BAGHDAD (Dispatches) -- Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi has ordered a secret intelligence operation to inspect Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) bases and weapons around Baghdad and dismissed nine senior officials in Babil province, in an escalating crackdown on resistance factions that critics denounce as a capitulation to Washington’s demand to dismantle the very forces that have borne the brunt of the fight against takfiri terrorism.
The intelligence service launched the operation on Saturday to identify PMF-affiliated facilities and weapons in several areas surrounding the capital, according to security sources cited by DID Press Agency. 
The same day, al-Zaidi chaired an emergency security meeting and ordered the dismissal of nine security and administrative officials, including Babil’s police chief and the PMF commander in the province, over allegations oil-smuggling investigation centered on Jurf al-Sakher, a Kataib Hezbollah stronghold.
The timing is not coincidental. Al-Zaidi visited Washington in early November and met President Donald Trump at the White House, a visit the Iraqi state news agency documented with photographs of the two leaders together. 
According to diplomatic sources cited by AFP, Washington granted tacit approval for al-Zaidi’s government lineup only after he “promised to move forward with his disarmament plans” and provided guarantees that armed groups would not attack American interests. The crackdown now unfolding is the price of that approval.
Kataib Hezbollah has refused to surrender its weapons and has warned al-Zaidi that he bears “full responsibility for any attack on Islamic Resistance headquarters or PMF bases”. 
The faction’s security official, Abu Mujahid al-Assaf, accused unnamed security agencies of gathering intelligence and sharing it with the United States, which then passes it to Israel for potential strikes in Iraq. 
The PMF and its constituent factions remain the most organized and battle-hardened force in Iraq, the same force that broke the back of Daesh’s territorial caliphate and continues to confront takfiri remnants in the desert and mountains.
Analysts cited by Al Jazeera acknowledged that the oil-smuggling framing is a tactic. Akeel Abbas of the Atlantic Council said al-Zaidi “cleverly decided to frame it as anticorruption” in order to “cut off the financial lifeline to this particular group that has been so resistant” to disarmament.