Iraq completes its cabinet with a US-designated terrorist as deputy prime minister

On the evening of Thursday 15 October the Council of Representatives approved three deputy prime ministers and eleven ministers, completing Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s cabinet five months after it took office in May. The session was chaired by Speaker Haybat al-Halbousi and attended by 261 members, and was reported by Reuters, AP, Al Jazeera, The National and Asharq Al-Awsat. The deputies are Muhsin Ali Akbar al-Mandalawi of the Asas Coalition; Laith Hadi al-Khazali, a senior figure in Asaib Ahl al-Haq and brother of its leader Qais al-Khazali; and a Taqadum politician rendered as Mohammed Tamim al-Jabouri by Iraq Business News and as Mohammed Ali Tamim by The National. Nayef al-Shammari takes defence and Yasir al-Maliki the interior; The National identifies him as the son-in-law of former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. The migration and displacement nomination was postponed over inter-party disagreement.

The United States designated Asaib Ahl al-Haq a foreign terrorist organisation in 2020 and named both Laith and Qais al-Khazali specially designated global terrorists, citing attacks including a 2007 assault that killed five American soldiers. Iraq therefore now has a deputy prime minister under US terrorism sanctions. Republican Congressman Joe Wilson wrote on X that al-Khazali is a “designated terrorist and Iranian puppet” and that “he is no better than ISIS, maybe even worse,” reporting carried by VOA and The National. VOA also quoted a former US diplomat — the extract gives only the surname Hood — offering the opposite reading: that the administration does “not appear to be interested in micromanaging how the prime minister gains primacy over the Iranian-backed militias,” and that if al-Zaidi “succeeds in using al-Khazali and others to squeeze the uncooperative groups, he will have found an Iraqi solution to this problem.”

The appointment sits against a timetable al-Zaidi’s government has given Washington in public. Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, speaking to reporters at the Iraqi embassy in Washington on 1 October, one day after the US withdrawal completed, said Iraq would meet a 30 June 2027 deadline to bring weapons held by armed groups under state control: “We have got the target, we have got the means, we have got the timetable.” The legislative vehicle is unfinished. On 29 September the Council of Ministers approved a draft Popular Mobilisation Forces law and referred it to parliament; nothing reached for this brief shows a first reading, a scheduled vote or a published final text. The New Arab reported on 7 October, citing unnamed sources only, that the bill was rewritten under US and Sunni-Kurdish pressure to restrict the PMF’s movement and keep it from rivalling the army, while leaving it an independent institution reporting to the prime minister.

Assessment: Two readings of the Khazali appointment are available and the evidence does not yet separate them: Iranian-aligned capture of the executive, or co-optation of the most organised faction against the less tractable ones. Washington has lost its troop leverage and has not replaced it, which is why the hands-off line quoted by VOA is credible without being reassuring. What to distrust: the claim that the PMF law was softened rests entirely on unnamed sources in a single outlet, and “referred to parliament” is not “before parliament.” The tests to watch are whether the bill gets a first reading, and whether ministerial rank for the PMF chairman survives in the text that is finally published.