Senior US official to speak with Halbousi, new Speaker of Iraqi Parliament
WASHINGTON DC (Kurdistan 24) — On Tuesday, State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert announced that “somebody at a high level” in the State Department would speak with Mohammed al-Halbousi, formerly the governor of Anbar province, who is now the newly-elected speaker of the Iraqi parliament.
“I would imagine that at the appropriate point, somebody at a high level—perhaps it’s the Secretary—perhaps it’s someone else—would be speaking with him,” Nauert said, as she answered a question from Kurdistan 24 regarding Halbousi’s recent statement that he opposed sanctions on Iran and would invite his Iranian counterpart to Baghdad.
Halbousi ran on the Iranian-backed Fatih (Conquest) list in Iraq’s May 12 elections. His main rival for the position of speaker of parliament was Iraq’s former Defense Minister, Khalid al-Obeidi, whom the US had backed.
Following the vote on Saturday that chose Halbousi over Obeidi, Qais al-Khazali, head of the Iranian-backed militia, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, tweeted his congratulations to Halbousi.
نجاح تحالف البناء في فوز مرشحه بمنصب رئيس مجلس النواب العراقي وبالجولة الاولى وسحب مرشحه لمنصب النائب الاول وتصويته لصالح مرشح سائرون هي رسالة بليغة معناها أننا نستطيع ان نتفاهم ونتنازل بَعضُنَا للبعض الاخر وتعني (انا واخوي على الغريب)
— قيس الخزعلي (@Qais_alkhazali) September 15, 2018
بداية موفقة وان شاء الله القادم افضل.
Khazali’s congratulatory tweet concluded with the old Arab proverb, “me and my brother against the foreigner.”
The US Congress is seeking to impose sanctions on Khazali and his militia for their pro-Iranian and anti-American activities going back to the 2003 Iraq war.
Since Saddam’s overthrow, Iraq’s speaker of parliament has been a Sunni Arab, as is Halbousi. But he is the most pro-Iranian of those figures, as was suggested to a senior State Department official.
However, the official merely responded, “We respect Iraq’s sovereignty.”
Analysts have begun to suggest that Iran is beating the US in the competition for influence in Iraq. Ranj Alaaldin, a Brookings Institution scholar, suggested, “Iran’s favored candidates are also set to get the presidency and premiership,” while the Middle East news magazine, Al-Monitor, titled its report on Halbousi’s victory “Iran 1, US 0.”
The US had counted on Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi securing a second term. But since last week, when Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s highest Shia religious authority, and Muqtada al-Sadr, the mercurial Shia cleric whose list won the most parliamentary seats, expressed opposition to Abadi, that outcome has come to seem extremely unlikely.
The Trump administration, however, apparently remains unfazed and continues a long-established policy. But it does seem that the difficulties that Washington is experiencing in Baghdad are driving it toward increased engagement in the Kurdistan Region.
Over the past week, Brett McGurk, Special Presidential Envoy to the Global Coalition against the Islamic State (IS), has held numerous meetings in the Kurdistan Region: with Masoud Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and former president of the Kurdistan Region; with the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government; and with the head of the Kurdistan Region Security Council, as well as officials from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
One leading contender for the position of prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, who has previously held the positions of Iraqi Oil Minister and Finance Minister, has said that the Kurds will have the “main word” in choosing the next prime minister because they are the swing vote between the Shia blocs.
Editing by Nadia Riva
