CHATHAM HOUSE What Nouri al-Maliki’s prime minister bid tells us about Iraq The surprise return of the controversial former leader has revealed that Iraq is still a US–Iran battleground. Expert comment Published 6 February 2026

 CHATHAM HOUSE 

What Nouri al-Maliki’s prime minister bid tells us about Iraq

The surprise return of the controversial former leader has revealed that Iraq is still a US–Iran battleground.

Expert comment

Published 6 February 2026

Updated 9 February 2026 —

4 minute READ

Image — Former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki after casting his ballot at a polling station in Baghdad on 11 November 2025. Photo by AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP via Getty Images.

Dr Renad Mansour

Senior Research Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme

On 27 January, US President Donald Trump surprised many with a blunt warning on social media: if Iraq reinstated the veteran politician Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister, the US would withdraw its support. 

The public threat exposed a reality of foreign influence in Iraq that the country’s leaders insist they have left behind. Despite their claims of renewed sovereignty, marked by the end of the US troop presence and the UN mission last year, Iraq remains a battleground for US–Iran rivalry. 

When that contest intensifies, Iraq’s fragility is quickly exposed. This time, even as Tehran grappled with mounting domestic and regional pressures, it showed little sign of strategic fatigue, reacting swiftly to promote its preferred candidate in Baghdad.

Meanwhile Washington, which had appeared to be distracted on Iraq under a president prone to spectacle over strategy, has since scrambled to oppose al-Maliki and Iran’s influence. 

The return of al-Maliki? 

Al-Maliki’s re-emergence as a prime-ministerial candidate caught almost all Iraqi political actors off guard. He served as prime minister from 2006 to 2014, but had not since been seen as a viable candidate to return. Yet despite holding no formal office for more than a decade, al-Maliki has remained one of Iraq’s most influential political brokers, in a system where power is often exercised informally rather than through official institutions.

Al-Maliki was in office when Iraq lost nearly a third of its territory to the Islamic State in 2014, a collapse that ultimately forced his resignation. Many Iraqi and international observers trace ISIS’s rise to the sectarian policies his government was accused of pursuing against Sunni Arab communities in north-western Iraq. At the time, opposition to his return was underscored by a letter from Iraq’s Shia highest clerical authority in Najaf, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. 

Related work

Iraq 2025 election: Reform candidates pushed out by a system that rejects change

Since regime change, Iraq’s elites have often favoured prime minister candidates who are weak, consensus figures, acceptable to all sides because they pose little threat to any of them. 

Following the November 2025 Iraqi elections, this was the expected outcome of the country’s long post-election government formation process. But in a sudden and unexpected turn in January 2026, al-Maliki emerged as a frontrunner after being endorsed by parts (but not all) of the ruling Shia Coordination Framework, within which al-Maliki divides opinion. While his candidacy remains unlikely to succeed, it threatens to upend convention and mark the return of a strong partisan prime minister. 

Tehran’s enduring hand 

Al-Maliki’s potential return also reflects Iran’s enduring influence in Iraq, even as Tehran faces mounting pressures at home and across the region. 

Since leaving office, al-Maliki has kept close relations with Iran. Among his final acts as prime minister in 2014 was the formalization of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an umbrella organization of armed groups. Several of these groups, including Kataeb Hezbollah, maintain strong ties to Tehran. 

The proliferation of these armed groups has made someone like al-Maliki particularly valuable to Iran as it seeks to exert influence over a fragmented security landscape in Iraq. This is especially the case since the 2020 US assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and PMF leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in Baghdad, which removed two key power brokers who had attempted to maintain cohesion over the growing constellation of armed groups. 

Iranian army cadets

Related work

The EU’s IRGC terrorist designation marks a major shift on Iran

For Tehran, Iraq is the most strategically valuable of the various conflict arenas where its influence and allied networks have eroded since 7 October 2023.  Iraq, which shares a long border with Iran, serves as a critical security buffer closely entwined with Iran’s own domestic stability. At a time when Tehran is battered by sanctions, Iraq also functions as an economic lifeline, offering access to trade, hard currency and channels through which sanctioned goods can still circulate. 

For these reasons, Iran cannot tolerate prolonged uncertainty or instability in Baghdad. This explains Tehran’s backing of al-Maliki. He is a trusted figure able to impose order on a system that Iran can no longer afford to leave in the hands of a weak, transitional leader who would need to learn the ropes. 

US caught off-guard?

Washington, by contrast, had largely allowed Iraq slip down its list of priorities. Working through the US Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, the Trump administration directed its efforts on other areas including Israel-Palestine, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. 

Amid a reduced focus on Iraq, in October 2025 the Trump administration appointed a close ally of President Trump, Mark Savaya, to serve as the US envoy to Baghdad. Savaya was still being orientated into the role and had not yet visited Baghdad since being appointed, leaving a vacuum of US presence, both during and after the November elections. 

Once it emerged that al-Maliki was a frontrunner to return as prime minister in the post-election government formation talks, Washington moved to re-engage. According to Reuters reports citing unnamed sources, Savaya was sidelined (reports that he initially denied) and Tom Barrack, the US Ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy for Syria, added Iraq to his portfolio. Barrack and other US officials made a flurry of calls to senior Iraqi leaders to reiterate their opposition to ‘a government installed by Iran’, in reference to al-Maliki’s candidacy. 

A sobering reality

This episode has underscored a sobering reality for many Iraqis. The country has enjoyed relative calm in comparison to neighbouring states engulfed in conflict since 7 October. But this stability remains precarious. It rests on fragile foundations and a political system that is still fragmented and exposed to external influences.

Iran, for its part, has shown it retains the capacity to react quickly and shape outcomes in Iraq. As one senior Iraqi official told me: ‘Iran is not just one person – the supreme leader. It is a state of institutions. And those institutions are present in Iraq, as if nothing has changed.’

Washington, too, revealed the persistence of its leverage. For many Iraqis, the fact that a single social media post by a US president could recalibrate the political process was a stark reminder that their country lacks full sovereignty, notwithstanding official claims to the contrary.

What next?

Al-Maliki’s candidacy now appears unlikely to survive this convergence of internal and foreign pressures. Yet for Iraq’s fragile stability to endure, the government formation process must move swiftly, avoiding another year-long paralysis that followed previous elections. 

The next government will also have to confront its lack of full sovereignty, while continuing to keep Iraq insulated from the regional wars still raging around it. Failure to do so would expose the country to a series of mounting crises. 

Most prominent is the fallout from a renewed US–Iran confrontation. Any existential threat to the Islamic Republic would inevitably reverberate across Iraq, overwhelming a political system ill-equipped to manage the fallout. 

Article second half

Iraq also faces renewed instability in Syria on Iraq’s western border. Recent developments, notably Damascus’s offensive against the Kurdish-led SDF in Syria, have reshaped the security balance, including the transfer of thousands of ISIS detainees back into Iraq.

Iraq’s economy is also reliant on debt and high oil prices, meaning any prolonged downturn in oil markets would strain the government’s ability to pay public sector salaries. This is compounded by intensifying climate stress, marked by water shortages that are already reshaping daily life. 

These are challenges Iraq can no longer afford to avoid. It needs a government in place to navigate them.