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Baghdad fills its last cabinet seats, and Washington says nothing about Khazali

Parliament approved 11 outstanding posts on 15 October, five months after Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi took office. The deputy premiership went to the brother of the Asaib Ahl al-Haq leader, and the only American reaction on the record came from a congressman.

Iraq’s parliament approved the remainder of Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s cabinet on Thursday 15 October, completing a government that had taken office earlier in the year, Reuters reported. The National, which carried the most granular account on 16 October, said 11 key positions were approved at a full parliamentary session, among them Defence Minister Nayef Al Shammari and Interior Minister Yasir Al Maliki — the son-in-law of former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, the detail The National led on. The Associated Press listed three deputy prime ministers plus new interior, defence, planning, higher education and culture ministers, with the rest of the cabinet filled five months earlier. One seat stayed empty: the vote on the migration and displacement nominee was postponed over disagreement among the parties. Al-Zaidi said the appointments opened “a phase of accelerated, diligent work” and pledged to implement the government’s programme.

The deputy premiership that drew the attention went to Laith al-Khazali, brother of Qais al-Khazali, who leads the Iran-aligned Asaib Ahl al-Haq. The New Arab notes that US forces arrested Laith al-Khazali in 2007 over allegations relating to an attack in Karbala that January in which five American soldiers were killed; The National described him as US-sanctioned. The other two deputies are Mohammed Ali Tamim of the Sunni Taqadum party and Asas Coalition leader Muhsin Al Mandalawi. The sharpest American response on the record came from Representative Joe Wilson, Republican of South Carolina, who wrote on X that Khazali is “a designated terrorist and Iranian puppet whose militia AAH killed Americans and Iraqis.” Wilson sits in Congress, not in the administration. There was no immediate official US statement on the appointment.

Al Jazeera tied the completion of the cabinet directly to the fiscal emergency, reporting on 16 October that the vote finalised appointments against severe liquidity shortages stemming from the regional conflict, and noting that before the war Iraq exported roughly 3.5 million barrels a day through the Strait of Hormuz, generating 90 percent of government revenue. Al-Zaidi framed the vote the same way, telling parliament the regional conflict had posed exceptional economic and security challenges. He is formally an independent, a banker by background, affiliated with the Coordination Framework, who was backed by President Donald Trump on taking office and has sought to hold relations with both Washington and Tehran — a balance that narrowed after the United States and Iran went to war on 28 February. One figure to hold loosely: The New Arab’s 13 October pre-vote exclusive reported agreement on nine ministers and four deputy prime ministers. Three were seated.

Assessment: The silence from the administration is the signal, not Wilson’s post. A White House that rejected Nouri al-Maliki’s candidacy in February had the option of saying something about a sanctioned deputy premier and did not take it, which suggests Washington has decided that al-Zaidi’s survival is worth more than the composition of his bench — or that, with the last US troops out since 30 September, it no longer has a cheap way to object. Read the Khazali seat as the Coordination Framework’s price for letting an independent banker keep the premiership through a revenue collapse. Treat pre-vote party arithmetic from single outlets as negotiating positions; only the floor vote counts.

A munitions store burns at a PMF base in east Baghdad as the casualty figure shifts

The Popular Mobilisation Forces first said there were no casualties, then said five people were hurt by exploding obsolete ammunition. Two anonymous sources told the wires a PMF member was killed.

An explosion hit an ammunition store at a Popular Mobilisation Forces headquarters in eastern Baghdad on the evening of Saturday 17 October. The most precise geography came from +964 Media, which timestamped its first report at 18:39 local and placed the facility east of the Canal Expressway near Saad al-Witri Hospital in the Sadr al-Qanat area, reporting that residents of nearby Kriat saw flames and that the blast was heard across surrounding neighbourhoods. The PMF media directorate’s first statement said no casualties had been reported and that the cause and extent of damage were not immediately known. A later PMF statement said a stockpile of obsolete ammunition had exploded, injuring five people and starting a fire that had since been brought under control. Neither statement acknowledged a death.

Wire copy carried by Arab News, bdnews24 and the Egyptian Gazette put the toll differently, citing a security source and a medical source: one PMF member killed and four others wounded. The Egyptian Gazette’s version of the same wire gives one killed and five wounded. Those accounts rest on two anonymous sources and have not been officially confirmed; the PMF has conceded injuries but not a fatality. The “obsolete ammunition” explanation is the organisation’s own, issued within the hour and before any stated damage assessment — a causal claim made by the party that owns the site, not an established cause. Iraq’s recent record includes an unexplained 2026 explosion at the PMF headquarters in Jurf al-Nasr that killed two and injured eight.

Assessment: An ammunition store does catch fire, and in a force holding ageing stock across dense urban ground it will happen without an enemy. What is worth watching is not the cause but the speed: the PMF produced a cause before it produced a damage assessment, and revised its casualty figure upward only after the wires had a death from two unnamed sources. That sequence is how an organisation manages a story it cannot yet see the end of. The test over the coming days is whether a funeral appears for a man the PMF says does not exist. Until then, neither the fatality nor the accident is confirmed.

An Iraqi brigadier is killed in Diyala three weeks after the last Americans leave

Islamic State remnants hit federal police near Hawija on 5 October and killed a divisional communications commander on 14 October. The first test of Baghdad’s claim that the group is finished is running now.

US forces completed their withdrawal from Iraq on 30 September, ending the military mission in the country, Reuters reported. Six days later, Islamic State claimed an attack on a federal police regiment southwest of Kirkuk, near Hawija and about 70km from the city, in which one policeman was killed and four wounded by machine gun and sniper fire, according to two security sources who spoke to Reuters. It was the first reported ISIS assault on Iraqi security forces since the withdrawal was completed. Iraq’s Security Media Cell said on 13 October that Iraqi forces had conducted airstrikes on Islamic State targets west of Kirkuk. On 14 October the Ministry of Defence announced that Brigadier General Ahat Yasser Khudair Hussein, commander of the 11th Infantry Division’s communications directorate, had been killed in a bombing blamed on an ISIS remnant, alongside Warrant Officer Mutaz Shahid Abbas; a third soldier later died of wounds. The air force struck in Diyala the same day.

The sequence is drawn together by Seth Frantzman for the Long War Journal, published by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies — a think tank with a declared policy orientation on Iraq and Iran, and the only outlet tying the 13–14 October strikes and the commander’s death into one account. It notes that the airstrikes and the killing came as al-Zaidi met US Special Presidential Envoy Tom Barrack on 13 October, and that on 10 October the parliamentarian Mazen Gharib, a member of the Security and Defence Committee, warned of Islamic State activity in northern Iraq following the American departure. The benchmark Baghdad set for itself is specific: then-prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani argued in September 2025 that ISIS had “lost its ability to plan, operate, control territory, or threaten security,” citing four attacks in 2025 against 42 in 2024.

Assessment: Three incidents in ten days do not reconstitute an insurgency, and the Hawija–Kirkuk–Diyala triangle has produced rural ambushes continuously since 2017. What has changed is who absorbs them politically. The 4-versus-42 figure was the argument for ending the coalition mission; it now belongs to whoever has to explain the next funeral. Expect the number to be contested rather than refuted — Baghdad counts claimed attacks, its critics count incidents. Note also the carrier: the fullest narrative of the past week comes from an organisation that opposed the withdrawal, which does not make the deaths less real but does shape which strikes get counted.