Ibrahim Olabi, addressing the council, said Damascus welcomed the extension of the US–Iran ceasefire to Lebanon and reiterated longstanding Syrian support for "efforts aimed at preserving Lebanon's unity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, as well as protecting its security and the safety of its people," according to Rudaw. He went further by calling on Beirut and Baghdad to push armed groups back from the frontier.
"We also support limiting weapons to the hands of the state in Iraq and call on both brotherly countries, Iraq and Lebanon, to deploy forces in the border areas with Syria and prevent militias from spreading there," Olabi said, as quoted by Rudaw.
Syria shares a roughly 600-kilometer border with Iraq, much of it running through remote desert long exploited by armed groups and smugglers, Rudaw noted. The terrain has historically frustrated efforts at centralized control on either side, leaving stretches of the frontier effectively policed by non-state actors.
Why now?
The timing of Damascus's appeal reflects a sharp reordering of power in the region. When Syrian armed groups led by the Sunni Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) toppled longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, the Iraqi Shiite-led Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) — a former paramilitary network now folded into Iraq's official security apparatus — moved troops to the Syrian border to block what it described as the crossing of "terrorists" into Iraq, Rudaw reported. Nearly a year and a half on, those deployments have hardened, and Syria's new authorities want them replaced by conventional Iraqi state units that answer to Baghdad rather than to factional commanders.
The sectarian backdrop helps explain the urgency. Assad belonged to the Alawite sect, a syncretic, esoteric branch of Shia Islam, and his government was for decades backed by Iran and an arc of allied militias across the region, per Rudaw. His fall stripped Tehran of a strategic anchor and left Iran-aligned armed groups in Iraq exposed and aggrieved. Some of those groups have issued threats against the now-dissolved HTS and warned publicly that instability could spill across the border — rhetoric the new government in Damascus reads as a direct threat to its consolidation.
Baghdad's posture has been more cautious. The Iraqi government, dominated by Shiite parties, has largely avoided open confrontation with the new authorities in Damascus, Rudaw reported. But the gap between official policy and the behavior of Iran-aligned factions on the ground is precisely the gap Olabi is asking Iraq to close. By framing his demand around the principle of "limiting weapons to the hands of the state" — language already in wide circulation in Iraqi and Lebanese politics — Damascus is aligning itself with a domestic Iraqi debate over centralizing military authority, rather than presenting itself as an external complainant.
That framing also speaks to Lebanon, where the US–Iran ceasefire has reopened questions about Hezbollah's arsenal and where calls to restrict weapons to state control have gained renewed traction, Rudaw noted. Powerful non-state armed groups continue to operate alongside official security forces in both countries, complicating any effort to fully centralize military authority.
For Damascus, the calculation is straightforward: a porous, militia-patrolled frontier is a standing invitation to confrontation with actors it cannot deter through diplomacy alone. Pushing the request into the UN Security Council — rather than handling it bilaterally — signals that Syria's new leadership intends to treat the border as an international, not merely a neighborly, file.