(L to R) Iraq’s President Abdul Latif Rashid, Qais al-Khazali, head of the Asaib Ahl al-Haq, one of the member factions of the Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation Forces) paramilitaries, Prime Minister Mohammed Shiaa al-Sudani, and former prime ministe
Iraq’s upcoming parliamentary election is looking increasingly like a personal duel between two of its biggest contenders. An ambitious incumbent, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani in one corner, and Nouri al-Maliki, the two-time former prime minister and patriarch of the country’s political establishment in the other.
The fact that the two are where they are today is the culmination of a personal and political drama: the apprentice turning on his master. For years, Sudani was a loyal protégé. Once a long-time member of Maliki’s Dawa Party and a fixture in Maliki’s State of Law Coalition, he served as a minister in successive cabinets. His eventual break from Maliki’s orbit allowed him, years later, to be presented as an acceptable compromise candidate when the Coordination Framework (CF) needed a prime minister in 2022.
The old guard expected a pliant manager who would administer their interests. Instead, they got an executive who began methodically using the state’s resources to build his own power base.
This personal rivalry is merely the most visible front in a much larger war. The election outcome will not only determine the next premier but will also define the future of the ruling Coordination Framework, because the core struggle is not for the title of prime minister, but for control over the next government’s policies, appointments and vast budgets.
Indeed, the pact underpinning the CF has been temporarily suspended for this election. Its constituent parts, Maliki’s State of Law, Hadi al-Amiri’s Badr Organisation, Qais al-Khazali’s Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq and Sudani’s own burgeoning coalition, are competing against each other. However, this is not a rupture, as the plan to reconsolidate is explicit. Nouri al-Maliki himself has confirmed this understanding, stating plainly: “After the elections, we are one bloc.”
The goal is to reassemble their collective strength after the vote to form the “largest bloc” in parliament, thereby ensuring they retain the constitutional right to name the next prime minister.
The legal basis for this is a 2010 Federal Supreme Court ruling, which defined the “largest bloc” not as the election’s winner, but as any coalition formed after the vote. The ruling institutionalised a system where the popular mandate can be legally overturned by backroom deals, allowing runner-up factions to unite and claim the right to govern.
Thrust into power by the very cartel he now competes against, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has spent his term cultivating a profile distinct from the warlord-politicians who elevated him. His strategy is clear: run on a tangible record of “E’mar wa Tanmiya” (Reconstruction and Development), and his single greatest asset is the power of incumbency, which he has used to deploy the state’s resources into visible projects including bridges, roads and public works, building a powerful brand around service delivery. He has also massively expanded the public payroll, creating his own burgeoning base within the state bureaucracy in the process.
Sudani’s goal is to alter the arithmetic of power. By projecting himself as a national leader with a non-sectarian, technocratic rhetoric, coupled with a deft diplomatic balancing act between Washington and Tehran, he has earned international praise, with figures like French President Emmanuel Macron lauding his “great agenda” for the country.
This resonates with a broad swathe of the Iraqi public, including Sunnis, Kurds and disillusioned Shia voters tired of sectarian rhetoric, who increasingly desire functional governance over ideological struggle. In running on his own list, Sudani seeks to prove that his popular legitimacy gives him more leverage than the historical claims of the CF old guard.
For Nouri al-Maliki, the election represents an opportunity to reassert his authority as the patriarch of the post-2003 political order. He views Sudani’s project as a dangerous heresy. Power, in his mind, flows from the agreements between the political-military chieftains of the Framework, not from the amorphous will of the street.
The rivalry is bitter. Following a contentious phone call where the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio demanded the disarmament of Iran-backed militias, a high-ranking member of Maliki’s State of Law coalition publicly accused Sudani’s government of maintaining a “subservience” to American dictates.
Maliki himself delivers a more calculated critique. He insists that Sudani, as prime minister, has an unfair electoral advantage by virtue of controlling the state’s vast resources and should be barred from competing. He portrays Sudani’s flagship service projects as a cynical “exploitation of state resources for electoral purposes,” pointing specifically to the distribution of 8,600 “thank-you” letters to state employees as a blatant form of campaign promotion.
While acknowledging that Sudani’s government has undertaken some reconstruction work, he dismisses it as being “below the required level,” a carefully calibrated jab designed to undermine Sudani’s core political brand without appearing overtly obstructive.
The strategy’s ultimate expression is one of gatekeeping. In a televised interview, Maliki positioned himself as an arbiter of the premiership, revealing that ten hopeful candidates had been “presented to him” for his assessment. This point, it seems, was to demote the incumbent Sudani to the status of a mere applicant, a point Maliki drove home by declaring that any candidate,”even Mohammed Shia”, cannot succeed unless “embraced by the Framework.” The message is a reminder to all players: the path to the premiership runs through the “gate of the Coordination Framework,” and Maliki is among the insiders that holds the key.
Indeed, beyond the challenge of overcoming a powerful old guard, Sudani’s predicament is compounded by two external factors. The first is Moqtada al-Sadr’s decision to boycott the election. His absence from the ballot is expected to lower turnout and will likely cede dozens of seats to rivals. Sudani, with his focus on anti-corruption and state-building (rhetoric that often mirrors Sadr’s own) is seen as a pragmatic alternative, far better positioned than the hardline Maliki to attract a significant portion of these disillusioned voters. However, Sadr remains a powerful wildcard, capable of destabilising the political process through street protests if he feels the outcome is illegitimate.
The second factor is escalating pressure from the Trump administration, with the latest Rubio-Sudani phone call being a critical episode. The US readout was brutally direct, stressing the “urgency in disarming Iran-backed militias that undermine Iraq’s sovereignty … and pilfer Iraqi resources for Iran.” The Iraqi statement, by contrast, was an exercise in omission and push-back, speaking of “partnership” and warning against “unilateral steps.”
This chasm further underscores Sudani’s difficult road ahead. To secure a second term and unlock the American investment his economic programme needs, he must confront the very armed factions that form the backbone of his political support. Additionally, Washington’s appointment of Mark Savaya, a non-diplomat businessman and Trump loyalist, as a special envoy signals a heightened and likely more aggressive future US posture on this file.
For Washington, the disarmament of militias is becoming non-negotiable, making Sudani’s political future even more precarious. Defying Washington risks economic isolation for Iraq, while acceding to its demands risks a violent backlash from his own coalition partners.
While Sudani’s coalition could well emerge with more parliamentary seats than Maliki’s, to translate that into a second term as Prime Minister, Sudani would have to engineer complicated realignments. First, his coalition must decisively outperform Maliki’s and other CF factions, establishing him as the undeniable centre of gravity within the Shia electorate. Second, and more importantly, he must leverage that result to either force a new, more favourable consensus within the CF or, more audaciously, build a new majority coalition with Sunni, Kurdish and independent reformist parties, daring the hardliners to play the role of spoiler.
Sudani’s path to a second term is therefore narrow and fraught with risk. But even if he is blocked from the top job, he is playing a bigger game: to ensure his electoral list emerges as an indispensable force. A strong result would guarantee him and his allies senior cabinet posts, a deputy PM role perhaps or key ministries, thereby cementing his influence and protecting the networks he has built, effectively creating a powerful new pole within the establishment.
This power play forces a fundamental question upon Iraq’s political system: will legitimacy continue to be a gift bestowed by an elite cartel, or can it be earned through a direct contract with the Iraqi people? The answer will reveal whether the system is capable of evolution.
