Iraq PM al-Zaidi to Washington with energy deals front, “militia file” unresolved
Shafaq News
Iraq's new prime minister, Ali Falih al-Zaidi, is preparing for an official visit to Washington in mid-July, his first face-to-face engagement with the Trump administration since taking office on May 14, with a bilateral agenda that places energy investment and economic partnership at its center, while leaving the harder issue of Iran-backed armed factions to negotiate in the margins.
In Washington policy circles, the reception has been broadly positive, though calibrated. Al-Zaidi is the youngest prime minister in Iraq's modern history, a former banker and businessman with no prior cabinet experience and no deep factional patron inside the Coordination Framework that backed his nomination. That profile, untested but untarnished, is precisely what makes him legible to an administration that prizes transactional relationships over ideological alignment.
William Lawrence, senior fellow at the National Council on US-Arab Relations and a former US diplomat, described Washington's posture toward al-Zaidi as broadly positive, driven in part by the novelty of his profile and his emergence as a consensus figure acceptable to Iraq's competing political blocs.
Lawrence noted that despite the fundamental differences between al-Zaidi and Ahmad al-Sharaa, Syria's post-Assad leader, Washington is applying a similar playbook to both: extend early engagement, set an informal probationary window, and measure the relationship against outcomes rather than commitments. “It’s almost like they’re going to wait and see,” he said.
The July visit was organized by US Special Envoy Tom Barack and reflects an American interest in anchoring Iraq's new government to the bilateral relationship before regional dynamics reassert themselves. Lawrence said that Washington had been acutely worried during the recent Iran-Israel conflict, using Iraqi territory to launch missiles and drones toward Saudi Arabia —an episode that exposed the limits of Baghdad's control over factions operating within its borders. "That could have really caused problems in Iraq if the war had been sustained and if Saudi Arabia had been hit more and more by projectiles coming from Iraq, but now that the war looks like it's ending, that's going to help al-Zaidi."
What Washington wants from the visit, in practical terms, is less a strategic declaration than a commercial opening. Todd L. Belt, director of the Political Management program at George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management, detailed the US administration's hierarchy of concerns: "It seems to be a significant effort at providing stability in the area. Also, Donald Trump is very concerned about energy and would like to have some new deals. I think the militia groups and disarming them are also a secondary concern, but Donald Trump's concerns are always about business first."
Al-Zaidi's own priorities align closely enough to make the visit viable, as he officially announced he will travel to Washington, accompanied by Iraqi businesspeople, framing the trip around investment and economic partnership. A $10 billion Central Bank contribution to a private sector development fund is part of the government's program.
The prize project on the bilateral agenda is an oil pipeline that would run from southern Iraq to Jordan's Aqaba Port, a route that would give Iraqi crude direct Red Sea access and, for Washington, represents exactly the kind of infrastructure deal the current administration finds compelling.
The energy dimension carries an uncomfortable backstory. Since March 2025 and until now, the Trump administration has declined to renew the sanctions waiver that had previously exempted Baghdad from penalties for purchasing Iranian gas, a waiver that had allowed Iran to deliver roughly 30 million cubic meters of gas daily to Iraq, supporting nearly a third of the country's power generation capacity. After the waiver lapsed in March 2025, Iranian gas flows to Iraq dropped by approximately 40 percent. Iraq now faces peak summer demand of around 40 gigawatts against production capacity of approximately 29 gigawatts, a gap that domestic alternatives have not bridged. The new government's program commits to ending Iranian energy dependency through accelerated domestic gas capture, a commitment made under structural pressure Washington helped create.
Read more: 40-GW electricity gap forces Iraq to back private generators
On that basis, the factions file is the most politically sensitive and the most diplomatically obscured item on the bilateral agenda. Al-Zaidi's ministerial program commits to consolidating all weapons under exclusive state authority but does not dissolve the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF-Al-Hashd al-Shaabi) —the umbrella of predominantly Shiite armed factions with deep ties to Tehran. Political sources told Shafaq News that Washington's categorical rejection of any candidate perceived as close to armed factions was the principal obstacle to filling the Defense and Interior ministries after the May 14 confidence vote. Those portfolios remain vacant.
Heba Abd al-Wahhab, a Washington-based researcher specializing in Middle East affairs, cautioned against reading American enthusiasm as confidence. The administration, she told Shafaq News, views the al-Zaidi government with considerable caution and is attempting a fundamental reset in the bilateral relationship, one made urgent by what the Iran-Israel confrontation revealed about Iraq's inability to restrain Iran-aligned factions on its soil.
Read more: The end of a waiver: Iraq's struggle for energy independence
"Washington is seeking through this government to build a different foundation for the relationship," she said, "particularly given the complications that emerged during the recent Iran-Israel confrontation and what it exposed about the fragility of the Iraqi state's capacity to restrain the Iran-backed armed factions."
She noted that Washington is also fully aware that al-Zaidi emerged from a complex and constrained political process, and that his room for maneuver is limited. The American approach, she argued, is deliberately focused on practical results rather than political statements.
Lawrence described the factions file as Washington's central preoccupation, distinct from al-Zaidi's own immediate priorities. "Washington's biggest issue is the Al-Hashd al-Shaabi…Whereas al-Zaidi's biggest issue probably is getting the economy flowing, this pipeline project to Jordan's Aqaba Port and other things to get the Iraqi economy humming with American assistance."
Asked whether reducing armed forces influence formed part of the broader US-Iran understanding, Lawrence said, "It's not explicitly included.”
“Al-Zaidi would do well to try to calm things down within Iraq so that there's no tit-for-tat involving PMF. That's sort of his job. And that will be one of the things that he will be measured by as the Trump administration views his leadership in Iraq, if he can get things under control vis-à-vis the militias."
In this regard, Abd al-Wahhab noted that the factional problem encompasses political networks, economic interests, and institutional penetrations built inside the Iraqi state over more than a decade. Dismantling or even constraining that architecture cannot be accomplished by a single government in a single term, let alone in the months between now and a White House meeting.
“The general impression [of the US] is that he [al-Zaidi] is good, he’s a businessman, he’s transactional like Trump, and hopefully, if things go well and he doesn’t get too close to Iran, things will work out fine,” Lawrence concluded.
Read more: How the US pushed Iraq's armed factions toward disarmament
Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.
