Hawzah News Agency- The statement comes weeks before a September 30 deadline set by Baghdad's ruling State Administration Coalition for armed factions outside the official security forces to hand over their weapons or be prosecuted under Iraq's anti-terrorism law, a deadline Kataib Hezbollah has so far refused to accept.
Al-Assaf said the Islamic Resistance would only discuss organizing its arms with a government that first secures the complete departure of American forces from Iraqi land and airspace, with guarantees they will not return, and frees the country's political and economic decision-making from "American domination."
He set two further conditions, including the withdrawal of the Turkish forces occupying northern Iraq, and dissolution of the Peshmerga, which he said is "the most heavily armed and dangerous militia to Iraq's unity," pointing to suspicious ties to "the Zionist-American enemy."
The demand echoes a grievance aired by Iraqi commentators in recent days that Baghdad's disarmament drive has targeted Iraqi Resistance factions in the center and south while leaving Peshmerga forces, which answer to the Kurdistan Region rather than Iraq's commander-in-chief, untouched, even as Turkish troops expand their occupation in Dohuk and other northern areas.
Al-Assaf said the Resistance had shown restraint for "more than a hundred days" toward what he called the empty bravado of the "young prime minister," hoping he would "grasp the realities governing Iraq's domestic, regional and international position" and heed veteran politicians.
Instead, he said, al-Zaidi had leaned further on US envoy Tom Barrack, whom the statement branded an open enemy of Iraq's Shia community and mockingly dubbed the "head of a Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham for Iraq and the Levant", using a derisive nickname meaning "the pickpocket."
The statement said patience was wearing thin over "reckless raids on the homes of martyrs' families, the wounded, fighters and clerics, carried out, under direct American supervision."
The statement warned that the Resistance might act on the principle of retaliation in kind.
Al-Assaf closed by calling on "the senior brothers and their wise men", a reference to veteran Coordination Framework leaders, to correct what he called the security missteps caused by the prime minister.
Al-Zaidi's State Administration Coalition has made the September 30 weapons deadline official policy, warning that any armed group acting outside the state after that date will lose any political or religious cover and be treated as a terrorist organization. Iraqi security forces have moved in parallel, announcing this month the dismantling of a network accused of plotting attacks on neighboring countries and the closure of 71 offices falsely claiming affiliation with the Popular Mobilization Forces.
Meanwhile, Kataib Hezbollah Secretary-General Ahmad al-Hamidawi said on August 3 the group would keep its weapons and work to expand its arsenal to deter "anyone who wishes us harm," a position that followed a July statement renewing the group's allegiance to the Leader of the Islamic Revoultion Sayyed Mojtaba Khamenei after the killing of his father Iranian Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei in the US-Israeli strikes that opened the war on Iran in February.
Source: Al Mayadeen
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