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The Iraqi political scene has been ablaze for the past 72 hours due to the emergence of recordings attributed to Nuri al-Maliki, the ex-Iraqi PM, in which he appears to be criticising and insulting Moqtada al-Sadr, one of Iraq's strongest Shiite political figures whose faction won big in the 2021 general parliamentary election. “The issue is that there is a British project aiming to put Moqtada in control of the Shia and Iraq, then they would kill him and give Iraq to the Sunnis. The issue is not al-Maliki [myself], I can just leave and take refuge in the house...

Shiite Militia groups taking up arms against IS Militants News / World Iraqi Prime Minister Disbands Seven Shiite Militia Groups 14.09.2014 Nuwar Faqie BasNews, Baghdad   Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Abadi has reversed key decisions of former PM of Iraq Nouri al-Maliki by halting the activities of several Shiite militia groups.   Abadi has pledged to stop the activities of seven Shiite militia groups in Baghdad while at the same time indicated that he cannot impose his authority on two Shiite militia groups, which report to Maliki.   He revealed that some internal decisions that were made by the...

Nouri al-Malki, the embattled prime minister of Iraq, announced on Thursday that he was stepping down after support from his party and associates in parliament slipped away.

Iraq’s parliament just chose a new President who refused to rename Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki to a third term. Maliki declared the move unconstitutional and his own State of Law Party pulled support from him. Now his forces are seizing government buildings in Iraq, have closed the airport, and are surrounding the Green Zone.

Iraq in chaos The situation in Iraq progressed over the weekend from frightening to utter chaos. The apparent good news is that U.S. airstrikes against the monsters of ISIS appear to be making some headway. The harder-to-judge news is the constitutional crisis brewing over the desire of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to assume a third term in office, despite the decision of the newly elected president not to re-appoint him. That goes directly against the Iraq constitution, the adoption of which was one of the main achievements that resulted from the U.S. invasion in 2003. If those in power in...

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s embattled Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, in a surprise speech late Sunday, resisted calls for his resignation and accused the country’s new president of violating the constitution, plunging the government into a political crisis at a time it is battling advances by Islamic State militants. On Sunday night, in a nationally televised speech, al-Maliki declared he will file a legal complaint against the new president, Fouad Massoum, for committing “a clear constitutional violation". “This attitude represents a coup on the constitution and the political process in a country that is governed by a democratic and federal system,” al-Maliki...

Save for the omnipresent Dick Cheney, the gaggle of Bush administration officials who emerged two weeks ago to lament the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq have largely disappeared from the public debate. But that doesn’t mean they’re gone. Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Bush advisor Richard Perle both expressed openness in the past days to Ahmad Chalabi as a replacement for embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Chalabi is a notorious figure from the early days of the Iraq War, as he supplied the United States with a great deal of falsified intelligence upon which the Bush administration...

Thursday, June 26, the day before US Secretary of State John Kerry was due in Riyadh, King Abdullah summoned a National Security Council meeting “upon the current security events in the region, especially in Iraq,” and ordered “all necessary measures to protect the kingdom against terrorist threats.” This meant a general call-up of military units for a high level of preparedness. DEBKAfile’s military sources disclose that Egypt is assembling an expeditionary commando force to fly to Saudi Arabia and bolster its border defenses. This flurry of Saudi-Egyptian military steps comes in the wake of intelligence gathered by Saudi reconnaissance planes...

BRUSSELS — Iran is directing surveillance drones over Iraq from an airfield in Baghdad and is secretly supplying Iraq with tons of military equipment, supplies and other assistance, American officials said. Tehran has also deployed an intelligence unit there to intercept communications, the officials said. The secret Iranian programs are part of a broader effort by Tehran to gather intelligence and help Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government in its struggle against Sunni militants with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the head of Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force, has visited Iraq at least twice to help...

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Wednesday rejected calls to create a new national unity government that the Obama administration has been pushing. "The call to form a national emergency government is a coup against the constitution and the political process," Maliki said in a televised address, according to Agence France-Presse. "The dangerous goals of forming a national emergency government are not hidden,” he added. "It is an attempt by those who are against the constitution to eliminate the young democratic process and steal the votes of the voters.”Al-Maliki, however, said he is still committed to launching the process that...

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki (R) and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meet at the Prime Minister's Office in Baghdad June 23, 2014. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry just finished a meeting with Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad, which not expected to be friendly, after the U.S. entertained the idea that the Iraqi Prime Minister should resign. A few days prior to his Middle East trip, the senior U.S. diplomat held a conference call with Sunni Arab leaders. According to a senior Arab diplomat briefed on the call, the U.S. contingent did not fully grasp the situation. "We felt...

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin has spoken by phone to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, expressing Moscow’s support for his action against the militant offensive. Putin confirmed Russia’s “full support for the Iraqi government’s action to quickly free the territory of the republic from terrorists,” the Kremlin said, adding that Putin and al-Maliki also discussed bilateral cooperation.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to step aside from his country as it gallops furiously toward civil war. In recent days, Sunni extremist fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria moved within 50 miles of Baghdad, an alarming escalation that, the former Secretary of State told Fox News on Tuesday, the Iraqi politician had only exacerbated. Clinton said al-Maliki showed weak leadership by exhibiting a preference for Iraqi Shi‘ites and purging senior military leaders of the rival religious sect group. Clinton added that she is “not in favor of any...

US President Barack Obama declared on Thursday that short-term military actions will have to be taken in Iraq, following the take-over by an Al Qaeda break-off Islamist terrorist group over large portions of the country. Reuters reported that Obama said he is looking at "all options" as far as helping the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, noting "I don't rule anything out," when asked whether the United States is considering drone strikes or any other action to stop the insurgency. Speaking at the White House while meeting Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot, Obama said there will be "short-term...

Iraqi Al Qaeda's entry into Syria's civil war caused "a political disaster" for Islamist militants there, the movement's global leader Ayman al-Zawahri said in a video message, urging the faction to redouble its efforts in Iraq instead. Zawahri has repeatedly tried to end infighting between the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and another Al Qaeda-aligned group, the Nusra Front. He said on May 2 in a message translated by SITE Monitoring that if ISIL had accepted his decision not to get involved in Syria and had instead worked to "busy itself with Iraq, which needs double its...

President Barack Obama plans to host Iraq’s prime minister at the White House on Nov. 1. …

Iraq’s Al Maliki is Obama’s Assad The only difference between al Maliki and Assad is that US President Obama personally installed and armed the Iranian stooge al Maliki as the new Shiite Saddam. By Mark Langfan, INN On January 10th 49 BCE, Roman General Julius Caesar crossed south over the red Rubicon river with his army. An all-out-to-the-death Roman civil war was inevitable. On April 23, 2013, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s Shiite tanks fired and murdered at least 23 unarmed Sunni protesters in the northern city of Hawijah as his tanks crossed red rivers of Sunni blood. An...

He’s one of the most powerful men in Iraq—and one of the least popular. Nuri al-Maliki has, for many Iraqis, forfeited his credibility as prime minister. His allegedly authoritarian and inefficient leadership style has even been criticized by members of the parties that make up the government coalition. No wonder—a year after the withdrawal of the US army, he can barely point to a single success. Unemployment is high, terrorists have infiltrated security forces and corruption is widespread. Some of his coalition partners are even accusing Maliki of behaving like Iraq’s former dictator Saddam Hussein. “Maliki depends on a small,...

A PUBLIC relations stumble between Tehran and Baghdad has intensified speculation that one of Iran’s most senior clerics is about to extend his power—and Iran’s theocratic system—into Iraq.On his return from a visit to Tehran, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s office released statements on his meetings with several senior Iranian officials—but it was silent on Mr. Maliki’s encounter with 63-year-old Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi. Despite a Baghdad blackout on what is understood to have been their third meeting in recent months, Iran’s government-run news agency IRNA released a photograph of Mr. Maliki and Ayatollah Shahroudi—who is Iraqi by birth—greeting each...

Saudi newspapers on Tuesday waged a scathing campaign against Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki over his implicit criticism of the kingdom and Qatar for their calls to arm Syrian rebels. "Gulf (states) should boycott Maliki and his government," wrote Tariq al-Homayed, the editor of Asharq al-Awsat, calling for the "punishment of all who stand with the tyrant of Damascus, first and foremost Maliki's government." "Boycott him to prevent the emergence of a new Saddam or another Bashar," wrote Homayed in the Saudi owned pan-Arab daily referring to the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and Syria's embattled President Bashar al-Assad. The...