عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Features

What’s Next as Iraq Moves to End Deadlock?

Abdul Latif Rashid takes his oath of office in front of Iraqi lawmakers in Baghdad, Iraq, October 13, 2022. (Iraqi Parliament Media Office/Handout via Reuters)
Abdul Latif Rashid takes his oath of office in front of Iraqi lawmakers in Baghdad, Iraq, October 13, 2022. (Iraqi Parliament Media Office/Handout via Reuters)
TT
20
TT

What’s Next as Iraq Moves to End Deadlock?

Abdul Latif Rashid takes his oath of office in front of Iraqi lawmakers in Baghdad, Iraq, October 13, 2022. (Iraqi Parliament Media Office/Handout via Reuters)
Abdul Latif Rashid takes his oath of office in front of Iraqi lawmakers in Baghdad, Iraq, October 13, 2022. (Iraqi Parliament Media Office/Handout via Reuters)

Iraqi lawmakers have elected a new president who swiftly named a prime minister in the hope of ending a year of political gridlock and deadly violence.

But major challenges lie ahead for the crisis-hit nation.

How will government talks play out?

Iraq's parliament, dominated by the pro-Iran Coordination Framework of Shiite factions, elected on Thursday a new president, 78-year-old Kurdish former minister Abdul Latif Rashid.

The new head of state moved immediately to task Shiite politician Mohammad Shia al-Sudani with forming a government, capping a whole year of deadlock between major parties since Iraq last went to the polls in October 2021.

In multi-ethnic, multi-confessional Iraq, where political alliances and coalitions constantly shift, divisions between feuding factions might resurface and complicate Sudani's efforts in the 30 days afforded to him to form a government capable of commanding a majority in parliament.

In the past, constitutional deadlines have been routinely missed amid protracted political wrangling.

"Once we start discussing who becomes minister, but even more critically who gains more leverage over the senior civil service, government agencies, state coffers -- that's when we will continue to see the fragmentation and stalemate play out," said Renad Mansour of British think-tank Chatham House.

He explained that Iraq is headed for "another power-sharing government", where political parties will "try and divide the country's wealth".

And the stakes are high. A colossal $87 billion in revenues from oil exports are locked up in the central bank's coffers.

The money can help rebuild infrastructure in the war-ravaged country, but it can only be invested after lawmakers approve a state budget presented by the government, once formed.

What will Sadr do?

The future government's hands may be tied by influential Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, capable of mobilizing tens of thousands of his supporters with a single tweet.

In June, he had ordered the 73 lawmakers in his bloc to resign, leaving parliament in the hands of the rival Coordination Framework, which now controls 138 out of 329 seats in the legislature.

This pro-Iranian alliance includes the political arm of the former paramilitary Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), as well as Sadr's longtime rival, former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Political analyst Ali al-Baidar noted the Sadrist movement has kept uncharacteristically "quiet".

It may be that their leader has been "giving the political forces a chance", but it could also be the result of "an agreement offering the movement some" government positions in return for their tacit approval of Sudani's nomination, Baidar said.

Tensions between the two rival Shiite camps boiled over on August 29 when more than 30 Sadr supporters were killed in clashes with Iran-backed factions and the army in Baghdad's Green Zone, which houses government buildings and diplomatic missions.

"It remains a precarious state of affairs," Mansour said.

"Sadr will remain on the margins of the political scene, trying to disrupt and use protests to replace the political capital" he lost in parliament, the researcher added.

Sadr is "hoping to force an early election using controlled instability as he always has, to maintain his power and leverage in negotiations.

"But mistakes in the past few months have... put him in a difficult bargaining position," Mansour continued.

Is there hope for change?

Political analyst Baidar said the "consensus" on Rashid's appointment means a government will be formed relatively easily, but stressed the "colossal tasks" ahead.

Nearly four out of 10 young Iraqis are unemployed and one-third of the oil-rich country's population of 42 million lives in poverty, according to the United Nations.

Prime minister-designate Sudani vowed on Thursday to push through "economic reforms" that would revitalize Iraq's industry, agriculture and private sector.

He also promised to provide young Iraqis "employment opportunities and housing".

According to Baidar, a "growing" global interest in Iraqi politics -- specifically from Washington, Paris and London -- could "force politicians to perform better".

"While Iraq is by no means a poor country, private and partisan interests conspire to divert resources away from critical investment in national development," UN envoy Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert told the Security Council last week.

"Iraq's political and governance system ignores the needs of the Iraqi people," she charged.

"Pervasive corruption is a major root cause of Iraqi dysfunctionality. And frankly, no leader can claim to be shielded from it."

A pessimistic Mansour said "public life will remain as it is".

"People will still not have their basic rights, water, healthcare, electricity."

Most Viewed

 
Features

Israel’s Notorious Prison: Survivors Speak of ‘Cemetery for the Living’

Palestinian detainees at Israel’s Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel, winter 2023 (AP)
Palestinian detainees at Israel’s Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel, winter 2023 (AP)
TT
20
TT

Israel’s Notorious Prison: Survivors Speak of ‘Cemetery for the Living’

Palestinian detainees at Israel’s Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel, winter 2023 (AP)
Palestinian detainees at Israel’s Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel, winter 2023 (AP)

by Bahaa Melhem

After hearing and reading much about the horrors taking place inside Israel’s Sde Teiman detention center, Palestinian journalist Shadi Abu Sidou says nothing could have prepared him for what he witnessed one night in April 2024, when Israeli soldiers “set police dogs on Palestinian detainees to rape them while laughing and filming.”

Abu Sidou, who was held in the military facility located in a base in the Negev Desert, was released as part of a prisoner swap deal in October 2025.

Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, he said he was arrested in March 2024 while documenting events at Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Medical Complex.

“It was brutal,” he recalled, struggling to speak. “When I was arrested, the soldiers ordered me to take off all my clothes. They tied my hands behind my back and beat me until they broke one of my ribs.” He said he was left naked in the rain and cold for more than 10 hours.

But Abu Sidou was not alone in facing what he described as “torture in a cemetery for the living.”

Testimonies given to Asharq Al-Awsat by two other former detainees revealed harrowing abuse inside Sde Teiman, including beatings, electric shocks, sleep and food deprivation, denial of medical care, and what they described as “brutal sexual assaults.”

Systematic Torture

Sde Teiman came under renewed scrutiny after the arrest of former Israeli Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, accused of leaking a video showing Israeli soldiers physically and sexually assaulting a Palestinian prisoner inside the facility.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the leak might have caused “the worst damage to Israel’s public image since its founding.”

As Israel’s war in Gaza intensified, it detained hundreds of Palestinians under what it calls the “Unlawful Combatants Law,” holding them incommunicado in the secretive desert prison, stripping them of all legal rights and denying access to lawyers and human rights groups.

Israeli and international rights organizations, including B’Tselem, have documented similar complaints of “systematic torture” and “inhuman treatment” inside Sde Teiman.

‘The Disco’: Torture to the Sound of Screams

After long hours of exposure to the cold, Abu Sidou said he was transported in a military truck to Sde Teiman, where a new ordeal began. “They call it the ‘reception’—a corridor lined with about 30 soldiers who beat the prisoners as they enter,” he said. “Some lost their teeth or eyes from the beating.”

After nearly 70 days in detention without charge, Abu Sidou was taken for interrogation. Before entering the room, he was stripped naked and subjected to a full body search, then taken to a place the soldiers called “the disco.”

Inside, he said, were loudspeakers blaring music and screams. “In the ‘disco room,’ prisoners are thrown in for hours without sleep. All you hear is noise, loud music, and the screams of others being tortured.”

He said he was later taken to another room where guards hung him by his wrists from the ceiling and punched his bare body until he passed out.

Back to the Barracks: Nights of Humiliation

After interrogation, Abu Sidou was returned to the overcrowded metal barracks, which he described as unfit for human life. “We were around 140 to 160 prisoners in each barrack, hands tied and eyes covered,” he said.

“Squads of 30 to 40 soldiers would storm in with dogs, ordering us to lie on our stomachs. The dogs walked on our backs, urinated on us, scratched and bit us.”

One April night, he said, the situation descended into “complete human collapse.” When one prisoner had a nervous breakdown and shouted, “I want to see my children,” the guards unleashed the dogs and “took him out, stripped him, and let the dog do the unspeakable.”

“We could see through our blindfolds, the soldiers laughing and filming with their phones as the prisoner screamed,” Abu Sidou said. “We all started shouting. We thought we were next.”

At the end of his testimony, Abu Sidou described Sde Teiman as “a graveyard for the living.” “We were losing our minds from fear. We couldn’t tell day from night, and the only faces we saw were those hitting and humiliating us,” he said. “I wished for death, just to escape the pain.”

He added that prisoners lived in total isolation from the world, allowed only two minutes to use the toilet in 24 hours, while medical care was used “as another form of humiliation.”

Abu Foul: Detained on One Leg, Released Without Sight

Another chilling account came from Mahmoud Abu Foul, a young man from northern Gaza who was arrested at Kamal Adwan Hospital while receiving treatment after his leg had been amputated. His time in Israeli detention, he said, ended with the total loss of his eyesight.

In late December 2023, Israeli forces stormed the hospital. “They tied my hands and covered my eyes, then beat me mercilessly until I bled,” Abu Foul told Asharq Al-Awsat. “I was already wounded and missing a leg. I could only walk with a crutch, but they took it away and cuffed my hands behind my back.”

After hours of beating and insults, he was transferred to Sde Teiman, where he spent months. “For the first seven days, my hands were tied behind me and my eyes were covered all the time,” he said. “There were about 140 prisoners in each barrack, the food was scarce, and the beatings and humiliation never stopped.”

One day, soldiers struck him repeatedly on the head for nearly two hours. “When I woke up, I realized I couldn’t see anything,” he said. “I told the others I couldn’t see, that everything was dark. I started crying in panic, and since then I haven’t been able to open my eyes.”

Abu Foul said he pleaded for medical help, but his calls went unanswered. “I begged for medicine, but they yelled at me and mocked me. I was left alone to suffer in darkness.” After losing his sight, he said, “I lived the rest of my imprisonment through sound—the screams of other prisoners, the cries for help, and the soldiers’ insults.”

Freedom Tainted by Loss

Months later, Abu Foul’s name appeared on the list of prisoners released in the latest swap deal. He recalled the moment of his freedom: “I returned to Gaza blind, thinking my family was gone,” he said.

“Then, among the crowd, I heard my mother’s voice and realized my family was around me. I thank God I am still with them. I just wish I could have seen my mother’s face, even once.”

According to the Palestinian Prisoners Affairs Commission, more than 10,000 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons, including over 1,800 detainees from Gaza classified by Israel as “unlawful combatants.”

Palestinian officials say that more than 80 prisoners have died in Israeli custody since October 7, 2023, more than half of them from Gaza.

A spokesperson for the Palestinian Prisoners Club told Asharq Al-Awsat that Israel “has carried out a continuous series of fully documented crimes against male and female prisoners over the past two years.”

He added that Israeli authorities “committed another form of genocide inside detention centers through systematic torture and sexual assaults, particularly against detainees from Gaza in Sde Teiman, where even police dogs were used as instruments of rape.”

Palestinian and Israeli rights groups say prisoners held in Israeli jails and camps, particularly in Sde Teiman, face systematic torture, starvation, and medical neglect, which have led to the deaths of several detainees.

No official figures exist on how many prisoners have been held or remain inside the facility.

Features

Mamdani Victory Fires up Europe’s Left Against Right-Wing Surge at Home

Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani speaks during a press conference at the Unisphere on November 05, 2025 in the Queens borough of New York City. (Getty Images via AFP)
Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani speaks during a press conference at the Unisphere on November 05, 2025 in the Queens borough of New York City. (Getty Images via AFP)
TT
20
TT

Mamdani Victory Fires up Europe’s Left Against Right-Wing Surge at Home

Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani speaks during a press conference at the Unisphere on November 05, 2025 in the Queens borough of New York City. (Getty Images via AFP)
Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani speaks during a press conference at the Unisphere on November 05, 2025 in the Queens borough of New York City. (Getty Images via AFP)

The blistering rise of Zohran Mamdani to become mayor of New York City has offered encouragement to left-wing parties across Europe that an unabashedly radical agenda could help turn the tide against right-wing forces at home.

Parties from London to Berlin cheered Mamdani, a 34-year-old self-described democratic socialist whose viral videos and promise of rent controls and taxing the rich in a city seen as a beacon of global capitalism struck a chord with voters.

Parties like Germany's The Left party and Britain's Greens hope to garner momentum from Mamdani's win, signaling they would not dilute their policies or be sucked into the right-wing battleground of migration. It could also give food for thought to established left-wing parties like Britain's ruling Labour party, which has tanked in the polls since its landslide election victory last year, and Germany's Social Democrats (SPD).

Zack Polanski, who this year became the first Jewish leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, has drawn comparisons to Mamdani for his use of social media and calls for a wealth tax to reduce inequality.

An ecstatic Polanski told Reuters that Mamdani's victory shows "hope has triumphed over hate".

"This is important - not just because it's important for New York but actually I think this resonates throughout the world. But this is about improving people's lives, recognizing the inequality that lies both at the heart of New York, but frankly, around much of the world."

"And this is about saying: let's lower people's bills and tax multimillionaires and billionaires," said Polanski, whose party has risen in the polls after winning just four seats in 2024.

Cost of living is a major focus in Britain where food price inflation for example hit 19% in March 2023, the highest in 45 years, and finance minister Rachel Reeves has signaled "hard choices" and possible tax rises to come.

LEFT WANTS TO BUILD MOMENTUM

In a polarized political landscape, Germany's Left party was a surprise package in federal elections in February and hopes to build on its strong showing next year in local elections, including in the capital Berlin. Like other European leftists, its members visited New York during the campaign.

"The problems people in New York face are very similar to those we hear about at people’s doorsteps here in Germany. Rents are unaffordable, and prices for food, electricity, heating, and public transport are rising faster than wages," Jan van Aken, head of Germany's Left party, told Reuters.

"We are in close contact with Zohran Mamdani and his team and are learning from each other. His campaign is like a blueprint for next year's elections in Berlin," he said in an email. "Zohran Mamdani's victory gives us momentum."

Set to become New York's first Muslim mayor and the youngest since 1892, Mamdani's social media posts resonated on both sides of the Atlantic with voters hit by rising inflation and stretched public services since the pandemic.

"I'm freezing ... your rent," Mamdani told New Yorkers after plunging into icy waters off Coney Island in January in suit and tie.

Germany's Left is also pushing rent controls and free or heavily subsidized transport, and uses blunt messaging. "We're taking on the rich. Nobody else is doing that," said one of its campaign posters.

Leftists in France, which is gearing up for presidential elections by 2027, were also inspired.

"Finally, a lesson for the left everywhere: it is not by watering down economic liberalism that we win, but by fighting it tooth and nail," Manon Aubry, from the far-left France Unbowed party (LFI), wrote on X.

COST OF LIVING FOCUS

Asked what lessons left-wing parties should draw from Mamdani's victory, Polanski said the cost of living mattered above all else and that progressive parties must offer real solutions to it.

More established mainstream parties have also taken heart from Mamdani's victory.

"For us in the SPD, this means we must refocus more strongly on what is at the heart of our work – social policies for the majority of society," SPD lawmaker Rasha Nasr told Reuters. The SPD, while still in power, scored its worst result since World War Two at the last election.

"In the last federal election campaign, we too often tried to engage in debates that were, by that point, hardly winnable on a factual basis, for example, regarding migration policy."

Philipp Koeker, political scientist at the University of Hanover, said it showed parties who want to win elections "or do not want to lose voters to the populist far right – should stick to their own core issues and present their own solutions to current problems rather than imitate the far right by adopting anti-immigration policies."

Having won on a radical agenda, Mamdani will face challenges putting his pledges into action. US President Donald Trump has threatened to cut funding to New York City. Some, including on Wall Street, hope and expect Mamdani will be unable to force through drastic change.

"Now comes the hard part," said James Schneider, former director of strategic communications for Labour under Jeremy Corbyn.

"Turning that electoral majority into real power — improving lives from City Hall while transforming his 100,000-strong volunteer army into community organizers in every neighborhood of the city."

Features

'Hostage Diplomacy': Longstanding Iran Tactic Presenting Dilemma for West

People walk past an anti-US billboard on a street in Tehran, Iran, November 5, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters
People walk past an anti-US billboard on a street in Tehran, Iran, November 5, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters
TT
20
TT

'Hostage Diplomacy': Longstanding Iran Tactic Presenting Dilemma for West

People walk past an anti-US billboard on a street in Tehran, Iran, November 5, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters
People walk past an anti-US billboard on a street in Tehran, Iran, November 5, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters

Iran since the revolution has employed the tactic of arresting Westerners in a bid to extract concessions from its foes, in a strategy of "hostage diplomacy" that has long presented Europe and the United States with a dilemma, observers say.

Iranian authorities this week released two French nationals, Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, from jail in Tehran after more than three years.

They had been convicted on charges of espionage, but their families said they were innocent tourists unwittingly caught up in a wider game being played out between Tehran and the West.

France described the pair, as well as several other French nationals detained in Iran who were recently released, as "state hostages". Over the last years, dozens of Europeans and Americans have been detained in similar circumstances.

The strategy has long antecedents, going back to the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran in November 1979 by radicals in the wake of the revolution, which saw dozens of Americans held for 444 days into early 1981.

"Iran has pursued hostage diplomacy since the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979," said Jason Brodsky, policy director of US-based think tank United Against Nuclear Iran.

"It uses hostages as pawns to extract concessions that it could not otherwise achieve from the United States and its allies," he added.

Tehran denies it has any strategy of hostage taking and all foreigners jailed are convicted after due legal process.

Such concessions include unfreezing assets or the release of Iranian nationals convicted in the United States, Europe and elsewhere on charges such as sanctions violations, assassination plots, or terrorism, he said.

"What the Iranian regime is practicing is state-sponsored hostage taking, also known as hostage diplomacy," added Daren Nair, a security consultant who has for years campaigned for detainees' releases worldwide.

For Clement Therme, an academic at France's Universite de Montpellier Paul-Valery, who closely follows the issue, the policy is "a pillar of Iranian foreign policy".

"Over time, there are arrests and releases, during periods of rapprochement and tension. But it's the intensity that varies, and the practice continues."

The release of Kohler and Paris, who have yet to be allowed to return to France, came after France freed on bail Iranian woman Mahdieh Esfandiari, detained in Paris on charges of spreading terror propaganda.

Tehran had explicitly linked the two cases, although the French foreign ministry has declined to comment on any deal.

The release of Western nationals detained in similar circumstances over the last years was often timed with Tehran receiving something in return after painstaking and ultra-secret diplomacy.

The cases of several British citizens, including dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, were linked to a payment owed by the UK to Iran for tanks ordered by the ousted shah that were never delivered. That debt was eventually settled and Zaghari-Ratcliffe and two other Britons were released in 2022.

In 2023, five Americans held in Iran, including the US-Iranian businessman Siamak Namazi who had been imprisoned for eight years, were released in a scheme that saw $6 billion of Iranian assets unfrozen in South Korea.

The release of British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert by Iran in 2020 came after Thailand freed three Iranian men jailed over a 2012 bomb plot.

But despite the recent releases, others remain held by Tehran, including Swedish-Iranian academic Ahmadreza Djalali, sentenced to death in 2017 on espionage charges his family vehemently rejects.

British couple Lindsay and Craig Foreman have been held in Iran since January on espionage charges after Iranian authorities seized the pair while they were on a round-the-world motorbike trip.

Brodsky said Europe and the United States should consider imposing a wholesale ban on travel to Iran by their nationals. But he acknowledged too that Washington and its allies had treated "this problem in a piecemeal manner" for too long.

"The US government should be working collectively with its allies to impose a range of multinational penalties on Iran the moment any hostage from these countries is taken by the Iranian regime -- this includes sanctions and diplomatic isolation," he said.