Iraq

A parliamentary republic of roughly 41 million people on the alluvial plain between the Tigris and Euphrates, governed since the 2005 constitution by a confessional power-sharing arrangement under which the presidency is reserved for a Kurd, the prime ministership for a Shia Arab, and the speaker of parliament for a Sunni Arab. The country in May 2026 is between governments and between systems. Newly elected president Nizar Amedi nominated political newcomer Ali al-Zaidi as prime minister on April 27, 2026, after a months-long deadlock that ended only when US President Trump publicly vetoed the leading candidate Nouri al-Maliki. Iraq spent the first quarter of 2026 as the frontline of someone else's war: Iran-aligned Iraqi militias launched more than 700 attacks against US targets, US and Israeli aircraft struck militia positions across Iraqi soil, oil exports halted at the Strait of Hormuz, and Iranian gas imports cut off. The country in 2026 is, in the unsentimental phrase of one Iraqi analyst, "an internal enemy of itself plus three external veto-holders" — Washington, Tehran, and the Najaf religious establishment.¹ What that adds up to is a country whose foreign policy, economic foundation, and political settlement are all simultaneously in active negotiation.

Geography

Iraq is the modern political form of ancient Mesopotamia — the land between two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, whose alluvial floodplain produced the world's first cities, the first writing, and several of the foundational cultural-religious traditions of the region. The country covers roughly 437,000 square kilometres, bounded by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, Kuwait and the Persian Gulf to the southeast, Saudi Arabia to the south, Jordan to the southwest, and Syria to the west. The interior is dominated by the river plain in the centre and south, the western desert plateau extending into Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and the Kurdish-inhabited mountains in the north and northeast.

The geography drives politics in three persistent ways. First, water. Both the Tigris and Euphrates rise outside Iraq — in Turkey — and the upstream Turkish dam construction programme, the GAP, has substantially reduced flow into Iraq over the past three decades. Domestic agriculture, the southern marshlands, and the Shatt al-Arab waterway leading to the Gulf are all affected. Iraq-Turkey water cooperation, advanced through 2025-2026 negotiations including a planned framework agreement, is now one of the country's most consequential bilateral relationships.² Second, oil geography. Iraq's largest fields are in the Shia-majority south around Basra (Rumaila, West Qurna, Majnoon, Zubair) and a separate field complex in Kurdish-controlled territory in the north (Kirkuk, plus the smaller fields managed under the Kurdistan Regional Government). The southern fields export through the Basra Gulf terminals at Khor al-Amaya and the Basra Oil Terminal — approximately 97% of pre-war national exports.³ The northern fields export through Turkey via the Ceyhan pipeline. Geography is also why the Strait of Hormuz, hundreds of kilometres south of Iraqi territory, is the country's single greatest economic chokepoint. Third, the long border with Iran (about 1,460 kilometres) and the long western border with Syria (about 600 kilometres) make Iraq the natural transit corridor between Iran and the Mediterranean — the land bridge that mattered until the December 2024 fall of Assad.

The principal cities are Baghdad (the capital, ~7.2 million in the metropolitan area, on the Tigris in the central plain), Basra (~2.5 million, the southern oil and shipping centre), Mosul (the second city before ISIS occupation, in the Sunni and mixed-minority Nineveh province), Erbil (the Kurdistan Regional Government capital, ~1.5 million), Sulaymaniyah (the second Kurdish city, PUK-controlled), Najaf and Karbala (the Shia religious centres), Kirkuk (the disputed multi-ethnic oil city), Ramadi and Fallujah (the Anbar Sunni cities), and Dohuk (the smaller Kurdish city in the far north).

Demographics

Iraq's population is approximately 41 million as of 2026.⁴ The ethnic composition is approximately 75-80% Arab (including the Marsh Arabs of the southern wetlands), 15-20% Kurdish (concentrated in the three northern Kurdistan Region governorates plus disputed territories around Kirkuk), and approximately 3% Turkmen (in Kirkuk and Tal Afar), with smaller populations of Assyrians and Chaldeans (perhaps 300,000 today, drastically reduced from the pre-2003 figure of over a million), Yazidis (approximately 500,000), Shabaks (approximately 250,000), Armenians (approximately 10,000), and Mandaeans (approximately 3,000).⁵

The religious composition is approximately 95-98% Muslim, with a Shia majority of 50-55% (concentrated in Baghdad, the southern governorates from Najaf and Karbala down through Basra, Dhi Qar, Maysan, and Muthanna, and parts of Diyala), and a Sunni minority of 40-42% (Sunni Arab in Anbar, Saladin, parts of Diyala and Nineveh; Sunni Kurdish in the north).⁶ No formal religious census has been conducted in Iraq since before 2003 and "there is little reliable data on the exact Sunni-Shia breakdown," as one demographer put it; the percentages above are the consensus range across recent estimates. The Christian minority — predominantly Assyrian and Chaldean Catholic, with smaller Armenian and Syriac Orthodox communities — has shrunk catastrophically since 2003 and again after ISIS occupation; the remnant communities are concentrated in Erbil, Dohuk, the Nineveh Plains around Mosul, and in Baghdad. Yazidis, an ancient religious tradition predating Islam, are concentrated in the Sinjar region of Nineveh; the community suffered genocide at ISIS hands in 2014-2017 and remains substantially displaced.⁷

The country's diaspora is large — perhaps 4-5 million worldwide, predominantly in neighbouring countries (Iran, Jordan, Turkey, Syria), in Western Europe (Germany, Sweden, the UK, the Netherlands), in North America, and in Australia. The diaspora includes substantial communities of Iraqi Christians, Iraqi Kurds, Iraqi Shia (a large refugee wave from the 1980s under Saddam, plus post-2003), and Iraqi Sunni (post-2003 and post-ISIS). Diaspora remittances and political networks remain consequential.

The country is highly urbanised (roughly 71% urban) and demographically young (median age in the early-to-mid 20s). Internal displacement remains a meaningful demographic fact a decade after the ISIS war: approximately one million displaced persons still live outside their pre-war homes.

History

Pre-Islamic and Islamic-era

Mesopotamia is the ancient cradle of urban civilisation. Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, Assyria, and the Neo-Babylonian Empire each centred on the territory of modern Iraq across more than three thousand years. The Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sassanid empires controlled the region successively before the Muslim conquest in 637 CE. The Abbasid Caliphate (749-1258) established Baghdad in 762 as the political and intellectual capital of the Islamic world; the city became, for several centuries, the largest in the world outside China. The Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258 ended the Abbasid era and began six centuries of decline relative to the era of regional centrality.

Ottoman period

The Ottoman conquest of Iraq in 1534 brought the region into a four-century Ottoman administrative framework, organised as the three provinces (vilayets) of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra. Ottoman rule was indirect in much of the south, where tribal-confederation politics and the Shia religious establishment in Najaf and Karbala operated with substantial autonomy. The 19th century brought modest modernisation in the central provinces and the rise of Anglo-Ottoman commercial interaction along the Tigris-Euphrates river system.

British Mandate, monarchy, and republican coups

The British seized Mesopotamia from the Ottomans in World War I and consolidated the three vilayets into the modern state of Iraq under a British Mandate from 1920. The Hashemite king Faisal I, son of the Sharif of Mecca, was installed in 1921; the monarchy persisted until the 1958 republican coup by Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim. The 1958-1968 republican period saw rapid political turnover, the rise of Arab nationalist and Communist mass politics, and the consolidation of an Arab military officer class. The 1968 Ba'athist coup brought to power the party that would, by 1979, be fully under Saddam Hussein's control.

The Saddam era and the 2003 invasion

Saddam Hussein's Iraq (1979-2003) was defined by the eight-year Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988, perhaps a million dead, including hundreds of thousands of Iraqis), the Anfal campaign of 1986-1989 that killed perhaps 100,000 Kurds (recognised internationally as genocide), the 1990 invasion of Kuwait and 1991 Gulf War, the subsequent decade of UN sanctions that devastated the Iraqi civilian population, and the 2003 US-led invasion that ended the regime.⁸ The post-2003 period — the Coalition Provisional Authority's de-Baathification and disbanding of the Iraqi army, the 2003-2008 insurgency, the 2006-2007 sectarian civil war, the partial stabilisation under General Petraeus and the surge, the 2011 US withdrawal, the 2014 ISIS conquest of Mosul and most of western Iraq, the 2014-2017 anti-ISIS war, the 2019 Tishreen protest movement, the 2021 elections and Sadrist withdrawal, the 2022 government formation crisis, the December 2024 fall of Assad, the 2025 elections, and the 2026 Iran war — has been a continuous reshaping of the country's political settlement under the constraints inherited from 2003.

The post-2024 inflection

Three events in the past eighteen months have decisively altered Iraq's strategic position. The December 2024 collapse of the Assad regime in Syria removed the land bridge that connected Iran's regional axis through Iraq to Hezbollah in Lebanon, simultaneously creating a security vacuum on Iraq's western border that Baghdad has been managing since. The November 2025 Iraqi parliamentary elections, held under a still-fragmented political system, produced a parliament with no clear majority and triggered a five-month government formation crisis. The February 2026 US-Israeli strikes on Iran turned Iraq into a frontline: US and Israeli aircraft struck Iran-aligned militias on Iraqi soil, those militias launched more than 700 retaliatory attacks against US targets, oil exports halted at the Gulf for over a month, and Iranian gas imports cut off entirely.⁹ Iraq in May 2026 is still working out what those three events together mean.

Political system

Iraq is a parliamentary republic with confessional power-sharing — formally one of the more democratic systems in the region, substantively shaped by the constraints inherited from the 2003 occupation, the 2005 constitution drafted under those constraints, and the political-religious-militia networks that operate parallel to the formal state.

The Council of Representatives (parliament) has 329 seats, allocated by a complex provincial proportional system with reserved minority seats. The November 2025 elections produced a sectarian distribution of 197 Shia seats, 67 Sunni seats, 56 Kurdish seats, and 9 minority seats, with no single bloc holding a majority.¹⁰ The largest individual blocs were Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani's newly established al-I'mar wal-Tanmiya (Reconstruction and Development) party with 46 seats, Nouri al-Maliki's Dawlat al-Qanun (State of Law) with 28 seats, Muhammad al-Halbusi's Sunni Taqadum (Progress) with 27 seats, and Sadiqun (the political wing of the Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia) with 27 seats. Voter turnout was 56%.

The Coordination Framework (al-Itar al-Tansiqi) is the dominant Shia political alliance, a council of twelve major Shia parties formed in March 2021. Iranian-backed parties within the CF won over a third of seats in the 2025 elections. The CF's internal divisions — between members with deep Iran dependency and those with more independent posture — became visible during the 2026 government-formation crisis.¹¹

The Sadrist Movement under Muqtada al-Sadr boycotted the November 2025 elections. Al-Sadr ordered all 73 Sadrist lawmakers to resign in June 2022 after the previous government-formation deadlock and has held that posture since. The boycott of 2025 was framed as rejection of "a flawed electoral process that only aims to secure ethnic, partisan, and sectarian interests."¹² Most analysts read the Sadrist position as anticipatory positioning rather than withdrawal: Sadr is keeping his movement as the most organised and independent Shia force outside the formal political system, available to step back in if the system fails.

The 2026 government-formation crisis played out across the spring. After Nizar Amedi's election as president on April 11, the Coordination Framework initially backed Nouri al-Maliki for the prime ministership. US President Trump publicly vetoed the candidacy, and the CF withdrew its support, instead endorsing Ali al-Zaidi, a businessman and political newcomer.¹³ Al-Zaidi was nominated April 27, 2026 with a 30-day window to form a cabinet. The episode is being read as the most explicit US interference in Iraqi government formation since 2003.

The Kurdish parties (the KDP under Masoud Barzani's lineage and the PUK under Bafel Talabani) hold the 56 Kurdish seats but operate within the Kurdistan Regional Government with its own parliament, security forces (Peshmerga), and substantial fiscal autonomy. The KDP-PUK rivalry has intensified through 2026, with the KDP arguing it is "the ascendent and primary force in Kurdistan" and seeking to reduce power-sharing, while the PUK presses for parity.¹⁴ The political deadlock between the two has left the Kurdistan Region "dangerously exposed" during the 2026 Iran war.

The Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation Forces, PMF) — a coalition of predominantly Shia armed groups formed in 2014 to fight ISIS — has approximately 238,000 members and roughly $3.6 billion in annual state funding.¹⁵ The PMF was formally integrated into the state security apparatus by the 2016 PMF Law but operates with substantial autonomy through dominant member groups: Badr Organisation (the oldest, founded in 1980s Iran), Asaib Ahl al-Haq (AAH), and Kata'ib Hezbollah, all of which maintain Iran-aligned chains of command and were the principal Iraqi participants in the February-March 2026 war.

The Najaf religious establishment — particularly the office of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the senior marja' of Shia Islam — exercises informal but significant veto power over Iraqi political decisions. As one analyst put it, "there is an informal veto from three different actors for the prime minister in Iraq. One is Washington, the other one is Tehran and the other one is the religious establishment in Najaf."¹⁶ Sistani has historically intervened sparingly but decisively, including against Maliki's 2014 third term and during the 2019 protest movement.

Civil society space is severely constrained. The CIVICUS Monitor classifies Iraqi civic space as "closed" for 2026 — among the lowest tiers globally. Iraq ranks 162nd of 180 countries in the 2026 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index, having fallen seven places from 2025; "recurring armed conflict" was cited as the primary reason. Activists, journalists, and political organisers face sustained threats from militia-affiliated entities operating within state frameworks.¹⁷

Economy

Iraq's economy is, by every meaningful measure, an oil economy. Oil accounts for approximately 53% of real GDP, 88% of government revenues, and 91% of merchandise exports.¹⁸ The IMF projected GDP growth of 2.5-3.2% for 2026 under pre-war assumptions. The 2026 Iran war shattered those assumptions in a single quarter.

Pre-war, Iraq exported approximately 3.4-3.5 million barrels per day, with about 3.3 million bpd shipped from the Basra Gulf terminals (97% of national exports) and approximately 198,000 bpd from Kurdistan Region fields through Turkey's Ceyhan port. When Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz on February 28, 2026, Iraq's southern exports halted completely. Production fell from approximately 4.3 million bpd in February to below 1.3 million bpd within weeks — an 80% decline as onshore storage filled.¹⁹ Daily revenue losses approached $220 million, or nearly $1.5 billion per week. Iraq resumed southern exports in mid-April 2026 as the Strait reopened; pre-war volumes have not been fully restored. The IMF's pre-war 2026 oil-revenue forecast of approximately $79 billion is now obsolete; the actual figure will depend on the second-half-2026 export trajectory.

Iraq's electricity supply is structurally fragile and substantially dependent on Iranian gas and electricity imports for the country's southern and central regions. The US-Israeli strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure caused a complete halt to Iranian gas exports to Iraq in early April 2026; domestic gas output fell from approximately 1,100 million cubic feet to just 400 million cubic feet.²⁰ Power cuts intensified across central and southern Iraq through April. The summer 2026 electricity supply, with Iraqi temperatures regularly exceeding 50°C, is the country's most acute domestic-policy concern as of writing.

The Iraqi dinar has stabilised after years of volatility, partly through banking reforms aimed at restoring correspondent banking relationships disrupted by US sanctions enforcement. The official rate is approximately 1,300 IQD to the US dollar.

The Kurdistan Regional Government maintains substantial fiscal autonomy, including direct sales of Kurdish-region oil exports through Ceyhan, separate banking arrangements, and ongoing disputes with Baghdad over revenue sharing. The post-2014 settlement has been periodically renegotiated; the political deadlock between the KDP and PUK has complicated the KRG's negotiating position with Baghdad through 2026.

The structural political-economic question of 2026 is whether the recovery from the war's economic disruption produces a durable diversification push (away from oil, away from Iranian energy dependence) or whether the country reverts to the pre-war pattern as soon as the crisis recedes. Most economists read the answer cautiously: meaningful structural change is unlikely without political consolidation that does not yet exist.

Foreign policy

Iraqi foreign policy in 2026 operates in a structurally constrained space. The country is, simultaneously, a US ally hosting US troops, an Iranian-axis partner via the Hashd al-Shaabi networks, a Saudi-Gulf-Arab partner attempting reintegration with the Sunni Arab world, a Kurdish-region power with its own external relationships through Erbil, and the immediate neighbour of a transitional Syrian government still finding its posture. No single ring is dominant; managing the tensions between them is the substantive content of Iraqi foreign policy.

The innermost ring is the regional axis question. Iran-aligned Iraqi militias under the Hashd al-Shaabi launched more than 700 attacks against US targets, US embassy facilities in Baghdad, and US bases in Kuwait and other Gulf states during the February-April 2026 war. Hadi al-Amiri (Badr Organisation leader) reportedly negotiated a "temporary truce" with the United States via Coordination Framework backchannels by late March; the formal end-of-hostilities was tied to the broader Pakistan-mediated US-Iran negotiations.²¹ Reports of Hashd fighters crossing into Iran to participate in defence of Iranian territory were confirmed by multiple sources but contested in scope. The strategic question now is whether the Iraqi government can credibly assert state monopoly over force against the Hashd networks; the answer, as of May 2026, is no.

The middle ring is the Sunni Arab world. Iraq-Saudi rapprochement has continued incrementally since the 2017 reopening of full diplomatic relations and 2019 reopening of the border crossing at Arar. Saudi reconstruction investment has flowed selectively. The Saudi-UAE rupture over Yemen has not visibly affected Iraqi-Saudi relations directly. Iraq-Egypt relations remain functional but distant; Iraq-Jordan relations are quietly cooperative on border security. Iraq-Qatar relations have warmed.

The most consequential bilateral of the past eighteen months is Iraq-Syria. The December 2024 fall of Assad has produced visible internal divisions in Baghdad. One camp — closely aligned with Iran — views engagement with the new Syrian government as betrayal of the Assad regime, a long-time strategic ally; another argues that Syrian stability is essential to Iraqi security, particularly against the threat of an ISIS resurgence in the Syrian-Iraqi desert and the possible breakdown of the al-Hol displacement camp in northeastern Syria.²² Discussions about Iraq-Syria security cooperation have advanced through 2025-2026; the precise terms remain unsettled.

Iraq-Turkey relations have improved substantially since 2024. Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein expressed Iraqi support for Turkey's late-2024 dialogue with the PKK in November 2025; the two countries advanced cooperation on shared water resources and announced plans for a framework water-sharing agreement.²³ Turkey's recalibration of the Kurdish question, institutionalised through a parliamentary commission in 2026, has become a central axis of Turkish-Iraqi engagement.

The outer ring is the great powers. The US relationship in 2026 is paradoxical: US troops remain on Iraqi soil, the US embassy in Baghdad is one of the largest US diplomatic facilities in the world, and Iraqi militias have been launching attacks on US targets while US aircraft strike those same militias. Trump's April 2026 public veto of Maliki's candidacy demonstrated that US influence over Iraqi government formation remains active and operational. Russia and China engage primarily through energy and infrastructure: Russian Lukoil operates in the West Qurna 2 field; Chinese investment continues across the oil-services and infrastructure sectors. Pakistan's mediator role in the US-Iran negotiations has had spillover engagement with Iraq through Coordination Framework channels.

Allies and rivals

The empty matrix above is intentional. Iraq's relationship structure does not fit cleanly into "allies" and "rivals" — the country is operationally embedded with both the United States and Iran simultaneously, in ways that no other country in the region is. Characterisation of the principal relationships in one line each:

• Iran — Embedded operationally through Hashd al-Shaabi militia networks (which actively engaged in the 2026 war), through gas-and-electricity dependency (until April 2026 cut-off), and through religious-political networks of the Coordination Framework. Iraqi government posture toward Tehran is institutionally complicated by the Najaf-vs-Qom distinction within Shia clerical authority.
• United States — Strategic security partner; thousands of US troops on Iraqi soil; the largest US embassy in the world; explicit US veto over Iraqi government formation demonstrated April 2026. Targeted by Iraqi militias the same week the embassy was operational.
• Saudi Arabia — Slowly normalising since 2017; reconstruction investment flowing; functional bilateral but no deep alignment.
• Syria (post-Assad) — Active recalibration; internal Iraqi divisions visible; security-cooperation discussions advancing.
• Turkey — Improved substantially since 2024; cooperation on PKK and water; framework water-sharing agreement in negotiation.
• Iran-aligned regional networks (Hezbollah, Houthis) — Functional through the Hashd al-Shaabi channel; diminished by the post-Assad collapse of the land bridge.
• Israel — No diplomatic relations; Israeli aircraft struck Iraqi soil during the 2026 war; the only Iraqi-Israeli interaction in operational terms is via the militia targeting question.
• Russia — Lukoil operates West Qurna 2; modest defence-technology relationship.
• China — Significant infrastructure and oil-services investment; energy buyer.
• Kuwait — Functional, with persistent border-and-reparations file from the 1990 war that has been substantially closed.
• Jordan — Quiet cooperation on border security and economic transit.
• Pakistan — Mediator role in 2026 US-Iran talks with spillover Iraqi engagement.

Key figures

Nizar Amedi (نزار أحمدي), President of Iraq since April 11, 2026. A Kurdish politician elected by parliament under the post-2005 confessional convention reserving the presidency for a Kurd. The presidency is largely ceremonial in Iraqi parliamentary practice, but the office's formal nomination of the prime minister is the bottleneck through which government formation flows. Amedi's specific political alignment within the KDP-PUK spectrum has been described in contradictory terms across sources.²⁴

Ali al-Zaidi (علي الزيدي), Prime Minister-designate since April 27, 2026. A businessman and political newcomer, Zaidi was nominated as the Coordination Framework's compromise candidate after US President Trump publicly vetoed Nouri al-Maliki. The 30-day cabinet-formation window expires in late May 2026; the cabinet's composition and political alignment will be the most consequential domestic political development of mid-2026.

Mohammed Shia al-Sudani (محمد شياع السوداني), Prime Minister October 2022 – the formation of the new government in 2026. Caretaker PM during the formation crisis. His al-I'mar wal-Tanmiya (Reconstruction and Development) party won the largest bloc in the 2025 elections (46 seats), making him a continuing significant political figure regardless of whether he returns to government.

Nouri al-Maliki (نوري المالكي), former two-time prime minister (2006-2014), leader of the State of Law (Dawlat al-Qanun) bloc with 28 seats in the 2025 parliament. The Trump-vetoed candidate for the 2026 prime ministership. Maliki's political trajectory — from anti-Saddam exile to PM during the Sunni civil war and the rise of ISIS, to senior CF leader — makes him one of the most polarising figures in Iraqi politics.

Muqtada al-Sadr (مقتدى الصدر), leader of the Sadrist Movement and son of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr. Holds no formal political position since 2022; commands a movement of perhaps tens of millions and a substantial paramilitary force; boycotted the 2025 elections; positions himself as the available alternative when the CF system fails.²⁵

Fuad Hussein (فؤاد حسين), Foreign Minister since 2020 (Kurdish, KDP-affiliated). Architect of the Iraq-Turkey rapprochement on the PKK and water files; visible in 2025-2026 regional diplomacy.

Masoud Barzani (مسعود بارزانی), longtime president of the KDP, former president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (2005-2017), and patriarch of the dominant Kurdish political family. Now in his late 70s, Barzani remains the dominant figure in Kurdish politics, with his son Masrour Barzani serving as the current KRG prime minister and his nephew Nechirvan Barzani as the current KRG president.

Hadi al-Amiri (هادي العامري), longtime leader of the Badr Organisation (the oldest Iran-aligned Iraqi Shia militia, founded in 1980s Iran). Negotiated the de facto US-militia truce in late March 2026 via Coordination Framework backchannels. The most senior operational interlocutor between the Hashd al-Shaabi militia networks and any external actor.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani (آية الله السيد علي السيستاني), the senior marja' of Shia Islam globally. Iranian-born but resident in Najaf for over 70 years. Holds no formal political position; his interventions, when they come, are decisive. Now in his 90s; the question of his eventual succession is a central long-arc political question for both Iraq and Iran (where the Najaf-trained marja' tradition stands in tension with the Qom-based velayat-e faqih doctrine).

Internal regions and subcultures

Iraq's internal map is more diverse than its modern political identity sometimes acknowledges. Six clusters operate as effectively distinct cultural-political worlds.

Baghdad and the centre. The capital, with about 7.2 million in the metropolitan area, is internally polarised: Shia neighbourhoods predominate east of the Tigris, including the Sadrist stronghold of Sadr City; Sunni-majority neighbourhoods predominate in parts of west Baghdad. The civil war years of 2006-2008 produced large-scale neighbourhood unmixing along sectarian lines; the partial recovery since has been visible in mixed commercial districts but the residential pattern remains substantially divided. The Green Zone, the heavily fortified governmental district along the Tigris, contains the prime minister's office, the parliament, and the major foreign embassies including the United States.

The Shia south. The southern provinces — Babil, Najaf, Karbala, Diwaniyah, Wasit, Maysan, Dhi Qar, Muthanna, Basra — form the Shia Arab heartland. Najaf and Karbala are the global centres of Shia religious authority and pilgrimage. Basra is the country's third-largest city, the southern oil and shipping centre, and the locus of repeated 2018-2019 protests demanding services, anti-corruption measures, and reduced Iranian influence. The southern Marsh Arabs of the Mesopotamian wetlands — drained by Saddam in the 1990s, partially restored since 2003 — are an ancient and distinct cultural community within the broader southern Shia identity.

The Sunni Arab west. Anbar province, the largest in the country by area and bordering Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, is overwhelmingly Sunni Arab and tribally organised. Ramadi and Fallujah, the principal cities, were the centres of the 2003-2008 anti-US insurgency, the 2014 ISIS conquest, and the 2014-2017 ISIS-defeat campaign. Reconstruction is ongoing and incomplete. Saladin and parts of Diyala and Nineveh share Anbar's Sunni Arab character.

The northern mixed zone. Mosul, the second city before ISIS occupation, is in Nineveh province and was historically religiously and ethnically diverse: Sunni Arab majority, with significant Christian, Yazidi, Shabak, Turkmen, and Kurdish populations in the Nineveh Plains. ISIS occupation 2014-2017 produced massive damage and demographic disruption, including the genocide of the Yazidis at Sinjar. Recovery has been visible but slow.

Kirkuk and the disputed territories. Kirkuk, the multi-ethnic oil city historically claimed by both Baghdad and Erbil, sits atop the country's oldest commercial oil field and remains the most volatile administrative question in the Iraqi system. The 2017 Kurdish independence referendum and the subsequent Iraqi army recovery of Kirkuk from Kurdish control reset the balance. The PMF maintains a heavy presence; US and Israeli aircraft struck PMF positions in the Dibis district in March 2026, killing several. The Kirkuk question is unresolved.

The Kurdistan Region. Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, and Dohuk constitute the formally autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, with its own parliament, security forces (Peshmerga), and substantial fiscal autonomy. The KDP dominates Erbil and Dohuk; the PUK dominates Sulaymaniyah; the rivalry between them structures Kurdish politics and has, in 2026, left the region "dangerously exposed" during the Iran war.²⁶ Approximately one million displaced persons and refugees live in the KRI, including the Yazidi survivor community and Syrian Kurds.

Generational divides cut across all of these regional and ethnic lines. Iraqis under 35 — the majority of the population — came of political age after the 2003 invasion. Survey data shows substantially lower confidence in confessional politics among that cohort than among older generations.²⁷ The 2019 Tishreen (October) protest movement was the most visible expression of that generational shift; subsequent waves of unrest have followed similar lines.

Cultural concepts

Several Arabic and Kurdish terms carry political weight that mechanical translation will miss.

Muhasasa (المحاصصة, quota allocation) — the post-2003 system of allocating political offices, civil-service positions, and state contracts by sectarian and ethnic quota. The word in Iraqi political conversation often carries pejorative weight: to call something muhasasa is to call it sectarian patronage rather than principled politics. Reformist political figures of all sects routinely campaign against muhasasa even as they participate in it.

Marja'iyya (المرجعية, the source of religious authority) — the institution of senior Shia clerical authority centred in Najaf. The four senior maraji' currently are Sistani (the most senior globally), Mohammad Ishaq al-Fayadh, Bashir al-Najafi, and Mohammad Saeed al-Hakim's successor; all are based in Najaf. The Najaf marja'iyya is doctrinally distinct from the Qom-based velayat-e faqih tradition that underpins the Iranian Islamic Republic, and the distinction is one of the most important religious-political fault lines in regional Shia thought.

Hashd al-Shaabi (الحشد الشعبي, Popular Mobilisation Forces) — the umbrella for the Shia militia networks formed in 2014 to fight ISIS, formally integrated into the state security apparatus by the 2016 PMF Law. The term is itself politically charged: its supporters frame it as the people's defence force; its critics frame it as an Iran-aligned parallel military. Both framings are partly accurate.

Tishreen (تشرين, October) — shorthand for the October 2019 protest movement, in which hundreds of thousands of mostly young Iraqis protested across Baghdad and the southern provinces against the political class, economic mismanagement, and Iranian influence. Roughly 600 protesters were killed by security and militia forces. The movement has not been formally organised since but its political identity persists.

Aman (الأمن, security) and its absence is the structural Iraqi political vocabulary of the past two decades. The promise of every government since 2003 has been to deliver aman; the failure to do so is the principal grievance against every government since 2003.

Kurdistan (كوردستان) — a politically charged term referring to the four-country Kurdish ethnic-cultural region (the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, plus parts of Turkey, Iran, and Syria). The Iraqi Kurdistan Region is the only formally autonomous Kurdish self-governance entity. The aspiration to broader Kurdish statehood is held with varying intensity across Kurdish politics; explicit sovereignty talk has been substantially muted since the failed 2017 independence referendum.

Current situation

As of May 2026, Iraq is between systems in three different ways simultaneously.

The first is the government-formation crisis. President Nizar Amedi was elected April 11; Prime Minister-designate Ali al-Zaidi was nominated April 27 with a 30-day cabinet-formation window. The Trump veto of Maliki has been read regionally as the most direct US interference in Iraqi government formation since 2003. Whether al-Zaidi succeeds in forming a cabinet within the window, and what its composition reveals about the post-2026-war political settlement, is the central political question of late May.

The second is the post-Iran-war recovery. Iraqi oil exports through the Basra Gulf terminals resumed in mid-April after a six-week halt; pre-war volumes have not been fully restored. Iranian gas imports remain cut off, and the summer electricity supply is the country's most acute domestic-policy concern. The de facto truce between US forces and Iran-aligned Iraqi militias holds but is not formalised. The Hashd al-Shaabi networks emerged from the war operationally degraded but politically validated within their domestic constituencies.

The third is the post-Syria realignment. The fall of Assad in December 2024 has continued to produce ripples through 2026 Iraqi politics: ISIS-resurgence anxieties, the al-Hol camp question, the Iran-axis-without-Syria-corridor question, and the question of whether Iraq's relationship with the new Damascus government is principled engagement or strategic capitulation. The Iraqi government has not yet articulated a coherent position because the political class remains divided on it.

What is settled by May 2026: Iraq remains a parliamentary republic with confessional power-sharing; the formal state holds; the security situation is more stable than at any point in the post-2003 period despite the recent war; oil exports are recovering. What is not settled: the composition and direction of the new government, the relationship between the formal state and the Hashd al-Shaabi networks, the durability of the post-2024 Iraq-Turkey water-and-PKK rapprochement, the Iraq-Syria settlement, and the longer-arc question of whether the country can build the state institutions that the muhasasa system has structurally prevented.

Recommended sources

A short, opinionated list — books, journalists, and outlets that, taken together, give a serious reader the angles. Organised by source type rather than ranked.

Books. Hanna Batatu's The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movement in Iraq (1978) remains the foundational scholarly history of modern Iraqi politics; essential and dense. Ali Allawi's The Occupation of Iraq is the single best account of the 2003 invasion and its early political aftermath, written by a former Iraqi finance minister with insider access. Thomas Ricks's Fiasco and The Gamble together cover the US-military side of the invasion and surge. Patrick Cockburn's The Rise of Islamic State on the 2014 ISIS conquest. Toby Dodge on Iraqi political economy. Shia clerical authority is best read through Yitzhak Nakash's The Shi'is of Iraq and the broader work on Najaf marja'iyya.

Journalists worth following. Mustafa Salim and Louisa Loveluck (Washington Post) for inside-Iraq political reporting. Jane Arraf (NPR, formerly NYT) for long-form on Iraqi politics and Kurdish issues. Sinan Mahmoud (The National) for inside-the-country political analysis. Renad Mansour (Chatham House) for analytical commentary. Joel Wing's Musings on Iraq blog for granular violence-tracking.

Outlets. Rudaw (Erbil-based, Kurdish-perspective English coverage). Kurdistan24 (KDP-aligned, complementary to Rudaw). Shafaq News (Iraqi domestic politics, particularly Sadrist-movement coverage). Al-Monitor Iraq desk. Iraq Oil Report (specialist English on the oil sector). L'Orient-Le Jour and L'Orient Today on Lebanon-Iraq cross-cutting issues. Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic for regional perspective. Reuters and AFP for wire-service factual reporting.

Think tanks and analytical sources. The International Crisis Group on Iraqi politics. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy on Iraq-Syria security issues. The Atlantic Council MENASource for elections and coalition tracking. Chatham House (Renad Mansour and the Iraq Initiative). The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Turkey-Iraq relations. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) on Iranian influence and militia networks. Iraqi Civil Society Solidarity Initiative (ICSSI) for civil-society documentation.

Polling and primary data. Arab Barometer Iraq waves (most recent 2024). The Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Baghdad office produces regular surveys. The Iraqi High Electoral Commission publishes detailed election results. The World Bank Iraq country reports and IMF Article IV consultations are the standard macro-economic references.

1. 01 /
   The 'three-veto' framework over Iraqi government formation: Washington, Tehran, Najaf — Iraq political analysts via YouTube interview compilations
   April 2026
2. 02 /
   Iraq-Turkey water cooperation and the framework water-sharing agreement in development — Carnegie Endowment / Yeni Şafak
   February 2026
3. 03 /
   Iraq oil export volumes and Basra Gulf terminal share of total exports — Iraq Oil Report / Reuters
   Q1 2026
4. 04 /
   Iraq population estimate — World Bank / UN Population Division
   2026
5. 05 /
   Iraq ethnic and religious composition — CIA World Factbook / Minority Rights Group
   2025
6. 06 /
   Iraqi Sunni-Shia demographic estimates and the data limitations — Pew Forum / Brookings
   2024
7. 07 /
   The Yazidi genocide of 2014-2017 and the displaced community — United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da'esh (UNITAD)
   2024
8. 08 /
   The Saddam era, the Iran-Iraq war, the Anfal campaign, and the 2003 invasion — Multiple scholarly sources including Allawi, Ricks, Cockburn
   various
9. 09 /
   The 2026 Iran war's impact on Iraq: militia attacks, oil disruption, gas cut-off — Atlantic Council / Reuters / Kurdistan24
   Feb-April 2026
10. 10 /
    November 2025 Iraqi parliamentary election results — Reuters / Dayan Center / Iraqi High Electoral Commission
    November 2025
11. 11 /
    The Coordination Framework's internal divisions during the 2026 government-formation crisis — Atlantic Council MENASource
    April 2026
12. 12 /
    Muqtada al-Sadr's boycott of the 2025 elections — Middle East Eye / Shafaq News / AP
    October-November 2025
13. 13 /
    Trump's veto of Maliki's candidacy and the al-Zaidi nomination — Le Monde / The Arab Weekly / YouTube interview compilations
    April 2026
14. 14 /
    KDP-PUK rivalry and the post-2026 government formation — Kurdistan24 / Rudaw / Chatham House
    2026
15. 15 /
    Hashd al-Shaabi composition, funding, and the 2026 war participation — FDD / Soufan Center / The Soufan Group
    March 2026
16. 16 /
    The 'three-veto' framework articulated by Iraqi political analysts — YouTube interview compilations of Iraqi political analysts
    2026
17. 17 /
    Iraq civil-society space and 2026 press freedom ranking — CIVICUS Monitor / Reporters Without Borders
    2026
18. 18 /
    Oil's share of Iraqi GDP, government revenue, and exports — World Bank Iraq Country Report / IMF Article IV
    2025
19. 19 /
    Iraqi oil production collapse during the 2026 Iran war — Reuters / Iraq Oil Report / Atlantic Council
    March 2026
20. 20 /
    Iranian gas exports to southern Iraq halted, April 2026 — Kurdistan24
    April 2026
21. 21 /
    Hadi al-Amiri's negotiated truce between US forces and Iraqi militias — The Soufan Center / FDD's Long War Journal
    March-April 2026
22. 22 /
    Iraq-Syria cooperation post-Assad: internal divisions and security dimensions — Washington Institute for Near East Policy
    2025
23. 23 /
    Iraqi support for Turkey-PKK dialogue and water cooperation — Yeni Şafak / Carnegie
    November 2025
24. 24 /
    Nizar Amedi's election as president, April 11, 2026 — The Arab Weekly / Reuters
    April 2026
25. 25 /
    Sadrist Movement long-term strategy and 2025 boycott — AP / Middle East Eye / Shafaq News
    October-November 2025
26. 26 /
    Kurdistan Region political deadlock and the 2026 Iran war exposure — Chatham House
    April 2026
27. 27 /
    Generational divides in Iraqi political attitudes — Arab Barometer Wave VIII
    2024