Iraq’s ministry of oil has published a very optimistic report on the country’s capability to ramp up production, but internal political issues could lead to a new crisis after this weekend.

At the same time that a new Iraqi government is forming, a government that is increasing Iranian influence within Iraq, another election is threatening the country’s stability.

On Sunday, Kurdistan is voting for a new KRG parliament, a vote that may result in new power brokers in Erbil. The Kurdish elections are hugely significant for the region, as they not only decide who is going to be put forward as the potential president of Iraq, but also reshape the KRG as an entity and its relations not only with Baghdad, but also with Iran and Turkey.

​A further destabilization of Iraq would be an outcome that most regional players aim to avoid, with the war in Syria and the imminent Iranian sanctions already causing uncertainty.

Former Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) minister Muhsin Rafiq Douste, who was in charge during the Iran-Iraq war 1980-1988, has revealed to the Iranian news outlet (MEHR) that the late Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi provided Iran with free ballistic missiles to be used against Iraq, on condition to target Saudi Arabia by one of them.

Rafiq Douste said that the former Iranian president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, had asked him to travel to Damascus and to see whether the late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad was willing to provide Iran with missiles. Rafsanjani was ashamed of the situation that Iran was targeted by Iraqi missiles and his country had no missiles to respond with.

Douste said that Rafsanjani at that time was representative of Iran's Supreme Leader at the Defence Supreme Council and deputy head of Iran's armed forces.

“Iran cities were under the bombardment of the Iraqi 'Scud B' missiles which Iraqis obtained from the Soviet Union, but Iran was unable to respond because; on one hand, the Iranian army had no suitable missiles to target Iraq with, and on the other hand, all countries had refused to sell Tehran such missiles.”, Rafiq Douste said.

BASRA, Iraq —Violent protests in this oil-producing city have dealt a fateful political blow to pro-American Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, all but ending his bid for a second term as both allies and opponents blame him for the unrest.

Abadi visited Basra on Monday after a week of demonstrations left at least 15 people dead and government offices, political party headquarters and the Iranian consulate in sooty ruins. He discovered that a fragile calm had returned to the city over the weekend — but that his own political future had at the same time become much more uncertain.

The protesters had fixed their frustrations on Iraq’s entire political class, chanting slogans aimed at both the government and the parties and militias aligned with Iran. But Abadi’s challengers for the post of prime minister have outmaneuvered him, seizing on the public anger to cast him as an impossible choice.

The United States, which had cultivated few alternatives to Abadi’s leadership, now finds itself with little influence over the shape of Iraq’s new government, analysts said.

Locked out of polluting wealth beneath their feet, those calling for an end to a ‘rotten system’ risk detention and death

​The land of the Bani-Mansour clan north-east of Basra is flat and parched, spattered with dry crusts of salt and thorny shrubs. Clusters of palm trees form small patches of green in the otherwise dusty yellow and brown landscape.

Nestled among them are about a dozen berms, each enclosing an oil well and its pump. Pipelines snake over the ground, cutting through villages as they connect wells and pumping stations. Oil rigs tower over the southern Iraq landscape, sending plumes of thick black smoke across the horizon.

The land sits above the West Qurna oilfield. One of the most lucrative in the world, it is owned by the Iraqi government and run by Exxon Mobil. After years of sanctions and neglect, oil production in southern Iraq is picking up. A two-lane road that crosses the Bani-Mansour land has become a busy highway for trucks carrying drilling equipment and busses ferrying foreign oil workers back and forth. The windows of nearby homes rattle as the traffic passes.

The opening up of Iraq’s enormous verified oil reserves to foreign expertise in the aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein was hailed as the means to kickstart its economy and potentially transform the south into an economic stronghold. Instead, ordinary Iraqis have seen little or no benefit from the proceeds of the country’s multibillion dollar oil industry, much of which has been siphoned off by corrupt politicians. Across the south in recent months, simmering anger over corruption and unemployment has been fuelled by the dire state of public services, regular power cuts and water shortages.

According to a number of global mainstream media sources, the Pentagon is covering up a disturbing video that was never made public with the rest of the recent torture report.

According to various well respected journalists, including Seymour Hersh, the appalling video was recorded at Abu Ghraib, the notorious US torture dungeon in Iraq that made headlines roughly a decade ago, when the inhumane tactics being used at the prison were exposed.

Sadly, it seems that the evidence released years ago was only scratching the surface.
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​While the video has remained under wraps thus far, Hersh says it is only a matter of time before it comes out.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq’s economy is so closely linked to Iran that Baghdad is going to ask Washington for permission to ignore some U.S. sanctions on its neighbor, Iraqi government and central bank officials said.

U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from an international deal aimed at limiting Iran’s nuclear program earlier this year and reimposed trade sanctions.

Washington has said there will be consequences for countries that do not respect the sanctions.

Baghdad is in a difficult position. Iraq imports crucial supplies from ally Iran but its other major ally is the United States, which provides security assistance and training.

Investigate Abuse During Interrogations in Mosul

​(Beirut) – Two former detainees and the father of a man who died in detention have provided details of ill-treatment, torture, and death in facilities run by the Iraqi Interior Ministry in the Mosul area, Human Rights Watch said today.

A detainee held by the ministry’s Intelligence and Counter Terrorism Office in an east Mosul prison from January to May 2018 said he witnessed and experienced repeated torture during interrogations, and saw nine men die there, at least two from the abuse. Another man from Mosul, arrested in March by local police, died during police interrogation in the Mosul police station, his father said. And a man who was held in the Intelligence and Counter Terrorism prison in Qayyarah said he saw other men returning from interrogations with signs of abuse on their bodies.

“These latest allegations reflect not only the brutal treatment of Interior Ministry detainees in the Mosul area, but also the failure of law enforcement and the judiciary to provide justice when there is evidence of torture,” Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said. “The government’s failure to investigate torture and death in detention is a green light to security forces that they can inflict torture without any consequences.

Because of the relatively low release rate from the facilities the men were held in and the exceptional fear former detainees have expressed, researchers were unable to find other former detainees who were willing to speak. However, the torture methods described are consistent with torture practices by other Interior Ministry forces that have been described to researchers by other former detainees and captured in photos and videos released by a photojournalist, Ali Arkady, in May 2017.

Baghdad to honour dollar ban but not all US sanctions on Iran, says Haider al-Abadi, stepping back from earlier remarks.

​Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has contradicted his recent reluctant commitment to abide by renewed US sanctions on Iran, saying his government only committed to not using dollars in transactions with Tehran.

Al-Abadi's remarks came at a news conference in the capital, Baghdad, on Monday, the same day that it was reported that Iran cancelled an upcoming visit by him.

"I did not say we abide by the sanctions, I said we abide by not using dollars in transactions. We have no other choice," he said.

One of the most common lies about Baathist-era Iraq is that of Saddam Hussein oppressing the Shia.

​This was a propaganda technique deployed by Iran to hasten a foreign intervention against the only regional government holding back its expansionist ambitions.

Iran achieved this by allying with politically sectarian minority groups in order to hijack Iraq’s Shia community. Together, they formed lobby groups in the United States and the West to portray Saddam not only as an individualist leader which is the norm in the Middle East, but mainly as a sectarian who had to be removed. After 2003, these sectarian minority groups were handed power by the United States – and immediately they handed Iraq over to Iran.
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With Iraqis in the south now protesting against both the post-2003 government and Iran, it is an ideal time to look at the high status of Shia under Saddam’s government.

Iraq’s New Parliament Should Prioritize Passage of Domestic Violence Law

​The horrific case of an Iraqi woman apparently murdered at home should prompt Iraq’s new parliament, once formed, to finally pass a draft domestic violence law which has been pending since 2015.

According to Iraqi media and BBC Arabic, one day last week a bridegroom returned his bride to her parents the day after their wedding, complaining that she was not a virgin. Media reports claim that upon hearing the accusation, a family member beat her to death. Media reports say that police have arrested a male relative.

While the man will likely now face trial for murder, it is possible that he may benefit from a reduced sentence under a provision in Iraq’s penal code allowing for shorter sentences for violent acts – including murder – for so-called “honorable motives.” But there is no “honor” in such brutal and needless killing. Moreover, the murdered bride would be just one of hundreds of women and children who suffer violence at the hands of their families in Iraq each year.