US pressure shapes Iraq's new prime minister and Baghdad politics
Ali al-Zaidi's visit to Washington has highlighted the extent of US leverage over Iraq's politics, security and economy. He met US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday while serving as Iraq's prime minister, a role that carries formal authority but, according to the supplied material, limited practical power. The meeting comes after months of paralysis in Baghdad and a rapid political settlement that brought him to office.
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The Coordination Framework, the Shia alliance that selected him, reportedly took just 25 minutes to agree on his name 11 weeks earlier. That decision followed intense pressure from Washington, including Treasury measures that affected Iraq's dollar lifeline. The supplied material says cash shipments from New Jersey to the Central Bank of Iraq were frozen, and that this financial squeeze helped force other contenders aside.
Former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, who had been seen as a leading candidate, was said to have abandoned his plans because of a US veto. Al-Zaidi is described as a 40-year-old banker with no established political base, which the article argues made him more acceptable under the circumstances. His own banking record has also drawn scrutiny.
In 2024, the Central Bank of Iraq barred his institution, Al-Janoob Islamic Bank, from US-dollar transactions as part of a wider crackdown on illicit dollar flows to Iran. He was not charged, and neither he nor the bank is currently sanctioned, but the file remains available as a possible source of leverage. The episode matters because it shows how financial controls can shape government formation in Iraq as effectively as parliamentary bargaining.
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Iraq depends heavily on oil revenue, and the supplied material says oil funds roughly 90 percent of the state budget. It also says that revenue sits in an account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, giving Washington a direct point of influence over the flow of money into the Iraqi system. In that context, the premiership is not only a political office but also part of a wider contest over access to dollars, sanctions enforcement and state authority.
The article also places Tom Barrack at the centre of Washington's current approach. It says he holds three roles at once: ambassador to Turkiye, envoy to Syria and envoy to Iraq. His influence is described as resting less on diplomacy than on the financial leverage the United States can exert over Baghdad.
In April, Washington blocked a cash shipment of nearly $500m drawn from Iraq's oil revenues and suspended parts of its security cooperation, according to the supplied material. That pressure is linked to a broader US demand that Iraq bring armed factions under state control. The supplied material says that issue remains unresolved.
It notes that Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr dissolved his Saraya al-Salam militia in late May, while other groups such as Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Kataib Imam Ali have announced positions of their own. The article does not say those groups have been disarmed, but it suggests the question of militia authority remains central to Iraq's political future. The current row also reflects a longer pattern in which Iraqi governments have had to balance domestic coalition politics against external financial constraints.
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The Coordination Framework's quick choice of al-Zaidi suggests a preference for a candidate who could secure office without provoking a deeper confrontation with Washington. At the same time, the mention of his bank's earlier dollar restrictions indicates that the US has already used banking oversight to target suspected illicit flows linked to Iran. That makes the premiership vulnerable to pressure well beyond parliament.
#Iraq #AlialZaidi #UnitedStatesTreasury #CentralBankofIraq #Baghdad
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