A source close to Muqtada al-Sadr told +ontime that the “National Shia Movement” is not currently planning to sever ties with Saraya al-Salam or hand over its weapons, despite Sadr’s latest call for a full disengagement from the movement and complete integration into the state for military formations.
The source explained that Sadr’s position does not mean Saraya al-Salam will be the first to give up its weapons. On the contrary, the source said, the movement will be the last to sever ties with its armed formation after ensuring that all armed factions have clearly and unambiguously come under the state’s umbrella.
Details:
• The source’s comments came after a statement by Muqtada al-Sadr dated May 27, 2026, in which he called for “complete disengagement” from the National Shia Movement and full integration into the state for military formations, while turning the civilian entities attached to Saraya al-Salam into a “solid structure” without headquarters, weapons, uniforms, or any military title.
• The source said Saraya al-Salam was founded from fighters of the Imam Mahdi Army, and that the movement sees it as a disciplined formation, not a rogue militia.
• The source added that the Green Zone events on August 29 and 30, 2022, what the movement describes as the “Ashura Revolution,” and the deaths of protesters at the gates of the Green Zone “make the movement think a thousand times before leaving its weapons while other factions keep their power.”
• The source accused armed factions linked to foreign actors of targeting the National Shia Movement, saying members of Saraya al-Salam, including commanders, have been subjected to a series of assassinations, especially in Nasiriyah and Basra.
• The source, a former lawmaker who took part in the October 10, 2021 election in which the Sadrist bloc won 73 seats before Muqtada al-Sadr asked his MPs to resign in June 2022, said that “the calls by faction leaders to hand over weapons are not serious, but merely a way of bending to the storm.”
• The source added that, in his assessment, those leaders are not the real decision-makers on the weapons file because the decision is tied to foreign powers.
• The source stressed that the movement will not leave its members exposed to the weapons of militias and factions that, he said, would not hesitate to eliminate them.
• Even if the factions hand over their weapons, the source said the movement is not planning to hand over the Samarra file. The city is home to the shrines of the two Askari Imams, and Saraya al-Salam has been deployed there since the period after the shrine bombing on February 22, 2006.
• The source concluded by saying that Sadr does not trust Ali al-Zaidi’s seriousness, but wants to remove the pressure from himself. That is why he expressed support and is now waiting for concrete steps that connect words to actions.
What next?
The source’s position opens the door to a different reading of Sadr’s statement. Under this interpretation, the call does not appear to be an immediate decision to dissolve Saraya al-Salam or hand over its weapons, but rather a political test for the other factions: who starts first, and who proves that the weapons decision is truly Iraqi and not tied to foreign powers. For now, Iraq’s weapons file remains stuck between the language of the state and the realities of power on the ground.
