Iraq’s prime minister carries the title, but not the power

Al-Zaidi’s Washington visit exposed the pressure reshaping Baghdad’s politics, security and economy.Analyst and journalist.Published On 15 Jul 2026Ali al-Zaidi met US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday as Iraq’s prime minister. He carried the title. The power was another matter.Eleven weeks earlier, after months of paralysis, the Shia alliance which is known as the Coordination Framework had taken just 25 minutes to choose him. That sudden consensus was forged under intense pressure from Washington DC.The United States Treasury had frozen Iraq’s dollar lifeline, the cash shipments that fly from New Jersey to the Central Bank of Iraq. Nouri al-Maliki, a former prime minister, and the top contender to return to the premiership had to abandon his plans because of Washington’s veto.Al-Zaidi, a 40-year-old banker with no political base, was the man left standing.His lack of an established political base is part of his usefulness. He owes his position less to Baghdad’s ballot box than to the pressure exerted by Trump’s Treasury.The banker’s own ledger is not clear.In 2024, Iraq’s Central Bank barred al-Zaidi’s own institution, Al-Janoob Islamic Bank, from US-dollar transactions as part of a wider crackdown intended to curb illicit dollar flows to Iran. He was never charged. Neither the bank nor the man is currently sanctioned. But the file exists. Its existence could give Washington another source of leverage should al-Zaidi drag his feet.The real power in Baghdad now sits in one man’s portfolio. Tom Barrack holds three titles at once: ambassador to Turkiye, envoy to Syria, and now envoy to Iraq. His influence rests less on diplomacy than on Washington’s financial leverage over Baghdad. Iraq’s oil revenue sits in an account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In April, Washington blocked a cash shipment of nearly $500m drawn from those revenues and suspended parts of its security cooperation. Oil funds roughly 90 percent of Iraq’s budget. Barrack does not need to threaten military force when the administration he represents can reach directly into the financial system on which the Iraqi state depends.