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Iraq Enters the Final Stretch

The coalition leaves tomorrow. Customs rules bite Thursday. Weapons principles land in days. The budget reaches parliament October 15. Then the CBI.

Yesterday, the four men who run the state sat at one table in Baghdad: Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, President Nizar Amedi, Speaker Haibat al-Halbousi and Chief Justice Faiq Zaidan. Their statement, published by the Prime Minister's office, called the coming Sovereignty Day the completion of the country's path to sovereignty. What comes next, it said, is a wider relationship with the world built on economic and trade cooperation.

Tomorrow the coalition's mission ends, the exit we covered in The Occupation Is Over, and military spokesman al-Numan told Channel8 no foreign troops remain past the date. On Thursday, October 1, every dollar an Iraqi importer sends abroad to pay for goods starts clearing customs first. In the first days of October, per the Hikma movement, the government publishes the principles for bringing weapons under state control. And on October 15 the 2027 budget is due in parliament.

For the better part of this year, this channel has tracked the same order of gates. Weapons first. After them, the empty ministries. The budget next. The rate last. From tomorrow, the weapons and the budget run on printed dates inside the next 16 days, and the cabinet is promised straight after the exit. That last gate belongs to the Central Bank of Iraq.

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The Statement From the Top

Yesterday we carried this meeting on a single source. Monday it happened. The Prime Minister's office published the readout itself. Read what the four men at the top of the Iraqi state chose to put in it, and in what order.

Sovereignty comes first: October 1 marks the completion of the sovereignty path, and relations with the international community move to economic, trade and cultural cooperation. Weapons next. War and peace are decisions for the state alone, and weapons outside its authority will be dealt with under the constitution, on timetables the government sets. Then the cabinet, which they want completed so the government can carry out its program. Then parliament, told to speed up priority laws and use its oversight powers. Corruption got its line too: support for the government's measures and the judiciary's work against it.

And then the economy. Around that table they discussed what the regional war has done to Iraq's finances. They called for measures and steps to confront the damage and harden the economy against regional and international shocks.

Judiciary, legislature, presidency and government, closing the military chapter and opening the economic one in a single statement. They also backed one very specific request. It shows you how the next chapter is set to run.

The Najaf Exemption

Yesterday we left Baghdad asking Washington for carve-outs to the Iranian flight ban, as covered in The Occupation Is Over. Monday's statement put all four signatures behind one of them: an exemption for Najaf airport.

The same day, according to one source cited by a wire service, Washington moved to grant a limited waiver letting Iraqi Airways fly between Iran and Najaf for 1 month, for the pilgrims who travel to the Shia holy city, with a longer waiver possible after that. Iraqi state media reported Iraqi Airways flights between Najaf and Iranian airports running again on Monday, crediting al-Zaidi's government.

Look at how narrow it is. Iraqi Airways only, Najaf only, for a month, for pilgrims. Everywhere else the ban holds. Baghdad asked for an exception inside the American rule rather than a way out of it. That is exactly what it got.

The Dollar Gate Opens Thursday

Thursday also switches on the customs rule we set out in Iraq Invites America's Banks. The new detail is the price. Importers pay a 3% tax deposit up front, and duties run to 30%, 35% and in some cases 40%, all settled before the transfer leaves the bank. For 2 decades a fake invoice needed only a dollar transfer against goods nobody inspected, the trade laid bare in ASYCUDA Enforcement Day. From Thursday, the inspection is paid for first.

Importers are not thrilled. Baghdad's Chamber of Commerce says traders have complained about the upfront cost. Rules without teeth draw no complaints.

Syria is being wired into the same system. On Sunday, Iraqi and Syrian officials agreed eight measures for their crossings, including direct electronic links between border posts and the exchange of customs data, with dedicated lanes for fuel tankers and perishable goods. Iraq makes electronic verification through its ECOR platform mandatory from October 7. Kurdistan's crossings come next. That step still needs final cabinet approval, so we hold it as pending.

Banks face a deadline of their own today. By September 29 every lender owed the CBI its files on the country's politicians and their extended families, the screening order issued at the end of August. Screen the families. Check the invoices. Then release the dollars.

The Weapons Principles

Now the file every other gate waits behind. Nobody hands in weapons tomorrow. The men running the process have said so plainly. "Sept. 30 is not doomsday," said Hossam al-Hassani, spokesman for the Hikma movement. General principles for placing weapons under state control come at the start of October, he said, and the work runs gradually after that. Nouri al-Maliki has said a timeframe and program will be announced on September 30.

Arabic-language press, citing officials close to al-Zaidi, describes the first phase. From October 1, the factions stop issuing statements. No military activity from Iraqi soil. Heavy weapons and the unaffiliated brigades come in a later phase. Al-Hassani also gave the most useful detail. The factions have put written demands on the table. They accept the principle of the state holding the weapons, and are now arguing terms.

Three factions have already signed up to join the state. Kataib Hezbollah and Nujaba are still refusing, the same holdouts named in No Extension. Everyone else walks through a legal door: the amended PMF package al-Zaidi said he would send to parliament once home from New York. Ranks and pensions inside the state for the fighters who cooperate. It has not reached the chamber yet.

A faction that files written demands is negotiating the size of the door, not whether to walk through it.

The Chairs and the Budget

A new date is attached to the cabinet file. Lawmaker Abu Turab al-Tamimi says the remaining vacancies will be settled once the coalition's mission closes on September 30, the next step after the deputy-premier objection Washington lifted, as we reported in The Occupation Is Over. The security chairs at Interior and Defense are the ones that matter. One lawmaker, and we carry it at that weight.

Behind the chairs sits the paper, the 2027 draft now with the Council of Ministers. What it contains is clearer this week. Electricity, Diwaniyah and Saladin move onto program and performance budgeting, money released against measured results. Contract staff can move onto permanent posts. Cabinet votes next.

That document has to carry the exchange rate Iraq will spend its 2027 money at. In 2023 the rate moved first and the law caught up months later, as Iraq's 2027 Budget Enters Production showed. A law records the number. Only the CBI moves it.

The Pressure on the Street

All of this runs against a bill. Al-Zaidi told The New York Times last week that the war next door has cost Iraq about $60 billion. The head of SOMO, the state oil marketer, told parliament Iraq could export 4.2 million barrels a day in September but averaged about 2.5 million. SOMO is offering discounts of $26.50 to $28 a barrel and still struggling to find buyers. Imported goods in Baghdad's shops cost 25% to 30% more than before the war.

Monday, the street felt it again. A hundred dollars closed near 156,500 dinars in Baghdad, up from 155,250 on Sunday morning, against the CBI's official 131,000. The cash shipment promised on Saturday has not landed yet.

Iraq is building around the strait while it pays for it. The first cargo of American gasoline, about 32,000 tonnes, was unloaded at Syria's Baniyas refinery last week and has started moving by truck to Iraq through the al-Tanf crossing, under a transit deal between SOMO and a Qatari firm. Syria says it plans to raise that to around 200 tankers a day. Washington's envoy Tom Barrack was in the room in New York when the two governments discussed raising those flows. Until this year, American sanctions on Syria ruled that route out.

The Read

For the better part of this year we have carried one short list, and it has not changed. Weapons answer to the state. A completed government follows. Then a budget that writes the number into law, and last, a rate that moves at the bank. Every one of those gates sat behind a foreign military mission on Iraqi soil. From tomorrow, that mission is gone.

What replaced it arrived on Monday, in writing, from the four men who run the country. Sovereignty complete. The economy next. Measures and steps to protect it. The military chapter signed off, and the money moved to the top of the page. That is the order a state writes when it expects the next few weeks to be about its currency, not its checkpoints.

History has run this handover before. On April 28, 1952, the Treaty of San Francisco took effect and the US-led occupation of Japan ended after nearly 7 years. Tokyo had been working its way toward the world's money institutions since 1950, with Washington's backing. On August 13, 1952, 107 days after the occupation ended, Japan became a member of the International Monetary Fund, the body that held the par values of its members' currencies. The occupation ended first. Membership followed inside a season, and the country went on to become one of the fastest-growing economies of the next 2 decades.

Iraq's path is its own and what rhymes is the order. A foreign mission ends, and the sovereign state turns its whole machinery to money: its borders, its banks, its budget and its standing with the lenders who clear its dollars. Everything in this briefing is Baghdad doing exactly that, in the week the coalition's mission closes.

Now look at what October holds. Thursday brings Sovereignty Day and the customs rule that makes every import dollar answer to the border. Saturday is National Day, the anniversary of the 1932 independence we taught in No Extension. The weapons principles arrive in the first days of the new month. Electronic verification at the border goes mandatory on October 7. By October 15 parliament holds the budget, with the exchange-rate line every holder will read first. Later in the month Baghdad hosts a national trade and investment forum with the European Union on October 28 and 29.

Plenty of holders have called October the month to remember. Nobody will know until it happens, and this channel does not print dates the bank has not printed.

What we can say is that this is the first October since 2014 without a foreign military coalition on Iraqi soil, and every gate on the list but the last now has a date or a promise attached to it. In all the years you have watched this saga unfold, Iraq has never been this close to its structural changes being delivered. Not promised from a podium. Signed, dated, and switching on at the border this week.

Keep your paperwork as clean as Baghdad is making its own, and know how a payout actually works before anyone asks you, the ground we cover in The Two Tracks.

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