Pro-Western Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al?Sudani performed strongly in parliamentary elections on November 11 – the seventh since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. With a turnout of around 56%, the Sudanese Coalition for Reconstruction and Development emerged as the largest faction, winning nearly 3 million votes. the pro-Iran State of Law Alliance with 370,000. However, Sudani’s faction still received only 15 percent of the seats in parliament, totaling 46 out of 329. On the other hand, pro-Iranian parties collectively won 121 seats — the largest share, though not enough to form the government alone. Who ends up as prime minister now is crucial not only for Iraq, but also for the two superpower blocs centered on Washington and Beijing, who see the country as central to their plans for the entire Middle East and beyond. So what happens next?
From a technical point of view, the procedure seems simple and quick. Under Iraq’s 2005 Constitution, once the election results have been verified, the president calls on the newly elected parliament to convene within 15 days. In that first assembly, the parliament elects a president and two deputies by simple majority vote. It can then elect a new president—provided there is a two-thirds majority for a single candidate—or extend the president’s term in session. This is currently Abdul Latif Rashid, a Kurdish politician and member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, as the presidency is a role traditionally held by a Kurd. Once this has been completed, the new president authorizes the bloc with the most seats in the new parliament to form a cabinet led by the chosen candidate for prime minister. Although pro-Iranian parties hold the most seats, they are not a unified bloc — Sudani’s coalition is. While he might be expected to be his bloc’s choice for prime minister, the past has seen the leader seemingly ousted before he could hold the top job. In any case, the prime minister’s nominee has 30 days to draw up a list of potential cabinet members and present it to parliament for a majority vote of confidence. If this vote fails, the president must choose another candidate to try the same process.
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In reality, a lot can happen in these latter parts of the process – in fact, in the past, the entire procedure has taken up to a year to complete. The basis of this approach was to guard against the re-emergence of a single dominant force in Iraqi politics, particularly any revival of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. In this, it has so far succeeded, but the process has instead militated in long-standing relations between the three major groups in the country: Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. Since 2005, this has manifested itself in a broad power-sharing agreement between the three, with the largest of them – the Shiites – assuming the role of prime minister, the Kurds taking the presidential role, and the Sunnis securing the role of speaker.
Sudani’s main problem here is that his Coalition for Reconstruction and Development bloc is part of the broader Shia-centric Coordination Framework, which also includes a number of pro-Iran parties of varying degrees of zeal. At the extreme end is the 27-seat al?Sadiqoun block, the political wing of the US-designated terrorist organization Asaib Ahl al-Haq. Winning the same number of seats is the slightly more moderate pro-Iran Rule of Law bloc. The coordination framework also consists of pro-Iran blocs, the Badr Organization, the Alliance of National State Forces and other smaller factions. The problem here is that during his first term as prime minister – especially in the last year – Sudani appeared to be moving away from Iran (and its key sponsors China and Russia) and towards the West (and its central presence, the US). This has been seen in the re-entry into Iraq of several major Western oil and gas firms, which have been awarded huge exploration and development contracts that are crucial to the structure of Iraq’s hydrocarbon sector, as fully analyzed in my latest book on the new global oil market order.
These include TotalEnergies’ $27 billion four-way mega-deal (incorporating the vital Common Seawater Supply project) and BP’s $25 billion five-point deal in northern Iraq, along with major deals signed by Chevron and ExxonMobil in the US. It can very well be argued that investments from these firms have been instrumental in the notable Sudanese-launched infrastructure improvement projects benefiting Iraq. This rapprochement with the West also played a key role in keeping Iraq out of the recent war between Iran and Israel, according to senior legal sources spoken exclusively to OilPrice.com recently. However, these moves are viewed with suspicion and some hostility by pro-Iran factions. This is because, apart from the political influence such deals could buy the West, these exploration and development sites are legally allowed to maintain an extensive presence on the ground of Western employees and whatever level of “security personnel” the firms see fit.
In all these developments, it must not be forgotten that both the West and China-Russia-Iran see Iraq as an essential space in the structure of the balance of power in the Middle East. Indeed, as exclusively revealed OilPrice.com a few years ago by a senior Kremlin official: “By keeping the West out of Iraq energy deals, the end of Western hegemony in the Middle East will become the decisive chapter in the West’s final demise.” As a result, Russia and China have made efforts – especially after the unilateral US withdrawal from the Iran “nuclear deal” in 2018 – to remove all Western firms from southern Iraq and also from the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region in its north. On the other side of the superpower equation, the US and its key allies believe that severing the multi-layered ties between Iraq and Iran will not only significantly weaken Baghdad’s neighbor, but also key sponsors China and Russia. The US and Israel also have an additional strategic interest in using the Iraqi Kurdistan region as a base for ongoing monitoring operations against Iran. As detailed in my last book. In addition, the West sees this northern territory as a critical security bridge from NATO member Turkey to the Middle East and beyond. In the context of this massive geopolitical balance of power, one should see the news of Russian oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil reducing their operations in Iraq.
Nouri al-Maliki is the only Iraqi prime minister to have served two terms in office since 2003, but his second term was widely seen as a failure in the country. Popular opinion is that his second term featured an increase in government corruption and a mishandling of Iraq’s position between the West, East and Iran. Both accusations have also been leveled at Sudani, including by some of his former allies in the Coordination Framework, particularly over his opposition to fully expelling the US military from the country. His refusal earlier this year to authorize the signing of a new law that would have legally turned the pro-Iranian Popular Mobilization Forces into a permanent arm of the Iraqi state was also seen by some Coordination Framework allies as a betrayal in that context. Then it may be that the only way Sudani sees to secure the crucial support of this group for a second term as prime minister is to return to a more pro-Iran stance, at least in the short term. Otherwise, Iraq’s new prime minister could likely emerge from the group’s hardline ranks.
By Simon Watkins for Oilprice.com
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