Iran backs new Iraq leader, US ready to help
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IRAQ’S new prime minister-designate won swift endorsements from uneasy mutual allies the United States and Iran yesterday as he called on political leaders to end crippling feuds that have let jihadists seize a third of the country.
Haider al-Ibadi still faces opposition closer to home, where his Shiite party colleague Nuri al-Maliki has refused to step aside after eight years as premier that have alienated Iraq’s once dominant Sunni minority and irked Washington and Tehran.
However, Shiite militia and army commanders long loyal to Maliki signaled their backing for the change, as did many people on the streets of Baghdad, eager for an end to fears of a further descent into sectarian and ethnic bloodletting.
As Western powers and international aid agencies considered further help for tens of thousands of people driven from their homes and under threat from the Sunni militants of the Islamic State near the Syrian border, Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States would consider requests for military and other assistance once Ibadi forms a government to unite the country.
Underscoring the convergence of interest in Iraq that marks the normally hostile relationship between Washington and Iran, senior Iranian officials congratulated Ibadi on his nomination, three months after a parliamentary election left Maliki’s bloc as the biggest in the legislature. Like Western powers, Shiite Iran is alarmed by Sunni militants’ hold in Syria and Iraq.
“Iran supports the legal process that has taken its course with respect to choosing Iraq’s new prime minister,” the representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the Supreme National Security Council was quoted as saying.
“Iran favors a cohesive, integrated and secure Iraq,” he said, adding an apparent appeal to Maliki to concede.
Ibadi himself, long exiled in Britain, is seen as a far less polarizing, sectarian figure than Maliki, who is also from the Shiite Islamic Dawa party.
Ibadi appears to have the blessing of Iraq’s powerful Shi’ite clergy, a major force in the land since US troops toppled Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Iraqi state television said Ibadi “called on all political powers who believe in the constitution and democracy to unite efforts and close ranks to respond to Iraq’s great challenges.”
One politician close to Ibadi said that the prime minister-designate had begun contacting leaders of major groups to sound them out on forming a new cabinet. The president said on Monday he hoped he would succeed within the next month.
Maliki angrily dismissed Ibadi nomination on Monday as illegal. But there was no further sign of opposition yesterday.
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