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Topic: Foreign Leaders Blog Brand: Middle East Watch Region: Middle East Tags: Ali Khamenei, Iran, Iraq, ISIS, Kurds, Nuri al-Maliki, Shia, and United States What Nuri al-Maliki’s Iraqi Comeback Means for the US February 4, 2026 By: Charbel Antoun Share

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The revival of Iraq’s most polarizing Shia leader signals Iran’s intent to set the terms of engagement with the Donald Trump administration.

Iraq’s dominant Shia bloc has reached into the past to choose a face for the future: former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. His nomination is being marketed as the return of an “experienced” strongman capable of restoring order and finally bringing Iran-aligned militias under state control. But this narrative is political theater. Maliki’s comeback is not a technocratic reset—it is a strategic message from Tehran to Washington that Iran intends to defend its primacy in Iraq through its most loyal and battle-tested operator.

Maliki’s record is not one of restraining armed groups. His tenure between 2006 and 2014 saw Iraq descend into its worst sectarian bloodshed since 2003, the loss of three provinces to ISIS, and the deepening entrenchment of Shia militias inside the state. Yet the same Iran-aligned coalition dominating parliament is reviving him now—precisely as Washington pressures Baghdad to curb militia influence and as the US facilitates the transfer of up to 7,000 ISIS detainees from Syria into Iraqi custody. There is more choreography to this decision than coincidence.

The Myth of Nuri al-Maliki the “Fixer”

A new narrative is taking shape: Maliki as the only figure strong enough to centralize power and impose order. Former US diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad has echoed this framing, and some regional commentators have embraced it as well. Saudi anchor Malek Alrougui argued that Maliki could “put the militias back in the bottle,” though even he conceded that the task is to “limit their power, not eliminate them.” He also noted that Iraq’s political elite seeks to construct an “Iraq under Maliki” to counterbalance a “Syria under al-Shara.” But this reading ignores the historical record. Maliki did not put the militias in the bottle; he shattered the bottle and built a political system that depended on them.

The idea that Maliki will dismantle or meaningfully weaken the militias is a structural fantasy. These groups are Iran’s primary lever of influence in Iraq. Tehran does not empower a loyalist to dismantle its own leverage.

Maliki’s likely role is to rebrand and centralize militia influence by integrating them deeper into state institutions; shield them from international scrutiny under the guise of “state control”; manage sensitive issues—including the transfer of thousands of ISIS detainees—within a security ecosystem aligned with Iran. This is not a plan to tame the militias. It is a plan to cement their position and present the arrangement to Washington as a fait accompli.

Iraqi political life often moves in circles rather than forward. As Iraqi academic Ayad Anbar notes, the system “reproduces itself without any circular or spiral development.” Maliki’s nomination fits this pattern.

Lebanese analyst Mustapha Fahs argues that the move reflects a new phase in which the Shia right and the Shia mainstream face an unprecedented challenge in maintaining their power amid regional realignment and rising domestic pressure. He also highlights the significance of Masoud Barzani’s support for Maliki—an alignment between the Shia right and the Kurdish right that exposes the depth of political bargaining required to manage Iraq’s next chapter.

Why Ali Khamenei Chose Nuri al-Maliki

Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has clearly blessed Maliki’s return over more consensus-oriented Shia figures. By elevating a polarizing veteran, Tehran signals that it values ideological loyalty over domestic legitimacy or Western approval. As Omar Abdulsattar Mahmoud—a leader in the Iraqi National Opposition Council and former member of parliament—put it, Iran is “dealing a painful blow to Trump and seizing complete control of all aspects of the Iraqi state and government.”

This sort of messaging indicates that Maliki’s return is not about governing Iraq. It is about shaping the terms of engagement with the Donald Trump administration. If Washington intends to revive elements of “maximum pressure,” Tehran is preparing to answer with “maximum resistance” through a Baghdad leadership fully aligned with its strategic worldview.

US Options: Punish Nuri al-Maliki, Don’t Just Protest

The timing of Maliki’s nomination was not lost on Washington. Just hours after the news broke, the State Department released a readout of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s call with Prime Minister Mohammed Shiaa al-Sudani, warning that “a government controlled by Iran cannot successfully put Iraq’s own interests first, keep Iraq out of regional conflicts, or advance the mutually beneficial partnership between the United States and Iraq.” The United States evidently views Iraq’s government formation process as a strategic red line, not an internal matter, and is prepared to recalibrate its approach if Baghdad tilts decisively toward Tehran.

Then came a direct and unusually blunt intervention from President Donald Trump on Truth Social, delivering a political body blow to Maliki’s bid. ​Trump warned: “Last time Maliki was in power, the Country descended into poverty and total chaos. That should not be allowed to happen again.” He added that “because of his insane policies and ideologies, if elected, the United States of America will no longer help Iraq and, if we are not there to help, Iraq has ZERO chance of Success, Prosperity, or Freedom.” Together, these statements transform Washington’s discomfort with Maliki into a clear threat of consequences for any Iraqi faction backing his return.

In 2014, the Obama administration helped push Maliki aside to prevent total state collapse. Today, the United States faces a far more entrenched reality. Washington cannot veto Iraqi internal politics, but it can shape the cost of political choices. The question is not whether the United States can stop Maliki’s appointment; it cannot. The question is how much it will make Maliki and his backers pay for it. Realistic means to impose costs on Maliki include targeted sanctions, financial pressure, conditional security cooperation, tighter oversight of US assistance, and diplomatic isolation of militia-aligned ministries. These are the levers that remain.

The West risks comforting itself with the illusion that a “strongman” can solve Iraq’s militia problem. Maliki’s return does the opposite: it entrenches the very forces that hollowed out the Iraqi state and paved the way for ISIS’ rise. If policymakers accept the myth of the “experienced fixer,” they are simply waiting for the next collapse.

About the Author: Charbel Antoun

Charbel A. Antoun is a Washington-based journalist and writer specializing in US foreign policy, with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa. He is passionate about global affairs, conflict resolution, human rights, and democratic governance, and explores the world’s complexities through in-depth reporting and analysis.

Image: 360b / Shutterstock.com.

The post What Nuri al-Maliki’s Iraqi Comeback Means for the US appeared first on The National Interest.

Ces dernières semaines, pendant que le régime iranien réprimait avec une violence extrême un vaste mouvement de révolte [il est question de 30 000 tués et de 50 000 arrestations], les États-Unis ont significativement renforcé leur posture militaire au Moyen-Orient, avec notamment le déploiement du Carrier Strike Group 3 [groupe aéronaval n° 3] formé autour...

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By CIVICUS
Feb 4 2026 (IPS)

 
CIVICUS discusses the situation following the US intervention in Venezuela with Guillermo Miguelena Palacios, director of the Venezuelan Progressive Institute, a think tank that promotes spaces for dialogue and democratic leadership.

Guillermo Miguelena Palacios

On 3 January, a US military intervention culminated in the arrest and extradition of President Nicolás Maduro, who had stayed in power after refusing to recognise the results of the July 2024 election, which was won by the opposition. However, power did not pass on to the elected president, Edmundo González, who remains in exile, but to Maduro’s vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, under a pact that preserves the interests of the military leadership, ruling party and presidential family. Hopes for a restoration of democracy are fading in the face of a process that is prioritising economic and social control.

What led Donald Trump to intervene militarily in Venezuela?

The US intervention responds to a mix of economic pragmatism and the reaffirmation of a vision of absolute supremacy in the hemisphere.

First, it seeks to secure nearby stable energy sources in a context of global instability. In his statements, Trump mentioned oil and rare earth metals dozens of times. For him, Venezuela isn’t a human rights issue but a strategic asset that was under the influence of China, Iran and Russia, something unacceptable for US national security.

Second, it represents the financial elite’s interest in recovering investments lost due to expropriations carried out by the government of former president Hugo Chávez. Trump has been explicit: the USA believes Venezuela’s subsoil owes them compensation. By intervening and overseeing the transition, he’s ensuring the new administration signs agreements that give priority to US companies in the exploitation of oil fields. It’s an intervention designed to ‘bring order’ and turn Venezuela into a reliable energy partner, even if that means coexisting with a regime that has only changed its facade.

How much continuity and change is there following Maduro’s fall?

For most Venezuelans, the early hours of 3 January represented a symbolic break with historical impunity. The image of Maduro under arrest shattered the myth that the regime’s highest leaders would never pay for their actions. However, beyond the joy experienced in Venezuelan homes and in countries with a big Venezuelan diaspora, what happened was a manoeuvre to ensure the system’s survival

Chavismo is not a monolithic bloc, but a coalition of factions organised around economic interests and power networks. Broadly speaking, there are two main groups: a civilian faction and a military faction. Both manage and compete for strategic businesses, but the military is present, directly or indirectly, in most of them as coercive guarantors of the system.

The civilian faction controls areas linked to financial and political management, while the military faction secures and protects logistics chains, ports, routes and territories. Within this architecture there are various conglomerates of interests. There’s oil, an opaque business managed through parallel markets, irregular intermediation and non-transparent financial schemes. There’s drug trafficking, sustained by territorial control and institutional permissiveness. There’s the food system, which historically profited from exchange controls and the administration of hunger. And there’s illegal mining, where the military presence alongside Colombian guerrilla groups such as the National Liberation Army (ELN) is dominant and structural.

Maduro’s downfall appears to have been part of an agreement among these factions to preserve their respective businesses: they handed over the figure who could no longer guarantee them money laundering or social peace in order to regroup under a new technocratic facade that ensures they can enjoy their wealth without the pressure of international sanctions.

A revealing detail is that, while Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured, their children remain in Caracas with their businesses intact. Their son, Nicolás Maduro Guerra, continues to operate in the fishing sector and in the export of industrial waste such as aluminium and iron. This suggests the existence of a family protection pact.

We are seeing an economic transition, but by no means a democratic transition. Rodríguez has the reputation of being much more efficient and has had greater international exposure than the rest of Chavismo. She’s backed by a new business elite, young people under 45 who need to launder their capital and gain legitimacy in the global market. Their goal is to improve purchasing power and reduce hunger in order to confer respectability on the regime, while maintaining social control.

What caused the recent resurgence of the territorial conflict with Guyana?

The conflict over the territory of Essequibo is neither new nor improvised: it’s a historical dispute and Venezuela has legal and political arguments to support its claims over the territory. For decades, the two states agreed on a mechanism to contain the dispute, which involved a temporary cessation of active claims and a ban on exploiting the area’s natural resources while a negotiated solution was sought.

In this context, Chávez chose to de-escalate the conflict as part of his international strategy. To gain diplomatic support, particularly in the Caribbean, he reduced pressure on the Essequibo, and as a result several Caribbean Community countries supported Venezuela in multilateral forums such as the Organization of American States. Guyana interpreted this not as a tactical pause but as an abandonment of the claim, and decided to move forward unilaterally and grant concessions to ExxonMobil to conduct oil exploration. These operations revealed the existence of large reserves of high-quality crude oil.

The reactivation of the conflict is, therefore, a combination of legitimate historical claims and political expediency. This wasn’t simply Maduro’s nationalist outburst but an attempt to capture new revenue amid the collapse of Venezuela’s traditional oil industry.

Oil remains the linchpin of the regime’s geopolitics. Although Venezuela has the largest reserves in the world, most of it is extra-heavy crude, which is expensive to extract and process and profitable only when international prices are high. In contrast, the oil discovered off the Atlantic coast of the Essequibo is light, comparable to Saudi oil, and therefore much cheaper to produce and refine. This economic differential explains much of the regime’s renewed aggressiveness in a dispute that had been contained for years.

What’s the mining arc and what role does it play?

In addition to oil and gas, there’s another source of strategic wealth that sustains the regime. The Orinoco Mining Arc is a vast exploitation zone in southern Venezuela, rich in coltan, diamonds, gold and rare earths. The ELN operates there under the protection of the army. It’s a brutal extraction system that generates a flow of wealth in cash and precious metals that directly finances the high military hierarchy, maintaining its loyalty to the system regardless of what happens to oil revenues or the formal economy.

It is noteworthy that, despite the US intervention and the rhetoric about strategic resources, the mining arc has hardly been mentioned. We presume it was part of the negotiation so the military would not resist Maduro’s arrest. The USA appears to have chosen to secure oil in other areas of Venezuela and let the military maintain its mining revenues in the south, since intervening there would mean getting involved in guerrilla warfare in the jungle.

What’s your analysis of the announcement of the release of political prisoners?

The announcement was presented as a gesture of openness, but the so-called releases are actually simple discharges from prison. This means political prisoners are released and go home, but still have pending charges and are therefore banned from leaving Venezuela and must appear in court periodically, usually every few days. In addition, they are absolutely prohibited from speaking to the media and participating in political activities.

This reduces the political cost of keeping prisoners in cells, but maintains legal control over them. Released prisoners live under constant threat. The state reminds them and their families that their freedom is conditional and any gesture of dissent can return them to prison immediately. This is a mechanism of institutional whitewashing: it projects an image of clemency while maintaining repression through administrative means that are much more difficult to denounce before the international community.

What’s the state of social movements?

Social and trade union movements are in a state of exhaustion and deep demobilisation. After years of mass protests between 2014 and 2017 that resulted in fierce repression, people have lost faith in mobilisation as a tool for change. Increasingly, the priority has been daily survival, particularly food and security, with political struggles taking a back seat.

Authorities have been surgical in their repression of the trade union movement: they imprisoned key leaders to terrorise the rank and file and paralyse any attempt at strike action. While organisations like ours have continued to provide technical support and training in cybersecurity, activism is now a highly risky activity.

What are the prospects for a democratic transition?

I see no signs of a genuine democratic transition. The regime’s strategy seems to be to maintain for the next two years the fiction that Maduro has not definitively ceased to hold office and could return, in order to circumvent the constitutional obligation to call immediate elections, which the opposition would surely win. During those two years, which coincide with the final two years of Trump’s term, they will flood the market with imported goods and try to stabilise the currency to create some sense of wellbeing. They will surely use the Supreme Court to interpret some article of the constitution to justify that there’s no definitive presidential vacancy.

Halfway through the term, they would no longer need to call elections. Instead, they could declare Maduro’s ‘absolute vacancy’ so that Rodríguez could finish the 2025-2031 presidential term. Thus, they would try to reach the 2030 election with a renewed image and a recovered economy, on the calculation that a sense of economic wellbeing would prevail over the memory of decades of abuse. They could even enable opposition figures to simulate a fair contest, but would maintain total control of the electoral system and media.

We are concerned the international community will accept the idea of an ‘efficient authoritarianism’ that reduces hunger but maintains censorship and persecution of dissent.

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SEE ALSO
Venezuela: the democratic transition that wasn’t CIVICUS Lens 30.Jan.2025
Venezuela: ‘Each failed attempt at democratic transition reinforces the power of the authoritarian government’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Carlos Torrealba 25.Jan.2025
Venezuela struggles to hold on to hope CIVICUS Lens 15.Aug.2024

 

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The United Nations Security Council meets on the situation in Yemen. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 4 2026 (IPS)

In recent weeks, Yemen’s humanitarian crisis has sharply worsened, as escalating food insecurity and brutal clashes between armed actors have prompted United Nations (UN) officials to warn that the country is approaching a critical breaking point. Intensified violence has increasingly obstructed lifesaving humanitarian operations, while deepening economic and political instability continues to erode access to essential services. As a result, millions of Yemenis now face the growing risk of being left without the support they need to survive, with children being the hardest-hit.

Late December and early January proved to be a particularly volatile period for Yemen, with political turmoil acting as a key driver of instability, particularly in the nation’s south. Recently, the United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) launched major offensives across the south, seizing key provinces such as Hadramawt and al-Mahrah, prompting Saudi-backed government forces to launch a series of airstrikes to reclaim key infrastructure in cities such as Mukalla and Aden.

While a military de-escalation was achieved in the following days, humanitarian experts warn that the overall security situation remains extremely fragile without a durable political and economic solution—both of which continue to threaten national stability. According to UN experts, years of political turmoil have severely weakened the economy, driving inflation, pushing food and fuel prices further out of reach, and leaving large numbers of public sector workers with unpaid salaries.

On January 14, UN Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg briefed ambassadors on the urgent need to establish a credible, transparent, and inclusive political process. He explained that the “developments in southern Yemen highlight how quickly that fragile balance can be disrupted,” and how critical it is “to re-anchor the process in a credible political pathway”.

“Absent a comprehensive approach that addresses Yemen’s many challenges in an integrated manner, rather than in isolation, the risk of recurrent and destabilizing cycles will remain a persistent feature in the country’s trajectory,” said Grundberg.

Grundberg also underscored the importance of protecting Yemen’s economic institutions—particularly the Central Bank—from political and security conflicts, warning that even short-lived instability can trigger currency depreciation, expand fiscal deficits, and hinder urgently needed economic reforms.

According to Yemeni officials, clashes between the STC, the Houthi movement, and the Saudi-backed government have driven large-scale displacement and disrupted access to essential services for thousands of civilians. On January 19, Julien Harneis, Assistant Secretary-General and the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, told reporters that humanitarian conditions are expected to deteriorate further in 2026, with an estimated 21 million people projected to require humanitarian assistance—an increase from the 19.5 million recorded last year.

This includes more than 18 million Yemenis—roughly half the population—who are projected to face acute food insecurity in February. Additionally, it is estimated that tens of thousands could fall into “catastrophic” levels of hunger and face famine-like conditions without intervention.

Yemen’s hunger crisis is projected to hit children the hardest, with roughly half of all children under five years old facing acute malnutrition. As a result of persistent funding gaps last year, only a quarter of the 8 million children targeted for nutritional support received lifesaving care. Furthermore, over 2,500 supplementary feeding programmes and outpatient therapeutic programmes were forced to close.

“The simple narrative is, children are dying and it’s going to get worse. My fear is that we won’t hear about it until the mortality and the morbidity significantly increases in this next year,” said Harneis.

Additionally, Yemeni officials underscored that recent hostilities have forced key civilian infrastructures—including schools and hospitals—to shut down or operate at limited capacity. Ramesh Rajasingham, Director of the Humanitarian Sector for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) noted that over 450 health facilities have closed in recent months, with thousands of others at risk of losing funding. Additionally, vaccination campaigns have been hindered, facing significant challenges in accessing children in the north, leaving them highly vulnerable to preventable diseases such as measles, diphtheria, cholera, and polio.

Rajasingham also warned of tightening restrictions on aid as a result of violence. According to figures from the UN, 73 UN staff have been arbitrarily detained by Houthi de facto authorities since 2021, restricting aid operations across 70 percent of humanitarian needs across Yemen. “We know that when humanitarian organizations can operate safely, effectively and in a principled manner, and when resources are available, humanitarian assistance works. It reduces hunger, it prevents disease, and it saves lives. But when access is obstructed and funding falls away, those gains are quickly reversed,” said Rajasingham.

On January 29, the World Food Programme (WFP) announced that it is shutting down operations in northern Yemen following severe aid restrictions, harassment, and arbitrary detainment of staff from Houthi personnel. UN officials informed reporters that approximately 365 of the remaining WFP staff members in northern Yemen will lose their jobs by the end of March, as a result of insecurity and funding challenges.

In 2025, Yemen’s UN Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan was only funded at 25 percent, forcing humanitarian actors to scale back critical services, deprioritize certain populations or sectors, and halt lifesaving operations, leaving millions without aid and exposed to heightened risks.

“The unavoidable reality is that the United Nations must continue to reevaluate and reorganize our humanitarian operations on the ground in DFA-held areas of Yemen – home to around 70 per cent of humanitarian needs countrywide,” said Rajasingham, also urging the Security Council to exert pressure on the international community to bring about the release of the 73 UN staff and scale up funding as needs continue to rise.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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De plus en plus de femmes en Afrique utilisent des tisanes naturelles pour faciliter et accélérer l’accouchement. Mais est ce réellement bénéfique ?