![\"Nizar](\"https:\/\/media.cnn.com\/api\/v1\/images\/stellar\/prod\/c-ap26101655237580.jpg?c=original&q=w_1280,c_fill\/f_avif\")
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\n Iraq is racing against missing another constitutional deadline to form a government, as the conflict involving the United States, Israel and Iran adds strain to a long-running political deadlock in Baghdad.\n <\/p>\n
\n Iraq held parliamentary elections<\/a> on November 11 for its 329-seat legislature but missed its first constitutional deadline by not naming a president within 30 days.\n <\/p>\n \n On April 11, Nizar Amidi was elected president and now has 15 days from that date to formally task the nominee of the largest parliamentary bloc with forming a new government \u2014 and ultimately selecting a prime minister.\n <\/p>\n \n The fight over who becomes prime minister \u2014 Iraq\u2019s most powerful post \u2014 is no longer just an internal dispute, said Issam al-Faili, an Iraqi political analyst and university professor. He said the US-Iran conflict has made it harder for lawmakers to agree on a candidate.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIran wants the next prime minister to support its interests, while the Trump administration is pushing for a candidate who will confront Iran-backed militias and move toward disarming them,\u201d al-Faili said. The United States views the militias \u201cas a threat to its regional interests,\u201d he added.\n <\/p>\n \n In practice, al-Faili said, no prime minister is likely to emerge without at least tacit acceptance from Iran.\n <\/p>\n \n The US has previously undercut potential candidates, and President Donald Trump has warned that that the US would cut support for Iraq if one former prime minister returned to power.\n <\/p>\n \n Iran can signal its preferences through deep networks in Iraq, al-Faili said, including allied political movements such as Islamic Dawa and armed factions within the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an umbrella group of mostly Shiite militias.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n \n Al-Faili said that even if a prime minister is chosen, he is likely to face US pressure to disarm Iranian-backed factions.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iraq is racing against missing another constitutional deadline to form a government, as the conflict involving the United…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,7788,21627,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-394805","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-hnk","10":"tag-intl","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-news","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-topnews","15":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}