Iraq’s New Government Is a Temporary Truce, Not a Strategic Settlement

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  Baghdad’s latest cabinet formation reveals a state still trapped between militia power, oil dependency, Kurdish fragmentation, and the geopolitical collision between Washington and Tehran. By Dr. Pshtiwan Faraj | Sulaimani, Iraq | 13 May 2026 — Kurdish Policy Analysis After six months of political paralysis, Iraq finally has a government. Yet the formation of Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s cabinet may say less about political stabilization than about the inability of Iraq’s competing factions to sustain prolonged deadlock. The parliamentary approval of Zaidi’s government this week ended one of the country’s longest post-election crises in recent years. But the structure of the new cabinet — incomplete, contested, and heavily shaped by factional bargaining — reveals an Iraqi state still fundamentally unable to resolve its core strategic contradictions. The most important fact about Iraq’s new government is not that it was formed. It is that it emerged without resolving the dis...
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Kaine says Trump leaving Iran nuclear deal ‘one of the worst’ foreign policy decisions by American president

 “Diplomacy Burned: Tim Kaine Blasts Donald Trump Over Iran Deal as Talks Collapse”


Kurdish Policy Analysis / SULAIMANI, Iraq

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) slammed President Trump for withdrawing the U.S. from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran during his first term. U.S.–Iran negotiations falter in Islamabad as Washington faces renewed criticism over its 2018 withdrawal from the nuclear agreement, raising fears of escalating conflict.

“This is not going to be an easy negotiation because the last negotiation that led to a control of Iran’s nuclear program, the U.S. made the decision to tear it up and walk away from the deal,” Kaine told host Martha Raddatz on ABC’s “This Week,” referring to negotiations between the Trump administration and Iranian officials in Islamabad, Pakistan. 

“I think that decision by President Trump to tear up a diplomatic deal will go down in history as one of the worst decisions in the foreign policy space ever made by an American president,” he continued. “If you make diplomacy impossible, you tend to make war inevitable.”

In 2018, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the JCPOA, which was negotiated under former President Obama. The deal, reached in 2015 between Iran and multiple world powers, required the Islamic Republic to dismantle its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

The Obama administration said in January 2016, citing the International Atomic Energy Agency, that the Iranian government had shipped 25,000 pounds of enriched uranium out of the country since the prior October.

Tehran also dismantled and removed two-thirds of its centrifuges, removed the calandria from its heavy water reactor and filled it with concrete, and provided “unprecedented access” to its nuclear facilities and supply chain, the Obama administration added.

The Obama administration noted at the time that nonnuclear sanctions, including those on missile technologies and conventional weapons, and the designation of Iran as a state sponsor of terror remained in place.

Earlier this weekend, Vice President Vance, U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, led negotiations with Iranian officials in Pakistan, amid a ceasefire between the two sides. 

After talks concluded, Vance told reporters that the discussions were “substantive,” but the two sides were unable to reach a peace agreement.

“The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement, and I think that’s bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States of America,” the vice president said. “So, we go back to the United States having not come to an agreement.”

Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, also said Sunday that U.S. officials “failed to gain the trust” of their Iranian counterparts during those negotiations. 

#IranDeal #JCPOA #USIran #Trump #TimKaine #Geopolitics #MiddleEast #NuclearCrisis #Diplomacy #BreakingNews


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