Iraq’s new prime minister faces a host of challenges. Coronavirus is just one of them

Plunging oil revenues, an Isis fightback and a brewing US-Iran conflict make Mustafa al-Kadhimi’s job a tough one, Patrick Cockburn writes

Mustafa al-Kadhimi's Iraq remains squeezed by the US-Iran confrontation (Reuters)

Iraq is threatened by multiple crises, each of which is capable of destabilising the country. The most immediate dangers are twofold: a resurgence in the coronavirus pandemic and the collapse in the oil revenues on which Baghdad relies to pay all its bills. In addition, Isis attacks have increased and, though much less deadly than the savage onslaughts of the past, they are enough to make Iraqis fear that there is worse to come.

An even greater threat to Iraq is that it will continue to be the political and military battlefield where the US and Iran fight out their differences. This confrontation came close to turning into a shooting war in January when the US assassinated the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani at Baghdad International Airport and Iran fired ground-to-ground missiles into US bases in Iraq in retaliation. The pandemic has muted this conflict for the last few months, but it has not gone away and will inevitably flare up again.

“The Iraqi government must try to fill the power vacuum inside the country,” a former Iraqi official tells The Independent. “Otherwise it will be filled by the US and Iran along with their local proxies and allies.” He sees the most important challenge facing the newly installed government of prime minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi to assert its control over the state machinery and, above all, over the Iran-aligned Shia paramilitary forces of Hashd al-Shaabi.