Barely two days had passed since the launch of a new anti-corruption campaign in Iraq when the former commander of US forces in Iraq, David Petraeus, published his op-ed in The Washington Post. He swiftly concluded\u2014paradoxically, before any significant results had even materialized\u2014that the campaign represents one of the most important political developments in the country in years: the return of Iraqi state authority.<\/p>\n
Petraeus did not overlook the fact that such a campaign is not entirely unprecedented, yet he granted it a sense of exceptionalism due to the “prospect that Iraq’s key state institutions\u2014the judiciary, the prime minister\u2019<\/span>s office, and the country’s most professional security services\u2014are moving together to reassert state control.”<\/p>\n For most of the past two decades, US policymakers viewed Iraq primarily as a problem to be managed. Today, however, they can begin asking a different question: Has Iraq finally become strategically important in its own right?<\/p>\n Petraeus, the veteran who headed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) before resigning over his girlfriend’s access to classified correspondence, reads Iraq’s new campaign amid a turbulent regional atmosphere. He hopes that Iraq can seize the opportunity presented by this upheaval, given how dramatically the geopolitical landscape in the Middle East has shifted over the past two years. In his words: “Iran has suffered major military setbacks. Hezbollah has been severely weakened. The Assad regime in Syria has fallen. To be sure, Iran remains a highly influential regional power; it retains substantial political leverage in Iraq, continues to support armed partners across the region, and demonstrates its ability to impose a strategic cost through maritime pressure in the Strait of Hormuz. However, the regional balance has become more fluid, and periods of strategic turbulence create opportunities for states capable of exploiting them with flexibility. Iraq now possesses such an opportunity.”<\/p>\n Naturally, Petraeus’s name has been floated\u2014though not yet officially\u2014to lead a US plan to dismantle the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) militias. If accurate, this plan, like others, belongs to the world of regional envoy Tom Barrack, who operates within the vacuum of American political thought during the Trump era. Through his agents, Barrack tills abandoned lands according to the Ottoman Iltizam (tax-farming) system: finding a “strongman” in each region to collect taxes in whatever manner that strongman sees fit. Certainly, Tom Barrack\u2019<\/span>s thesis will not be absent from this context, which is to “hand Iraq over to Turkey” (an unrealistic characterization, but used here to match Barrack’s own political culture).<\/p>\n In any case, and before diving into some details of the campaign led by the new Prime Minister, Ali Al-Zaidi, the nature of authority and the structure of its construction in Iraq and Syria\u2014to be specific here\u2014trap the “deans of the Trumpian era” into compounded errors. The assumption that a suit-and-tie-wearing figure in Baghdad saying in secret meetings with Americans that he wants to get rid of the PMF militias prompts this team of “deans” to take the matter seriously, as if the militia apparatus in Iraq were merely an anti-state phenomenon in the Iraqi context, and as if Al-Zaidi himself were not a product of this very system, with all its militias and technocrats.<\/p>\n It is nothing new for an incoming Iraqi prime minister to announce the launch of an anti-corruption campaign. Ever since the beginning of the parliamentary election campaigns in 2005, fighting corruption has been a staple of political platforms. However, this is the first time an Iraqi prime minister has launched an active field campaign involving raids and public pursuits of a wanted list charged with corruption and embezzlement of state funds. The scale of this operation has struck panic into those who believe they might be targeted next, and it has caused an international stir because the interlocking threads between corruption files and regional influence\u2014particularly Iranian\u2014are hiding in plain sight.<\/p>\n Banker and Businessman<\/strong><\/p>\n Ali Faleh Al-Zaidi entered the Iraqi premiership through an unconventional door. His career has been centered around being a businessman and banker, making him a compromise candidate within a political system that constantly searches for consensus figures whenever a political crisis intensifies. However, the banker arrived seeking to quickly shed his role as a “conflict-compromise figure among factions.” Instead, he is attempting to establish his own footing without the political guardianship of entrenched traditional forces, which have exhausted their popular capital due to a history of unfulfilled promises. This is compounded by the fact that low electoral capital matters little to armed groups that view their mission as far loftier than winning the approval of the “common folk”; they believe they are protecting Shia governance in Iraq, which was threatened and nearly collapsed in 2014.<\/p>\n The recent wave of arrests appeared on the surface to be a security and judicial assault on corruption networks within the state. Yet, its political significance runs much deeper. It represents the first true test for a prime minister who assumed power amidst domestic division, American pressure, Iranian caution, and a public treasury facing severe depletion following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the disruption of Iraqi oil exports.<\/p>\n A Man of Compromise<\/strong><\/p>\n Born in the second half of the 1980s, Al-Zaidi hails from Dhi Qar Governorate. Sources close to him present him as being qualified in law, finance, and banking, and a member of the Bar Association, before transitioning into the business world to manage financial, educational, and medical institutions. His name was previously associated with the South Islamic Bank\u2014which is tied to the very militias he now seeks to dismantle\u2014as well as extensive economic and commercial enterprises, alongside his presence in the media, education, and trade sectors.<\/p>\n How can a prime minister fight corruption when he was brought to power by the very forces that created it?<\/p>\n Al-Zaidi\u2019<\/span>s ascent to the premiership followed a prolonged crisis within the ruling coalition, the “Coordination Framework,” which sought a figure capable of forming a government without shattering internal balances. On May 14, 2026, the parliament partially granted confidence to his cabinet after voting on 14 ministers and postponing other portfolios. From the very first moment, his government appeared dictated by equilibrium in a country that never grants its prime ministers the luxury of peaceful beginnings.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, Al-Zaidi attempted to quickly carve out a defining brand for himself: fighting corruption. With the recent arrest campaign targeting members of parliament, officials, and figures tied to oil and public fund portfolios, he announced that the battle was moving to the ground. Early promises thus transformed into raids within the Green Zone, arrest warrants, and the exposure of networks suspected of plundering public funds or leveraging them for political gain, elections, and influence.<\/p>\n The Limits of Influence and the Law<\/strong><\/p>\n This campaign derives its uniqueness from the fact that it touches areas that remained protected for years, where a comprehensive system had turned the state into a cash cow for parties, factions, corporations, and brokers. Since 2003, hundreds of billions have vanished into stalled contracts, phantom projects, “ghost” salaries, lawless border crossings, and an oil sector that has long remained the state’s most enticing prize for political and economic networks.<\/p>\n Therefore, Al-Zaidi’s mission seems contingent upon the government’s ability to reach the very structure that made corruption an inherent part of the governing system. Can the state recover public funds? Can the judiciary continue its investigations far removed from political understandings? And does the prime minister possess the capacity to protect the accountability process when it edges close to figures who possess popular followings, weapons, and foreign allegiances?<\/p>\n Consequently, Al-Zaidi finds himself caught early on between dual pressures, which remain unresolved despite the first round of quiet raids targeting parts of Iran’s financial network. On one hand, the United States wants Baghdad to curb the influence of Iran-aligned militias, regulate funds and weapons, and prevent the Iraqi state from being used as a pipeline to evade sanctions or finance armed networks. On the other hand, Iran does not want the slogan of restricting weapons and fighting corruption to become a gateway to dismantling its allies’ influence within Iraqi institutions.<\/p>\n What business does Petraeus have with an anti-corruption campaign in Iraq? His business is that he reads it through the eyes of an old American general who once saw Iraq as a warzone, commanded a side of that war, and now theorizes on the “ethics of peace.” He believes that Iraq is a state that has passed the “survival test” and must now begin the test of governance. And there is no better beginning than the war on corruption\u2014the longest ongoing administrative battle in human history.<\/p>\n Has Iraq truly ceased to be a state merely trying to survive, while Tom Barrack roams the region with plans built on investment returns rather than human beings and their destinies?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Barely two days had passed since the launch of a new anti-corruption campaign in Iraq when the former commander of US forces in Iraq, David Petraeus, published his op-ed in The Washington Post. He swiftly concluded\u2014paradoxically, before any significant results had even materialized\u2014that the campaign represents one of the most important political developments in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":14665,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"jnews_post_split":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,61],"tags":[1321,382,1212,964],"ppma_author":[151],"class_list":["post-14664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-slider","tag-cia","tag-iraq","tag-middle-east","tag-united-states"],"authors":[{"term_id":151,"user_id":13,"is_guest":0,"slug":"hussain-jummo","display_name":"Hussain Jummo","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Jummo-3.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Jummo-3.jpg"},"0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14664"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14666,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14664\/revisions\/14666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14664"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=14664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}