Iraq’s Election Shock Sets Off a West-vs-Iran Showdown
Pro?West Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al?Sudani performed strongly in the 11 November parliamentary elections – the seventh since Saddam Hussein’s fall in 2003. With turnout around 56%, Sudani’s Reconstruction and Development Coalition emerged as the largest faction, winning 1.3 million votes out of nearly 11 million cast, beating the pro-Iran State of Law Alliance by 370,000. However, Sudani’s faction still only received 15% of the seats in parliament, totalling 46 out of 329. On the other hand, pro-Iran parties collectively won 121 seats — the largest share, albeit not quite enough to form the government by themselves. Who ultimately takes the prime ministerial slot now is crucial not just for Iraq, but also for the two superpower blocs centred in Washington and Beijing who regard the country as critical to their plans for the entire Middle East and beyond. So, what happens next?
Technically, the procedure looks straightforward and quick. According to Iraq’s 2005 Constitution, once the election results have been verified, the president asks the newly elected parliament to meet within 15 days. In that first gathering, parliament elects a speaker and two deputies by straight majority vote. It can then choose a new president – provided there is a two-thirds majority for a single candidate — or extend the sitting president’s term. This is currently Abdul Latif Rashid, a Kurdish politician and member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, as the presidency is a role that traditionally goes to a Kurd. Once this has been finalised, the new president authorises the bloc that holds the most seats in the new parliament to form a cabinet led by its chosen nominee for prime minister. Although pro?Iran parties hold the most seats, they are not a unified bloc — Sudani’s coalition is. Whilst it might be expected that he would be the choice of his bloc for prime minister, the past has seen the apparent leader removed before he could take the top job. In any event, the prime ministerial nominee then has 30 days to put together a list of prospective cabinet members and submit it to parliament for a majority vote of confidence. If this vote fails, the president must select another nominee to attempt 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 as long as a year to conclude. The basis for this approach was to safeguard against the re-emergence of a single dominant force in Iraqi politics again, especially any resurgence of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party. In this regard, it has succeeded so far, but the process has militated instead into long-running dealings between the three major groupings in the country: Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds. Since 2005, this has manifested into a broad power-sharing agreement between the three, with the largest of them – the Shias – assuming the prime ministerial role, the Kurds taking the presidential one, and the Sunnis securing the role of speaker.
Sudani’s core problem here lies in the fact that his Reconstruction and Development Coalition bloc is part of the broader Shia-centric Coordination Framework, which also comprises an array of pro-Iran parties to varying degrees of zealotry. At the extreme end is the al?Sadiqoun bloc, with 27 seats, the political wing of U.S.-designated terrorist organisation Asaib Ahl al-Haq. Winning the same number of seats is the slightly more moderate pro-Iran State of Law bloc. The Coordination Framework also consists of pro-Iran blocs the Badr Organisation, the National State Forces Alliance, and other smaller factions. The problem here is that during his first tenure as prime minister – especially over the last year – Sudani has appeared to move away from Iran (and its key sponsors China and Russia) and towards the West (and its central presence, the U.S.). This has been seen in the re-entry into Iraq of multiple major oil and gas firms from the West, which have been awarded huge exploration and development contracts that are crucial to the fabric of Iraq’s hydrocarbons sector, as analysed in full in my latest book on the new global oil market order.
These include TotalEnergies’ US$27 billion four-pronged megadeal (incorporating the vital Common Seawater Supply Project) and BP’s US$25 billion five-pronged deal in northern Iraq, together with major deals signed by the U.S.’s Chevron and ExxonMobil. It can well be argued that investment from these firms has been instrumental in the notable infrastructure improvement projects launched by Sudani that benefit Iraq. This rapprochement with the West also played a key part in keeping Iraq out of the recent war between Iran and Israel, according to senior legal sources exclusively spoken to by OilPrice.com recently. However, these moves are viewed with suspicion and some hostility by the pro-Iran factions. This is because, aside from the political influence that such deals might buy the West, these exploration and development sites are legally allowed to maintain an extensive on-the-ground presence of Western employees and whatever level of ‘security personnel’ the firms see fit.
In all these developments, it should not be forgotten that both the West and China-Russia-Iran see Iraq as a pivotal space in the fabric of the Middle East’s power balance. Indeed, as exclusively revealed to OilPrice.com some years ago by a very high-ranking official from the Kremlin: “By keeping the West out of energy deals in Iraq, the end of Western hegemony in the Middle East will become the decisive chapter in the West’s final demise.” Consequently, the push has been on from Russia and China – especially since the U.S.’s unilateral withdrawal from the ‘nuclear deal’ with Iran in 2018 – to remove all Western firms from southern Iraq and from the semi-autonomous Kurdistan territory in its north as well. On the other side of the superpower equation, the U.S. and its key allies believe breaking the multi-layered links between Iraq and Iran will not only significantly weaken Baghdad’s neighbour but its key sponsors, China and Russia, too. The U.S. and Israel also have a further strategic interest in utilising the Iraqi Kurdistan region as a base for ongoing monitoring operations against Iran. As also detailed in my latest book. The West additionally sees this northern territory as a critical security bridge from NATO member Turkey into the Middle East and beyond. It is in the context of this massive geopolitical power balance that news of Russian oil giants Rosneft’s and Lukoil’s downscaling of its operations in Iraq should be seen.
Nouri al-Maliki is the only Iraqi prime minister to have two terms in office since 2003, but his second term was broadly seen as a failure in the country. The popular view is that the second term featured an upsurge in government corruption and a mishandling of Iraq’s position between the West, the East and Iran. Both allegations have also been levelled at Sudani, including by some of his previously onside Coordination Framework allies, particularly arising from his opposition to completely expelling the U.S. military from the country. His refusal earlier this year to authorise the signing of a new law that would have legally upgraded the broadly pro-Iran Popular Mobilisation Forces to a permanent arm of the Iraqi state was also seen by some Coordination Framework allies as a betrayal in this context. It may then be that the only way Sudani sees of securing the crucial support of this group for a second prime ministerial term is to move back towards a more pro-Iran stance, at least in the short term. Otherwise, Iraq’s likely new prime minister may well emerge from the harder-line ranks of the grouping.
By Simon Watkins for Oilprice.com
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