The mediator in the room: President Barzani comes to Baghdad with more than Erbil's demands

On the surface, the visit followed a familiar pattern: a Kurdish leader arrives in Baghdad ahead of a new government cycle, reaffirms constitutional principles, and returns to Erbil. But the political moment it landed in was anything but routine. Iraq's government formation process is unfolding under simultaneous pressure from an unresolved regional conflict, Washington's recalibrating posture toward Baghdad, Tehran's calculations about the next Iraqi cabinet, and a set of Erbil-Baghdad disputes —oil, salaries, budget allocations, the status of disputed territories under Article 140— that have not left the negotiating table in years.

Within the first hours of his arrival, Barzani met with leaders of the Shiite ruling Coordination Framework, including State of Law head, Nouri al-Maliki, caretaker Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, al-Hikma (Wisdom) Movement leader Ammar al-Hakim, then with prime minister-designate Ali Falah al-Zaidi, and leaders of the Sunni National Political Council.

The agenda moved from government formation to oil revenue sharing, salary arrears, the federal budget, and the necessity of insulating Iraq from regional escalation —a range that reflected not a courtesy call but a substantive attempt to shape the parameters of what comes next.

Official statements from the meetings emphasized the need for a government "commensurate with the challenges of the current phase," capable of meeting the demands of Iraq's constituent communities while resolving outstanding Erbil-Baghdad disputes on a constitutional basis. Barzani also reaffirmed Kurdistan's readiness to support the new government's formation.

Testing the Ground

Kurdish politician Abd al-Salam Barwari described the visit as "a new positive development for breaking the tensions that accompanied the post-presidential election phase" —tensions that had been building since the KDP staked a claim to the Iraqi presidency as a matter of established political entitlement, only to find Sunni and Shiite coalition leaders divided between rival Kurdish candidates, with some backing the PUK's nominee, Nizar Amedi, over Fuad Hussein, one of the KDP's most senior figures. Barwari was careful to characterize Barzani's meetings as exploratory rather than conclusive— closer to preliminary consultations for testing positions and exchanging views before the moment of decision than to a finalized political settlement.

Speaking to Shafaq News, Barwari pointed to al-Zaidi's recent visit to Erbil, where the prime minister-designate met separately with Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) leader Masoud Barzani, President Nechirvan Barzani, PMMasrour Barzani, and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan head, Bafel Talabani, as evidence that the Kurdistan Region's position is being treated as a structural variable in the government formation calculus, not an afterthought.

The KDP's weight in that calculus is concrete: the party secured over one million votes in November's parliamentary elections, the highest total of any single party nationwide, translating into 26 seats in parliament, making it a bloc no government formation can ignore mathematically. Political circles in Baghdad read that visit as an attempt to avoid repeating the crises that plagued previous governments' relationships with the Region from the outset.

Researcher in political affairs Suhad al-Shammari offered a broader frame, noting that the current government formation is unfolding in conditions meaningfully different from previous cycles, with a prime minister-designatenavigating simultaneously between rebuilding trust among political forces, managing divisions within each community, and arranging a working relationship with the Kurdistan Region that does not begin in confrontation.

Barzani's visit, in her assessment, signals Kurdistan's readiness to “engage constructively,” though she stopped short of predicting specific outcomes, describing the visit's likely contribution as “bringing positions closer rather than resolving the underlying disputes.”

That picture from the meetings said more than any statement. In one session with leaders of the Sunni National Political Council, Barzani sat at the center flanked by prominent Sunni figures, including rivals Khamis al-Khanjar and Mohammed al-Halbousi, a composition that appeared to summarize the visit's function.

He was not present solely as Erbil's representative but as someone operating in the grey space between adversaries, attempting to anchor a proposition: that the next government cannot be born from an internal Shiite understanding alone, nor from an isolated distribution of positions, but from a broader equilibrium that includes Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites within a single political architecture. Both sides agreed that the new government must prioritize services and reconstruction, and that dialogue among political forces must be the entry point for resolving crises rather than a formality that follows them.

Files That Never Leave the Table

Political analyst Ali al-Baydar situated the visit within a structural argument, telling Shafaq News that the issue is less about individual political figures than about the prevailing political culture, and that the next government will largely be a continuation of the Coordination Framework's internal balances, with the variable being how Baghdad manages its relationship with Erbil rather than whether that relationship changes fundamentally.

Al-Baydar assessed al-Zaidi as someone disinclined toward escalation with the Region or toward unilateral decisions against it, suggesting the new prime minister-designate may offer more room for addressing outstanding files within constitutional frameworks than his predecessors, while leaving open whether that room translates into resolved disputes.

Hussein al-Kinani, head of al-Hadaf Center for Studies, noted to Shafaq News that Barzani's meetings with al-Zaidi fall within the standard pattern of coalition-building that precedes every new government cycle, but that their substantive content centers on concrete unresolved files: the federal budget, oil exports, oil and non-oil revenues, and the degree to which both Erbil and Baghdad have honored previous agreements.

Those files carry weight beyond the political. Salaries in the Kurdistan Region have become a recurring living crisis for the population. Oil has become the permanent headline of the constitutional and financial dispute between Erbil and Baghdad, a dispute sharpened in 2023 when the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris ruled that Turkiye must pay Iraq approximately $1.5 billion for breaching the Iraq-Turkiye Pipeline agreement by allowing unauthorized Kurdish oil exports, halting loading, and export operations through the pipeline, and significantly impacting the Region's revenues. The budget, renegotiated in cycles, has exposed the fragility of arrangements that both sides treat as temporary. Taken together, they make Barzani's visit an early test of whether the incoming government intends to manage these crises as it finds them or move toward closing them, a distinction that matters more to the Region's population than to the political class on either side.

Al-Zaidi is operating under time pressure, constitutionally required to present his cabinet within 30 days, and aware that passing the government will require more than a numerical parliamentary majority; it will require understandings that ensure Kurdish and Sunni participation within an arrangement that no party feels excluded from.

Barzani's visit, in this reading, functions as an attempt to produce a dual political guarantee: an assurance to Erbil that the incoming Baghdad will not revert to the language of financial pressure and punitive measures, and an assurance to Baghdad that the Region will be a source of governmental stability rather than a recurring source of tension.

The details of ministerial portfolios and the distribution of positions also remain subject to ongoing negotiation. What Barzani's visit makes visible is that the contest over the next government is not only about who enters the cabinet, but about the shape of the state that cabinet will manage, the boundaries of the relationship between center and Region, and Iraq's capacity to hold its internal arrangements together in a region changing faster than its political class is moving to keep pace.

The Bill Comes Due

Three baseline conditions Barzani wanted to stress before the new government takes shape: genuine partnership in decision-making, constitutional rather than provisional solutions to the outstanding files, and Iraq's insulation from the currents of regional escalation. Whether those conditions become structurally embedded in the next government or remain aspirational language in post-meeting statements is the question the visit leaves open.

[Source: Shafaq News English]