Shafaq News
Iraq's newprime minister, Ali Falih al-Zaidi, is preparing for an official visit toWashington in mid-July, his first face-to-face engagement with the Trumpadministration since taking office on May 14, with a bilateral agenda thatplaces energy investment and economic partnership at its center, while leavingthe harder issue of Iran-backed armed factions to negotiate in the margins.
In Washingtonpolicy circles, the reception has been broadly positive, though calibrated. Al-Zaidi is the youngest prime minister in Iraq's modern history, a formerbanker and businessman with no prior cabinet experience and no deep factionalpatron inside the Coordination Framework that backed his nomination. Thatprofile, untested but untarnished, is precisely what makes him legible to anadministration that prizes transactional relationships over ideologicalalignment.
William Lawrence,senior fellow at the National Council on US-Arab Relations and a former USdiplomat, described Washington's posture toward al-Zaidi as broadly positive,driven in part by the novelty of his profile and his emergence as a consensusfigure acceptable to Iraq's competing political blocs.
Lawrence notedthat 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 therelationship against outcomes rather than commitments. “It’s almost likethey’re going to wait and see,” he said.
The July visitwas organized by US Special Envoy Tom Barack and reflects an American interestin anchoring Iraq's new government to the bilateral relationship beforeregional dynamics reassert themselves. Lawrence said that Washington had beenacutely worried during the recent Iran-Israel conflict, using Iraqi territoryto launch missiles and drones toward Saudi Arabia —an episode that exposed thelimits of Baghdad's control over factions operating within its borders."That could have really caused problems in Iraq if the war had beensustained and if Saudi Arabia had been hit more and more by projectiles coming fromIraq, but now that the war looks like it's ending, that's going to helpal-Zaidi."
What Washingtonwants from the visit, in practical terms, is less a strategic declaration thana commercial opening. Todd L. Belt, director of the Political Managementprogram at George Washington University's Graduate School of PoliticalManagement, detailed the US administration's hierarchy of concerns: "Itseems 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 newdeals. I think the militia groups and disarming them are also a secondaryconcern, but Donald Trump's concerns are always about business first."
Al-Zaidi's ownpriorities align closely enough to make the visit viable, as he officiallyannounced he will travel to Washington, accompanied by Iraqi businesspeople,framing the trip around investment and economic partnership. A $10 billionCentral Bank contribution to a private sector development fund is part of thegovernment's program.
The prizeproject on the bilateral agenda is an oil pipeline that would run from southernIraq to Jordan's Aqaba Port, a route that would give Iraqi crude direct Red Seaaccess and, for Washington, represents exactly the kind of infrastructure dealthe current administration finds compelling.
The energydimension carries an uncomfortable backstory. Since March 2025 and until now,the Trump administration has declined to renew the sanctions waiver that hadpreviously exempted Baghdad from penalties for purchasing Iranian gas, a waiverthat had allowed Iran to deliver roughly 30 million cubic meters of gas dailyto 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 byapproximately 40 percent. Iraq now faces peak summer demand of around 40gigawatts against production capacity of approximately 29 gigawatts, a gap thatdomestic alternatives have not bridged. The new government's program commits toending Iranian energy dependency through accelerated domestic gas capture, acommitment made under structural pressure Washington helped create.
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On that basis,the factions file is the most politically sensitive and the most diplomaticallyobscured item on the bilateral agenda. Al-Zaidi's ministerial program commitsto consolidating all weapons under exclusive state authority but does notdissolve the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF-Al-Hashd al-Shaabi) —the umbrellaof predominantly Shiite armed factions with deep ties to Tehran. Politicalsources told Shafaq News that Washington's categorical rejection of anycandidate perceived as close to armed factions was the principal obstacle tofilling the Defense and Interior ministries after the May 14 confidence vote. Those portfolios remain vacant.
Heba Abdal-Wahhab, a Washington-based researcher specializing in Middle East affairs,cautioned against reading American enthusiasm as confidence. Theadministration, she told Shafaq News, views the al-Zaidi government withconsiderable caution and is attempting a fundamental reset in the bilateralrelationship, one made urgent by what the Iran-Israel confrontation revealedabout Iraq's inability to restrain Iran-aligned factions on its soil.
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"Washingtonis seeking through this government to build a different foundation for therelationship," she said, "particularly given the complications thatemerged during the recent Iran-Israel confrontation and what it exposed aboutthe fragility of the Iraqi state's capacity to restrain the Iran-backed armedfactions."
She noted thatWashington is also fully aware that al-Zaidi emerged from a complex andconstrained political process, and that his room for maneuver is limited. TheAmerican approach, she argued, is deliberately focused on practical resultsrather than political statements.
Lawrencedescribed the factions file as Washington's central preoccupation, distinctfrom al-Zaidi's own immediate priorities. "Washington's biggest issue isthe Al-Hashd al-Shaabi…Whereas al-Zaidi's biggest issue probably is getting theeconomy flowing, this pipeline project to Jordan's Aqaba Port and other thingsto get the Iraqi economy humming with American assistance."
Asked whetherreducing armed forces influence formed part of the broader US-Iranunderstanding, Lawrence said, "It's not explicitly included.”
“Al-Zaidi woulddo well to try to calm things down within Iraq so that there's no tit-for-tatinvolving PMF. That's sort of his job. And that will be one of the things thathe will be measured by as the Trump administration views his leadership inIraq, 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 stateover more than a decade. Dismantling or even constraining that architecturecannot be accomplished by a single government in a single term, let alone inthe 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, andhopefully, if things go well and he doesn’t get too close to Iran, things willwork out fine,” Lawrence concluded.
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Written andedited by Shafaq News staff.