America is about to hand Iraq to Iran again

As Iraq moves to form a new government, Washington is preparing to recognize the outcome as routine. It is not. What is emerging in Baghdad is a political system increasingly shaped by Iran, and recognizing it without conditions risks cementing that reality.

For years, U.S. policy has relied on a convenient assumption: that elections in Iraq, even flawed ones, produce independent governance. But when the institutions that shape those outcomes are influenced from the outside, the results cannot be treated as fully sovereign.