The anti-ISIS mission is drawing to a close; a crackdown on the ‘Iranians’ in Iraq is underway

Even before receiving his formal appointment from Donald Trump on 31 May, US Special Envoy Tom Barrack had already focused Washington’s relations with Baghdad on one key institutional interlocutor: Judge Faiq Zaidan, president of the Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council, who has for years been regarded as the real ‘kingmaker’ in Baghdad’s political scene.

The model — lists of names linked to suspicious financial networks, delivered via a single channel rather than scattered amongst multiple political interlocutors — is the very model that a thorough analysis of the region should recognise as typical of a phase in which the great powers prefer to rely on a single centre of power rather than on an entire system of alliances.

The timetable is tight: by 30 September – the date marking the end of the international anti-ISIS coalition’s mission in Iraq – all armed factions linked to Iran must hand over their weapons to the state.

Some, such as Asaib Ahl al-Haq, have already announced that they will lay down their arms. Others, such as Kataib Hezbollah, are making their disarmament conditional on the complete withdrawal of US troops. Should that deadline be missed, the instability in Iraq would not remain confined to Mesopotamia.

Why should an Italian reader care about what’s happening in a drainage ditch in Basra? The answer lies underground, not in the metaphor.

Since 2009, the Italian company Eni has been developing the Zubair oilfield in southern Iraq, holding a 41.56 per cent stake alongside its Korean partners and the Iraqi state-owned company. Zubair currently accounts for almost 9 per cent of Iraq’s national oil production, and Eni has announced a further increase in production in 2026 compared with the previous two years.

At the international anti-ISIS breakfast meeting, Italia made a significant contribution. It played an important and influential role. It will therefore be crucial for us too to monitor what may happen from October onwards. There are underground resources. There are Iranian influences that we are trying to curb. There are Turkish influences which, at the moment, seem to be operating unhindered.

Clearly, an unstable Iraq, fragmented by conflicts between armed factions and power networks linked to Tehran, also poses a direct risk to Italian industrial interests in the Gulf. An Iraq that consolidates the rule of law — or at least attempts to do so, with all the ambiguities that entails — is news that concerns us all, in a positive sense.

Whether Operation ‘Dawn Strike’ will actually succeed in undermining the power networks that have been managing Iraq’s public funds for the past twenty years, or whether it will merely redistribute those funds amongst new players, is a question that no one in Baghdad can yet answer. Certainly, between now and the end of September, it is worth keeping a close eye on developments.