Iraq’s top judicial body says it does not have the authority to dissolve the country’s parliament, days after influential cleric Muqtada al-Sadr escalated a political standoff by giving it one week to dismiss the legislature so new elections can be held.

After a weekend of protests and angry denunciations, Muqtada al-Sadr upped the ante on Monday by calling on his supporters in the southern and central provinces to take to the streets.

With counter-protests beginning on Monday evening, the threat of violence in Iraq looms large.

Supporters of the influential Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have vowed to continue their occupation of the Iraqi parliament for a second day as the country's political crisis continues to deepen. 

Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday stormed the parliament building for the second time in four days, with scores of protesters and police reported injured.

Nearly 10 months after October elections, Iraq is still without a new government despite intense negotiations between factions.

More than nine months after Iraq held its October 2021 parliamentary elections, political leaders have been unable to form a government.

The country’s political crisis reached a boiling point when demonstrators, mostly supporters of Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr, one of the most powerful people in the country, stormed the Iraqi parliament on Wednesday to protest against corruption and one of the candidates running for prime minister.

Hundreds of protesters recently broke into Iraq’s parliament. The riot turned violent Wednesday as the country reached 290 days without a government.

Fighting among Shi’ite and Kurdish groups has prevented the formation of a government. The last longest deadlock was in 2010 after it took 298 days to elect a prime minister.

Iraq’s post-election chaos continued Wednesday, with hundreds of supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr storming parliament in a “show of force” and condemning pro-Iran candidate Muhammad al-Sudani.

Reports from Iraq say that Baghdad is subtly expanding its diplomatic role from mediating between Iran and Saudi Arabia to arranging Iranian dialogue with Egypt, Jordan, and the UAE as well. This regional diplomatic track has the potential to fill the Middle Eastern vacuum in inclusive regional diplomacy while reducing the scope for the Abraham Accords as a format for regional cooperation.

Filling the regional diplomacy vacuum

George W. Bush committed a Freudian slip so brutal they may have to rename the phenomenon after him.

The former President made the shocking mistake at a forum sponsored by the George W. Bush Institute in New York.

In an attempt to condemn the war effort in Ukraine, Bush accidentally roped in his own controversial history.

The hardest part of living through a time of wrenching change is that nobody particularly bothers to inform you that the times have changed and that nothing will be the same again. Certainly not the talking heads on TV, who are often the last to know. You have to figure it out for yourself if you can. But I am here to help.

As I pointed out yesterday, the Center for American Progress (CAP), a Democratic-Party-linked thinktank in D.C., has met quietly with officials of the Israel lobby group AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and explicitly sought to squelch suggestions by its own journalists that AIPAC is pushing war on Iran.