Trump Reclaims Iraq from Iran
When one delves into the evolution of the Iraqi situation since the spring of 2003, the date marking the fall of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist family regime as a result of an American war waged by the United States, one can then understand a specific stance adopted by President Donald Trump. It is a negative stance toward the return of Nouri al-Maliki to the post of prime minister, a position he was forced to relinquish in 2014. The issue is less about an Iraqi politician as such than about, on the one hand, the symbolism embodied by Nouri al-Maliki and, on the other, an American decision to reclaim Iraq from Iran.
The American position must be understood in light of Iran’s retreat in the region. There is a reality that cannot be ignored: the “Islamic Republic” has lost all the wars it waged on the margins of the Gaza war, including the war in southern Lebanon and the war to preserve the Alawite regime in Syria. If one sets aside the Houthis in Yemen and their control over most of the country’s north, including Sanaa and the port of Hodeidah, Iran has no genuine leverage left other than Iraq. What, then, prevents the United States from reclaiming Iraq from Iran, after having handed it over on a silver platter twenty-three years ago?
It appears that Trump seeks revenge for the American failure for which the administration of George W. Bush was responsible. A resounding failure, stemming from an administration that decided to invade Iraq without planning for the post-Saddam era and the consequences that would follow. The Bush administration failed to grasp that sectarian parties and militias loyal to Iran could not produce democratic systems capable of serving as models for the region. Ultimately, the Iraqi system established after 2003 has done nothing but drive a large segment of Iraqis to long nostalgically for the bloody and backward regime of Saddam Hussein. Saddam left no mistake uncommitted from the moment he monopolized power in the summer of 1979, when he eliminated his predecessor Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr and anyone whose loyalty to him he even remotely questioned.
Despite this, there are those today who lament Saddam Hussein, who did not content himself with fighting the eight-year war against Iran, which had assumed he would be an easy target. In fact, by declaring war on the “Islamic Republic,” Saddam fell into an Iranian trap, as Ayatollah Khomeini in 1980 was seeking an external enemy through which to rally Iranians around national solidarity. Time passed, and Saddam committed another fatal error by invading Kuwait in the summer of 1990. That, however, was not sufficient reason for George W. Bush to decide to hand Iraq over to Iran, under the pretext of the September 11, 2001 attacks carried out by Al-Qaeda under the leadership of Osama bin Laden. Yet the logic of illogic embraced by the Bush administration led it to Iraq, despite the absence of any link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
It was logical for America to pursue Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, where bin Laden was based. Conversely, it was illogical to go to Iraq, in a gamble that cost the United States dearly. Does Trump, in 2026, seek to correct the misguided course taken in the aftermath of September 11, 2001?
From this starting point, namely the invasion of Iraq in a war whose sole victor was Iran, Donald Trump has decided to put an end to Iran’s expansionist project. The American invasion of Iraq was the new launchpad for that project. Consequently, Trump has no option but to reclaim Iraq from Iran if he is to achieve his objective. This is the meaning of his opposition to Nouri al-Maliki returning as prime minister, the most powerful man in Iraq under the system that has governed the country since the 2003 earthquake and the constitution it produced.
There is no joking with Donald Trump since he tore up the nuclear agreement with Iran during his first presidential term in 2018, followed by the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, in Baghdad at the beginning of 2020. Soleimani was not a marginal figure; he was the de facto ruler of Iraq, whose orders were not open to debate.
It is becoming increasingly clear that Donald Trump is not Barack Obama, who in 2010 struck a deal with Iran that kept Nouri al-Maliki in the prime minister’s post, even though the largest parliamentary bloc resulting from that year’s elections was that of Iyad Allawi, generally accepted in the Arab world. Iran sidelined Iyad Allawi, despite his constitutional right at the time to become prime minister.
In 2026, it is natural for Iraq to seek a new prime minister who reflects the new regional reality. It is even more natural that this prime minister be of a different kind altogether, far removed from Nouri al-Maliki and his sectarian zeal, or from Mohammed Shia al-Sudani. Al-Sudani has never managed to be a prime minister equidistant from all Iraqis, regardless of sect, community, or ethnicity. In other words, regional developments compel Iraq to emerge from Iranian domination, just as Syria did at the end of 2024.
Is it too much to ask that Iraq have a prime minister for all Iraqis, Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, Shiites, Sunnis, and what remains of Christians and Yazidis? Has the existence of such a prime minister become an Iraqi dream?
That dream may not be far-fetched, especially if Donald Trump completes the task of ending Iran’s grip on Iraq, and if he remembers that those who rule Iraq today would never have reached their positions were it not for the American tanks.