Al-Zaidi’s cabinet was declared complete on 15 October, and the arithmetic still does not agree

Reuters reported that parliament on Thursday 15 October approved the remainder of Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s cabinet, five months after he took office: eleven portfolios, including Nayef al-Shammari at defence and Yasir al-Maliki at interior, with the migration and displacement nominee postponed over inter-party disagreement. The National reported the same eleven positions, identified al-Maliki as the son-in-law of former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, and named the three deputy prime ministers approved — Laith al-Khazali, brother of Asaib Ahl al-Haq leader Qais al-Khazali; Mohammed Ali Tamim of Taqadum; and Muhsin al-Mandalawi of the Asas Coalition. Iraq Business News put attendance at 261 MPs in a Thursday evening session chaired by Speaker Haybat al-Halbousi. Al-Zaidi told parliament his deputies would receive “no salary, financial allowances, or office appointments” and would work “field-based according to their specialisations and citizens' needs.”

The dissent is arithmetical. Eye on Kurdistan, a single-author Substack, wrote on 22 October that two posts remain unfilled — migration and displacement, and a fourth deputy premiership allocated to the KDP. That is consistent with The New Arab’s 13 October pre-vote exclusive, which reported agreement on nine ministers and four deputy prime ministers. If four were agreed and three were seated, the missing one is Kurdish, and completion is a claim rather than an event. The government’s other unfinished business is the PMF law: the Council of Ministers approved a draft on 29 September and referred it to parliament, one day before the US-led coalition withdrawal deadline. There is no evidence it has had a reading in the new chamber. Washington’s objection is on the record — the US designated Asaib Ahl al-Haq a foreign terrorist organisation in 2020 and both Khazali brothers as specially designated global terrorists.

Assessment: Two incentives to separate. Seating a sanctioned militia leader’s brother as deputy prime minister while leaving the Kurdish deputy premiership empty tells you which partner can impose a cost for exclusion and which cannot. And the PMF bill’s disappearance into an unmoved parliament suits everyone: The New Arab reported the revised text strips the provisions that angered Washington, which means passing it annoys the factions and shelving it annoys only the Americans, who have already gone home. Michael Knights of Horizon Engage warned in August that institutionalising the force would create a parallel apparatus with a multi-billion-dollar budget and an unchanged leadership. Non-passage leaves that apparatus exactly as it is, unlegislated and unconstrained.