BAGHDAD \u2014 US President Donald Trump announced Sunday that Tom Barrack, the United States ambassador to Turkey, will also serve as special presidential envoy to Iraq and Syria while remaining in his Ankara post.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we advance our strategic cooperation with the Governments of Syria and Iraq, our relationship with them continues to grow,\u201d Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that Barrack would work \u201cwith the full backing of the United States Department of State.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier this month Barrack expressed optimism about Iraq\u2019s new leadership following parliament\u2019s confidence vote, saying Washington is prepared to work closely with Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi\u2019s government. The remarks followed Barrack\u2019s first direct contact with Zaidi on April 30, when he congratulated him by phone.<\/p>\n
Barrack replaces Mark Savaya, an Iraqi-American businessman from Michigan who was appointed US special envoy to Iraq in October 2025. Reuters and other outlets reported in January 2026 that Savaya was no longer serving in the post, with one source citing what was described as his \u201cmishandling\u201d of political developments in Iraq.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BAGHDAD \u2014 US President Donald Trump announced Sunday that Tom Barrack, the United States ambassador to Turkey, will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139040,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[14],"tags":[592,35627,14050,94,13725,95,608,596,392,3892],"class_list":["post-139039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iraq","tag-and","tag-barrack","tag-envoy","tag-iraq","tag-special","tag-syria","tag-that","tag-the","tag-trump","tag-with"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116670120893732607","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}