Iraq completed its cabinet by seating the men Washington sanctioned, and the militia law still waits

Al-Zaidi took office on 14 May 2026 with 14 of 23 cabinet posts filled, according to FDD’s Long War Journal and the Congressional Research Service, which describes him as a Shia Arab businessman and a newcomer to government. On Thursday 15 October the Council of Representatives approved 11 ministers and three deputy prime ministers, closing the gap. The Arab Weekly, The National and Al Jazeera all reported the same detail on 16 October: one of the three approved deputy prime ministers is under US sanctions. Nayef al-Shammari went to Defence and Yasser al-Maliki — the son-in-law of former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki — to Interior. FDD’s 26 October analysis is framed explicitly around the seating of Iran-backed militia figures; Eye on Kurdistan’s 22 October read was that Washington “appears to be shifting from confronting Iran-backed factions in Iraq to accommodating some of them.”

The second half of the arc is the Popular Mobilisation Forces bill. The Council of Ministers approved it in its 21st regular session on 29 September and referred it onward. “The cabinet voted in favor of the Popular Mobilisation Forces bill,” al-Zaidi’s office said in a statement carried by The New Region. “It approved referring the bill to parliament for a vote, in accordance with constitutional provisions.” No parliamentary vote has been reported since. The New Arab reported on 7 October, citing unnamed sources, that the text was revised after US objections to restrict the force’s movements, keep it out of cities and prevent it rivalling the army while retaining it as an independent institution reporting to the prime minister. The National reported in August that officials and experts warned the opposite — that a law would cement a parallel force. The New Arab is Qatari-owned; The National is Abu Dhabi-owned.

Assessment: The two readings of the PMF bill are not in conflict, which is the point most coverage misses. A law can fence the force’s operational footprint and still write it permanently into the state. Whether “reporting to the prime minister” is a leash or a charter depends entirely on who the prime minister is and who sits at Interior — which is why the 15 October votes and the 29 September referral are one story, not two. Treat the delay as information: Shafaq’s own tag page carries a run of headlines on postponement and US interference, but they are undated in what we could retrieve. Nobody should assert a sequence they cannot date.