Iraq’s Prime Minister Leads in Elections but May Struggle to Form a Government

A new coalition led by Iraq’s prime minister, Mohammed al-Sudani, appeared to have won the greatest share of votes in the country’s parliamentary election, according to preliminary election counts on Wednesday, but not enough to form a government.

With no clear victor emerging from the Tuesday election, it will take months of political horse trading for some of the winning parliamentary lists to assemble a bloc large enough to form a government.

Political experts say that Mr. al-Sudani, who has tried to promote himself to Washington as someone who can help keep Iranian influence in check, will struggle against rivals determined to deprive him of a second term.

Official election results will be announced in the coming days, Iraq’s electoral commission told reporters. But on Tuesday evening, it released provincial preliminary results, which showed Mr. al-Sudani’s parliamentary list, Reconstruction and Development, taking the most seats.

“We will immediately enter negotiations to form a competent government,” Mr. al-Sudani said on Tuesday evening, after election forecasts showed his bloc leading in eight out of 18 provinces, including the capital, Baghdad.

This was the sixth parliamentary election of Iraq’s 20-year-old democracy, and it offered the largest number of candidates yet — a dizzying 7,743 people competing for 329 seats. Critics say it was most likely the most expensive election in the country ever, and deeply marred by vote buying.

Parliamentary seats become bargaining chips in the formation of the government, whose ministries will eventually be key to handing out lucrative state contracts.

Iraqi parliamentary negotiations are famously complex and often extremely long. The last government took nearly a year to form, and the front-runner is almost always knocked down.

The process of forming the government is also deeply influenced by competition between Washington and Tehran, which was often able to outmaneuver its superpower rival in Iraq.

Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq toppled the dictator Saddam Hussein, the country’s politics have been dominated by its Shiite Muslim majority, and many of their parties are close to Iran, the regional Shiite power.

In recent years, Iraqi militias aligned with Tehran have turned to politics, ensuring both political clout and financial gain. Their political allies hold several ministries in the current government.

But Washington now has the upper hand, Iraqi political leaders say, after Iran and its allies were dealt a string of humiliating blows by Israeli strikes that upended the regional power balance.

Iraqi officials say their U.S. counterparts have made it clear that the Trump administration will not accept leaders in the next government who are close to Iran.

Some of those parties appeared likely to secure a large number of seats, including the party affiliated with Asaib Ahl al-Haq, which has moderated its tone toward the United States in recent years.

“We don’t believe it’s in the Americans’ interest for Iraq to be unstable or to experience unrest,” said Mahmood al-Rubaie, the Asaib political spokesman, citing “significant American interests in Iraq.”

“No company has come under any transgressions by any faction of the resistance,” he said.

Mr. al-Sudani has pitched himself as the leader who can balance the interests of Washington and Tehran. He has increasingly focused his messaging for the Trump administration, casting himself as an ideal, business-focused partner who has overseen several recent deals with American oil giants. He has vowed to send Iraqi billionaires to invest in the United States.

Iranian officials have expressed no objections to a second term for Mr. al-Sudani, Iraqi officials say. His bigger problem is his own Shiite majority.

The main Shiite bloc in Iraq, the Coordination Framework, selected Mr. al-Sudani for his first term. But he defied the bloc’s insistence that he not seek a second term, and Iraqi politicians say his rivals are now wary that he has concentrated too much power in his hands.

“They will try to collapse his coalition,” said Sarmad al-Bayati, an Iraqi political analyst.

He predicted that the bloc would do the same thing it did in the last election, in 2021, when it blocked the winning coalition, led by the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, from forming a government. He then threw the Parliament into chaos when he ordered lawmakers from his bloc to resign.

Mr. al-Bayati said similar attempts to block Mr. al-Sudani from forming a government would be a “dangerous step.”

“The next government needs to complement the wishes of the people,” he said. “And al-Sudani was the clear choice.”