Once and possibly future Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s candidacy is increasingly in doubt this weekend, with reports that President Trump’s demand he not be allowed to return to office increasing the possibility that the Coordination Framework bloc may withdraw him as their choice for premier.
Last year’s Iraq elections ended with the usual deeply split parliament, though the State of Law Party’s fourth place finish with 6% of the vote was generally seen as enough to give Maliki the coalition leadership, since current PM Mohammed al-Sudani does not intend to return.
Late last month, Trump demanded that Maliki step down from the nomination, but he refused at the time, saying that the US should stay out of Iraq’s internal affairs. Maliki was already Iraq’s PM from 2006 through 2014.
Former Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki | Image is CC 4.0, from Wikimedia
Now though, the reports are that coalition formation has slowed, and Maliki has even told the Framework he will withdraw his candidacy if two-thirds of the coalition agrees to remove him. That seems increasingly possible, even if no obvious alternative candidate exists.
The Hikma Movement reported that the US had extended Trump’s threats to an outright ultimatum, demanding Maliki be withdrawn by Sunday. That’s yet to happen, but they predicted a vote would take place before the deadline.
Underpinning this whole thing is that after the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq, the country was restructured such that all of Iraq’s oil revenue was paid in US dollars through the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Since that revenue is almost the entirety of Iraq’s government budget, that means the US can virtually seize Iraq’s treasury at any time any bankrupt the country on a moment’s notice.
Though this was theoretically always a concern, it has only become a significant problem since President Trump started using threats of doing so to effectively veto Iraqi government policy and now, it seems, composition.
Though no one in Iraq’s current coalition really had a lot of support, Maliki was seen as the least-bad alternative because he was palatable to both Shi’ites and Kurdish partners. If Trump is successful in ending his candidacy, it’s not clear who would be the next up to try to form a government, or if whoever that is would be more to Trump’s liking.
