



The US tied his bank to Iran proxies. Now he’s Trump’s choice to run Iraq.
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.A little-known Iraqi tycoon named Ali Al Zaidi has emerged as the likely next prime minister of Iraq with the backing of President Trump, who has invited the businessman to Washington and said the U.S. “is with him all the way.”The White House endorsement has come with a demand that Zaidi exclude Iranian-backed militias from Iraq’s next government and curtail Tehran’s influence in Baghdad.He has faced similar U.S. pressure before: Zaidi owns a bank that the Treasury banned from dollar transactions in 2024 over suspicions it was doing business with a militia leader linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, current and former U.S.
officials said.A political unknown who has never held office, Zaidi was a compromise choice after Trump warned that he would cut off U.S. assistance to Iraq when Nouri al-Maliki, a former prime minister close to Iran, was put forward for the job in January after months of political wrangling. The Coordination Framework, the Iraqi coalition dominated by pro-Iranian Shia political factions, turned to Zaidi late last month.Iraqi officials ran the nomination by the U.S.
and Iran before announcing it, Iraqi officials said. Zaidi has taken telephone calls from Trump and from Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian. He is still working to assemble a coalition in Iraq’s Parliament that will vote him into office in coming weeks, along with his nominees to run Iraq’s ministries.Gen.
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