Ali al-Zaidi has no political experience, has never worked in international affairs, and even inside his own country is a relative unknown.<\/p>\n
Now, as Iraq\u2019s newly designated prime minister, he faces the daunting task of cobbling together the next coalition government of a country caught in the middle of the war between the United States and Iran.<\/p>\n
Yet the choice of Mr. al-Zaidi, a wealthy businessman who owns a popular television station and holds lucrative state contracts for foodstuffs, has managed to break months of political gridlock. And \u2014 no small matter \u2014 his nomination appears to have gone unchallenged by the Trump administration, at least initially.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s so far from even the usual ideas of a compromise candidate,\u201d said Renad Mansour, an Iraq analyst at the London-based think tank Chatham House. \u201cHe\u2019s the first that has had no political role or experience in government. That\u2019s why many are surprised with the choice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Against a backdrop of rising U.S. pressure, Mr. al-Zaidi\u2019s nomination is in some ways puzzling. He is an owner of Al-Janoob Islamic Bank, which the Iraqi central bank banned from U.S. dollar transactions in 2024 at the urging of U.S. officials. The bank was suspected of laundering money, in particular on behalf of Iran and powerful Iraqi militias allied with Iran.<\/p>\n
Unlike several other candidates whose names were floated for the job since elections last November, Mr. al-Zaidi, 43, enjoys good relationships across Iraq\u2019s political spectrum, according to people involved in the deliberations, including leadership figures close to both Washington and Tehran.<\/p>\n
Whether he can manage to form a government within the 30 days allotted to him remains unclear, said Mr. Mansour.<\/p>\n
That a candidate had to be found so far outside the political field speaks to the serious deadlock inside Iraq\u2019s largest political bloc, the Coordination Framework, which represents the country\u2019s Shiite Muslim majority.<\/p>\n
It is also a symptom of the broader power struggle in which Iraq is mired.<\/p>\n
Since the U.S. invasion in 2003, the central government in Baghdad has struggled to strike a balance between the interests of its former occupier and those of Iran, the regional Shiite power next door. That balancing act has grown increasingly tenuous since late February, when the United States and Israel attacked Iran, turning neighboring Iraq into one of the war\u2019s battlegrounds.<\/p>\n
Even before the war, Washington had been ratcheting up pressure on Baghdad to rein in the Iranian-linked militias in Iraq. After the conflict began, many of those militias joined in solidarity with Iran, lobbing missiles and drones at U.S. diplomatic and military targets in Iraq, as well as at Washington\u2019s Iraqi partners and, at least once, at Iraqi military forces themselves.<\/p>\n
Iraq\u2019s Shiite militias, first formed with Iranian backing to fight the U.S. occupation, grew in influence after joining the international fight in 2014 against the jihadist Islamic State. They leveraged their popularity to establish political parties and vied for parliamentary seats, enmeshing themselves<\/a> into Iraq\u2019s economy and politics in the process.<\/p>\n Some of the militias\u2019 political wings controlled ministries in the last government. And in Iraqi elections<\/a> in November, even as U.S. officials warned they would not tolerate militia influence in the next government, militia-affiliated parties gained a still greater share of parliamentary seats.<\/p>\n The situation grew even thornier after the war against Iran began, and continues to simmer even with an indefinite cease-fire in place.<\/p>\n Iraqi officials are under heavy U.S. pressure over their apparent reluctance or inability to stop the recent militia attacks. Last week, Washington suspended funds<\/a> to Iraqi security forces and even cut the flow of U.S. dollars<\/a> to Iraq.<\/p>\n Yet just this week, a day after Washington issued a reward for information about a militia leader it accused of being behind attacks on U.S. targets, that commander was photographed at a political bloc meeting for selecting a prime minister nominee.<\/p>\n Some Iraqi officials see the formation of Iraq\u2019s government as \u201ca protective shield,\u201d said Ghaith Shaba, a lawmaker from the political bloc.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are living in the heart of the storm,\u201d he said, \u201cand our greatest fear as civil and national powers is that Iraq will transform from a state of institutions into an arena for settling scores.\u201d<\/p>\n U.S. officials appear likely accept Mr. al-Zaidi\u2019s nomination despite the sanctions against his bank, said Victoria J. Taylor, who led Iraq policy at the State Department during the Biden administration, and is currently at the Atlantic Council, a think tank.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ve clearly decided they want to see a government formed sooner rather than later,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey likely see the path ahead with a new prime minister as providing an opportunity to press this new government to take stronger action against the militias,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad declined to comment on the nomination.<\/p>\n In addition to banking, Mr. al-Zaidi also owns a popular television channel, Dijlah TV, and held the contracts to provide food to the Iraqi military and food baskets to the population paid for by Iraq\u2019s trade ministry.<\/p>\n Iraqi political analysts say he enjoys close relations with two of the most powerful figures inside Iraq\u2019s largest political bloc: Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, the current prime minister, and the head of Iraq\u2019s supreme judicial council, Faiq Zaidan, who is seen as close to Washington.<\/p>\n But though he enjoys friendly relations across much of Iraq\u2019s political spectrum, ultimately the standard by which both Washington and Tehran will judge him is how he confronts the militias.<\/p>\n \u201cHe will have to confront and clash with the issue of disarmament and restricting weapons to the hands of the state,\u201d said Sarmad al-Bayati, a political scientist in Baghdad. \u201cThis is the biggest challenge he will face.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ali al-Zaidi has no political experience, has never worked in international affairs, and even inside his own country…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[34913,34914,1743,34,94,5485],"class_list":{"0":"post-99919","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iraq","8":"tag-al-zaidi","9":"tag-ali-1986","10":"tag-international-relations","11":"tag-iran","12":"tag-iraq","13":"tag-politics-and-government"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116525712578669560","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99919","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=99919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}