Iraq reaches the withdrawal deadline with no defence minister and nine cabinet seats empty

A research briefing published by the UK House of Commons Library on or about 21 September, CBP-10829, records the position bluntly: “as of September, many ministerial posts are unfilled because of disputes within the ruling coalition.” Parliament gave Zaidi a vote of confidence on 14 May and approved 14 of 23 ministers; nominees for planning and higher education were rejected outright. Nine portfolios were left empty — interior, defence, culture, reconstruction and housing, migration, labour and social affairs, youth, planning and higher education. Defence has been run in an acting capacity by Mohammed Shia al-Sudani since 28 January, after Thabit al-Abbasi left, and the Council of Ministers listing still shows it vacant. Zaidi, 41 and the youngest prime minister in Iraq’s history, had never held political office; he was backed by the Shia Coordination Framework but was not its first candidate, and reached the job only after more than five months of deadlock following the November 2025 election.

The Commons briefing cites Chatham House analysis, echoed by the International Crisis Group, that Iraqi parliamentarians favour consensus prime ministers precisely because they “pose little threat to any of them.” Hayder al-Shakeri, a research fellow at Chatham House, told Arab News in June that “among the political class, there is recognition that US pressure has made the PMF/armed groups question harder to avoid, but there is little appetite for a direct confrontation that could destabilize the new government,” and that “the emphasis on structure and appointments rather than disarmament reflects the fact that administrative reforms are generally easier to negotiate, while questions of weapons control and authority remain far more contentious.” That is what the restructuring looks like in practice: The National reported in May that Baghdad was weighing a new Federal Security Affairs Ministry to house the PMF alongside federal forces, with a Coordination Framework committee headed by Badr Organisation leader Hadi al-Amiri overseeing the integration process.

Assessment: The vacancies are not administrative drift; they are the price of the consensus that produced Zaidi. Interior and defence are the two ministries a disarmament programme would have to be executed through, which is why they are the two hardest to fill and why the proposed answer is a new ministry rather than a filled one. A Federal Security Affairs Ministry chaired into being by Hadi al-Amiri would give the PMF a cabinet seat before it gives the state a defence minister — the reverse of the sequence Washington was told it was buying. Treat any completed cabinet announced in the next fortnight as a signal about the weapons file, not about governance.