A seemingly perpetual battlefield caught under the tension between the United States and Iran, Iraq goes to elections at a time when the domestic discontent towards the eastern neighbour and criticism towards the American presence are at their height, paving way for an uncertain future of the US-Iran relationship that has haunted Iraq for years.The early elections, a response from interim Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi to the mass protest movement in 2019, would in a way serve as a testimony to how Iraq perceives Iran and the US, and at large, the relationships with the country’s two most important partners.The US and Iran have long been using Iraq as a proxy in competing for regional interests. The assassinations in January in 2020 of General Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, one being the top Iranian commander and the other being the then-deputy head of the Popular Mobilisation Forces, opened the curtain for a series of tit for tat escalatory confrontations between the US and Iran with sanctions and rockets – all happening on the Iraqi soil.
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