Ali al-Zaidi

Ali al-Zaidi (born May 1, 1985, Baghdad, Iraq) is an Iraqi businessman who became prime minister in May 2026 at a particularly volatile time when Iraq’s most important patrons, the United States and Iran, were at war with each other. Considered a compromise candidate between factions that favor or oppose close ties between Iran and Iraq, he was nominated after the United States pressured the Iraqi parliament to reject another term for Nouri al-Maliki, a former prime minister (2006–14) with close ties to Iran and whose sectarian governance contributed to considerable instability in the country, including the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Early in his term as prime minister, Zaidi undertook an aggressive anti-corruption campaign and sought to bring autonomous militias under direct state control.

Early life and career

Zaidi was born in Baghdad to a Shiʿi Muslim business family from the Dhī Qār governorate in southern Iraq. He was just shy of adulthood during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent toppling of Saddam Hussein. Later he studied law and finance at university, eventually earning a master’s degree, and joined the Iraqi Bar Association.

Although well connected in Baghdad, Zaidi has largely stayed out of the media spotlight and verifiable details about his career are sparse. He runs a sizable business empire, with interests that include banking, real estate, construction, and food and agriculture. He chairs the National Holding Company, a major conglomerate with a portfolio of companies across a variety of sectors, and owns the Dijlah TV channel. In the early 2020s he became one of the main contractors for the country’s food rations program. He formerly chaired Al-Janoob Islamic Bank. Throughout his business dealings, he has maintained a wide range of ties with business and political leaders across the political spectrum.

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Prime minister

The nomination of Zaidi in April 2026 to become prime minister was a surprise. It followed a political crisis when Nouri al-Maliki, a divisive former prime minister, appeared poised in January 2026 to return to office but faced strong opposition from the United States. After Zaidi was floated as a candidate, he was reportedly nominated by the parliament in less than half an hour. Upon taking office in May, Zaidi swiftly launched an anti-corruption drive, building off ongoing investigations by the judiciary and a federal committee. The campaign was unique in its dramatic undertaking, beginning with the high-profile arrest of Adnan al-Jumaili, who had been a senior member in the ministry of oil. Jumaili’s arraignment was televised, and Iraqis were shown images of piles of money bags, gold bars, and vehicles, and stashes of weapons and ammunition that authorities had uncovered across Jumaili’s dozens of properties. The scale was also daunting: More than 200 other public figures were detained between June and August.

Zaidi also set out to bring militias in the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF; also called al-Hashd al-Shaabi) under direct state control. The PMF coalition assisted the state in the fight against ISIS in the 2010s and was awarded state recognition as an auxiliary to the armed forces. The coalition had continued to operate independently of the state, however, and a subset of militias (that participate in the Iran-aligned Axis of Resistance and are informally called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq [IRI]) began confronting U.S. forces and stoking tensions between Iraq and the United States. When the IRI took part in the Iran war that was launched by the United States and Israel in February 2026, the United States mounted pressure on Iraq’s government to take action against the militias. In May Zaidi embarked on a disarmament program and gained support from Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Sarāyā al-Salām militia had been part of the PMF but not the IRI, as well as Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s top Shiʿi cleric. In June he secured agreements from ʿAṣāʾib Ahl al-Ḥaqq and Kataeb Imam Ali, two prominent groups in the IRI, to hand over their weapons to the state. After a meeting with U.S. Pres. Donald Trump in July, Zaidi set an initial deadline of September 30 for disarmament, when the last U.S. troops in Iraq were set to withdraw. Some of the militias in the IRI, including the preeminent Kataeb Hezbollah militia, refused to disarm, although Kataeb Hezbollah announced the suspension of its military activities simultaneous with the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Meanwhile, about the time of the U.S. withdrawal, Zaidi set out a more detailed timeline for disarmament by the end of June 2027.