Terrorism Law. Al-Zaidi has separately ordered a draft law establishing a state monopoly on military weapons. The version circulating in Baghdad covers exclusive state ownership of military-grade arms, exclusive state authority over decisions of war, a ban on parallel chains of command, a prohibition on political parties financing or commanding armed formations, a national weapons inventory, surrender deadlines, criminal penalties after a transition period and a twelve-month implementation window. The text has not been independently authenticated and has not reached a parliamentary vote.
Iraqi officials use the 2011 withdrawal as the reference point. Coalition forces left that December and ISIS took Mosul thirty months later. The 2026 problem is differently shaped: ISIS is degraded, and the open question concerns the status of armed groups already inside the Iraqi system.
Enforcement has been visible. In the first ten days of August the interior ministry shut 71 offices operating under Popular Mobilisation Forces branding without authorisation, seized 49 drones, banned unauthorised drone flights and began a database covering roughly six million registered weapons. Al-Zaidi has merged security coordination into a revived office reporting to the commander-in-chief and replaced the heads of the Counter-Terrorism Service and the federal police. Government officials say a drone cell was dismantled in Baghdad during the security deployment of early August.
More at the link