Ali Hashem is a senior Al-Jazeera English correspondent who has long covered Iraq and Iran. He is also a research fellow at the Sectarianism, Proxies, and De-Sectarianization Project (SEPAD) based at Lancaster University. His research focuses on the Middle East, with an emphasis on Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq. Diwan interviewed Hashem to get his perspective on recent developments in Iraq, where Prime Minister Mustapha al-Kadhimi was the target of a drone attack on his home last week. The country has been caught in a deadlock since parliamentary elections in October, when the Popular Mobilization Forces lost a significant number of seats in parliament, to the advantage of Muqtada al-Sadr and the former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. In the aftermath of the Kadhimi assassination attempt, Ismail Qaani, the head of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, visited Baghdad to calm tensions between the different Shia factions.
Keeping an Eye on Baghdad (Michael Young, Carnegie Middle East Center)
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