Iraq’s parliament met Sunday for its first time since October 10’s election, voting to reelect Mohammed Halbousi as speaker with an overwhelming majority of 200 votes out of 228 in attendance.
The first parliament meeting is chaired by the oldest MP, which led to some complications. Mahmoud Mashhadani is the oldest MP, but needed to be taken to the hospital just minutes after the start.
The session was resumed with the second-oldest MP, and they managed to get the speaker vote done. That done, they now have 30 days to elect a president, traditionally a Kurdish post.
That president will appoint the bloc with the largest plurality to try to form a majority government. This is expected to be Moqtada al-Sadr’s party. That is being contested by a rival Shi’ite bloc calling itself the Coordination Framework, which claims to command the loyalty of 88 seats to Sadr’s 73.
It’s good that they’re still trying. We’ll know their government finally functions when they boot out all the American troops.
The United States holds Iraqi oil revenues hostage to ensure that this does not happen.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-warns-iraq-it-risks-losing-access-to-key-bank-account-if-troops-told-to-leave-11578759629
This article is about Trump
Administration threats to Iraq. True, oil revenue from oil sale to US can be confiscated, but not all Iraqi oil fields are under US control. I believe it is a rather small quantity compared to concessions to other countries, including China and Russia.
No. Iraq’s revenues from exports of oil (regardless of buyer) are paid into an account controlled by the United States.
You may recall that the United States has done something similar with monies ostensibly payable to the former regime in Afghanistan, which is why the current government cannot access those monies.