US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that Iraq risks "Balkanisation" unless Iran-aligned armed factions are brought under state control, deploying the term after meeting Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. The framing is strategic: Balkanisation implies territorial breakup, but what Rubio actually described is something different — parallel power structures operating inside a nominally unified state. Analysts diverge sharply on the substance behind the rhetoric. Burcu Ozcelik of the Royal United Services Institute told Al Jazeera the real issue is not imminent partition but Iraq's inability to become a "centralised, stable state that can wean off Iranian interference." She described Iran-aligned groups as wielding "parallel economic channels, political influence, and oil smuggling networks" — a structural problem, not a separatist one. Zeidon Alkinani of the Arab Perspectives Institute was more sceptical, suggesting the remark could be "a pressure tactic to push the Iraqi government forward on the disarmament process, or a sign of the administration's limited understanding of Iraq and the wider region." The disarmament timeline tells its own story. Al-Zaidi promised at the White House in July that armed factions would have no justification after September 30. That deadline has already slipped to June 30, 2027. At least three groups — Saraya al-Salam, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, and Kataib al-Imam Ali — have reached understandings with Baghdad. Saraya al-Salam was formally integrated into Iraq's security forces at a ceremony in Samarra in June. But Ozcelik cautioned that "full disarmament of any group has not really been fully, successfully implemented yet." The holdouts are the most consequential. Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba have explicitly refused, insisting they will keep "resistance weapons." Both have targeted US forces in Iraq and attacked Gulf states during the US-Iran confrontation. Rubio said Wednesday that recent strikes on regional energy infrastructure were "probably carried out in part by Iran-backed armed groups in Iraq, not only by Yemen's Houthis." Ozcelik cited reports that Saudi Arabia's East-West Pipeline was targeted from southern Iraq. The meeting's timing is loaded. It came days before the remaining few hundred US troops are due to leave Iraq on September 30. Rubio told reporters "there's been no discussion" on extending that timeline. Washington is simultaneously withdrawing its military footprint and raising its rhetorical demands — a combination that either reflects confidence in Iraqi capacity or indifference to the outcome. New US sanctions add another pressure vector. Sanctions threaten to cut off any airport or company that refuels, services, or sells tickets for Iranian airlines. Iran says Baghdad has stopped accepting its flights, rerouting to Najaf, where flights continue and local travel companies depend heavily on Iranian pilgrimage routes. The economic tendrils of Iranian influence run through commerce, not just militias. The core question Alkinani raised is whether disarmament — genuinely unprecedented in post-2003 Iraqi politics — is achievable through external pressure or requires patient internal transformation. Iraq survived the 2003 invasion, the 2006-2007 sectarian civil war, the ISIL campaign of 2014-2017, and the 2017 Kurdish independence referendum. The armed groups are a structural feature of the post-invasion order, not an aberration from it. Rubio's Balkanisation language may overstate the territorial risk while understating the institutional one.
