July 2, 2026. Iraq's last political resistance to the corruption sweep made its move this week and got nowhere. Iraqi-press channels report the Coordination Framework, the Iran-aligned bloc that assembled the last government, privately asked Prime Minister al-Zaidi to halt the arrests and settle the cases for cash. The arrests continued, the judiciary refused the settlements, and the bloc ended the week publicly endorsing the campaign it had reportedly tried to stop.

Every door the old machine used to knock on stayed shut. The parliament speaker lifted the immunity of the arrested lawmakers himself and declared there is no immunity for the corrupt. The new central bank governor walked into the speaker's office on day one of the session and put protection of the national currency into the official record. The biggest street movement in Shia politics rallied behind the cleanup. Even Kurdistan arrested Baghdad's fugitives and drove them to the checkpoint.

The net is going international. Iraq signed a working arrangement with Eurojust, the EU's criminal justice agency, opening a direct channel for cross-border asset recovery. An Interpol fugitive list is reportedly in preparation, a travel ban covers every name in the inquiry, and the running seizure tally being discussed in Baghdad has passed 219 billion dinars and 85 million dollars in cash.

There is a precedent for where this leads, and it is not the famous one. Saudi Arabia locked its princes in the Ritz-Carlton in 2017, took 107 billion dollars in settlements, and let the men walk. Iraq just refused that exact deal. The closer rhyme is Hong Kong, which chased its most corrupt policeman to London in 1974, dragged him back to face trial, and became one of the world's great financial centres because money learned it could trust the system. The cleaning came first. The capital followed.

Parliament votes on the final 9 ministers Sunday July 5. A complete government flies to Washington 2 weeks from now. The cleanup and the reprice were never two separate stories. Watch the vote.