July 1, 2026. Iraq's parliament came back from recess today, and Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi now has about two weeks to finish building his government and finish cleaning it out before he flies to Washington. The arrests that locked down Baghdad's Green Zone are the opening move. The deadline behind them is the real story.

The recovery keeps climbing. Investigators have pulled more than 107 million dollars from the oil-ministry case alone, including 14 million dollars found inside the walls of one deputy minister's home, plus properties, vehicles and gold. A separate case at the national airline added another 19 billion dinars. The list of names under investigation grows with every interrogation.

Here is the part the headlines miss. A currency is only worth what a foreign bank will clear, and for years Iraq's banks had lost the correspondent lines that let money move at all. This month Iraq was added to the FATF grey list, the global watchdog's register of countries with dirty-money problems. The cleanup is how Iraq buys its way back through the door the banks shut on it. Clean the house, and the value follows.

Singapore ran this exact play. Lee Kuan Yew took a corrupt 1960s port, made theft a career-ending crime, and turned it into one of the safest places on earth to hold a dollar. The cleaning came first. The money followed. What took Singapore years, Iraq is running in weeks, in front of Washington, with a reported 400 billion dollar energy fund waiting on the other side.

Parliament seats the final ministers by July 5. A cleaned government flies to Washington mid-July. The reprice everyone is waiting on sits at the end of that sequence, not the start. Watch what Iraq does before Washington, not after.