ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The United States Consulate General in Erbil welcomed the return of Steven Fagin to Iraq as the new ambassador at the US Embassy in Baghdad on Wednesday, highlighting his past diplomatic work in the Kurdistan Region.
"The US Consulate General in Erbil is thrilled to welcome back Ambassador Steven H. Fagin, who returns to Iraq as Chargé d'Affaires at the US Embassy in Baghdad,” the consulate stated, fondly recalling Fagin as the consul general in Erbil in 2018-2020 “when he worked to strengthen ties with the Iraqi Kurdistan Region."
Fagin has frequently advocated for resolving longstanding disputes between Erbil and Baghdad, primarily focusing on tensions over the Kurdistan Region's financial entitlements and the payment of Kurdish public sector salaries.
In August 2025, Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani commended Fagin for his diplomatic contributions and active efforts to bridge perspectives between the federal and regional administrations.
“That experience will serve him well as he advances US interests across all of Iraq, including the IKR [Iraqi Kurdistan Region],” the Erbil consulate stated.
His appointment coincides with a push by Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi to confine weapons strictly to state control, even as armed factions renew efforts to pass legislation governing the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) that Fagin previously warned would institutionalize Iranian influence.
In October 2020, while Fagin was serving as the Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Baghdad, Iran's foreign ministry placed him on its sanctions list. Tehran accused the diplomat of organizing "terrorist acts," implementing US sanctions, and supporting the January 2020 US drone strike that killed top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.
In his mid-May inaugural address before the Iraqi parliament, Prime Minister Zaidi vowed sweeping security reforms, including "confining weapons to state control," with the aim of enforcing the rule of law, strengthening the country's security, intelligence, and military capabilities, and ensuring that decisions of war and peace remain exclusively in state hands.
In early June, Zaidi ordered the formation of a committee to oversee the disengagement of political parties and armed factions from the PMF.
The PMF was established in 2014 following the emergence of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq as an umbrella organization of roughly 70 predominantly Shiite armed groups with some 250,000 members.
Though a state-funded institution, the PMF includes factions aligned with the Iran-led ‘Axis of Resistance,’ among them Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, Kata'ib Hezbollah, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, and Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada.
These factions are believed to have played an active role in backing Tehran during the six-week war in late February and its aftermath, operating under the banner of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI) entity, which in early April claimed more than 750 attacks against targets across the region in support of Iran.
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