Monday May 18. Faleh al-Sari opened his first working day at Iraq's Ministry of Finance on Sunday by calling his general managers into a room and telling them the current stage requires exceptional work. He used the language Iraqi Finance Ministers have used at every handover meeting for 22 years. What is different about Sunday is which constituency the man at the head of the table reports to.

The word that anchors his pledge, and the program his Prime Minister carried into parliament last Thursday, is REFORM. In Iraqi political vocabulary, reform is not a generic political noun. It is the code word the IMF, the World Bank, and every G7 letter to Baghdad has used since 2003 to name a specific package. Pass the federal Oil and Gas Law. Close the spread between the program rate and the parallel market. Replace the cash payroll rails with audited electronic flows. Diversify the budget away from oil receipts. Cut the patronage line items the Finance Ministry has been waving through since the country had a parliament.

Every one of those moves requires a Finance Minister's signature on a budget submission the Central Bank then executes. For 22 years the signature was held back by a Finance chair that belonged to the people the moves would unwind.

That is what is different this time around.

5 Times The Word Was Promised

The first reform in post-invasion Iraq was a currency replacement, and it worked because it was executed from outside the cabinet.

October 15, 2003. Coalition Provisional Authority began exchanging new dinars, printed by De La Rue, for Saddam-era and Swiss-era currency. 27 planeloads. 240 sites. 25 million Iraqis. The entire monetary stock replaced in 3 months. Every reform since has been written from inside the Iraqi cabinet, and not one has matched what 2003 delivered.

February 2007. The cabinet approved the federal Oil and Gas Law (the Hydrocarbon Law) that would have governed revenue distribution between Baghdad, the Kurdistan Region, and the southern provinces. The bill went to parliament. 19 years later it is still there. Every PM since 2007 has named hydrocarbon law passage as a priority. Not one has put a Finance Minister at the Council table willing to sign it through.

July 2016. Haider al-Abadi opened an IMF Stand-By Arrangement worth $5.34 billion. Iraq was inside the double shock of the ISIS insurgency and a collapsed oil price. Two reviews completed, then the program lapsed because the spending discipline never reached the patronage line items the Finance Ministry was processing.

October 2019. Tishreen protests filled Baghdad and the southern provinces. More than 600 Iraqis were killed by security forces. Adil Abdul-Mahdi's cabinet promised a reform package under live fire. He resigned in December. The package did not survive the cabinet that replaced him.

October 13, 2020. Mustafa al-Kadhimi's cabinet approved Finance Minister Ali Allawi's White Paper. 95 pages. 200 reforms. Endorsement followed from the G7, IMF, World Bank, and European Union through the Iraq Economic Contact Group. 2 months later Allawi devalued the dinar from 1,190 to 1,460 per dollar to close the fiscal deficit. That devaluation cleared the chamber. None of the other 199 recommendations did.

February 7, 2023. Central Bank raised the dinar from 1,450 back to 1,300 per dollar. That repricing cost the budget 12 trillion dinars in oil-revenue translation. It is the only post-2003 rate move executed from the Iraqi side that survived the cabinet that approved it, and it happened because the Finance Minister of that cabinet had no nominating bloc invested in keeping the spread wide.

Five iterations of the word from inside the Iraqi cabinet.

Each one died on the same desk. Until now.

What "Reform" Names Specifically

A federal Oil and Gas Law passed at last would govern an oil revenue stream that produces nearly all of Iraq's federal budget. With the law on the books, KRG exports flow without ad-hoc negotiation, international operators get contract certainty, and revenue to Baghdad gets audited rather than estimated. Without the law, every barrel still moves through an opaque chain that the patronage networks process privately at the Ministry of Oil.

A budget package that closes the spread between the official rate of 1,300 to 1,320 dinars per dollar and the parallel rate of 1,440 to 1,450 ends the arbitrage the Iran-aligned exchange networks have lived on for two decades. Closing that spread is what compresses the dinar float for an eventual delete-the-zeros redenomination.

al-Alaq has spent 18 months wiring the digital and clearing rails underneath that outcome. The CBI's own public position is that three-zero deletion advances only when surrounding conditions are right. A reform-aligned Finance signature on a non-patronage budget is the surrounding condition that has been missing.

A non-oil revenue program that taxes commerce, ports, and customs instead of skimming the oil cheque is what makes a rate move survivable. Allawi's 2020 package costed it. The Finance Minister carries the signature.

Sunday's Meeting Read In That Light

al-Sari is a Hikma Movement nominee, not from the patronage centre. His May 14 confirmation was the price the Coordination Framework paid for cabinet seating under US pressure, 7 days after Treasury named a sitting Iraqi minister on the SDN list. We covered the sanctions calendar that broke the hold in The Pittance and the Pen.

On Sunday May 17 he chaired his first general managers meeting and put three pledges on the record. Economic reforms. Digital payments transition. Public sector worker entitlements. Read against the package above, each pledge names a piece of Allawi's 2020 White Paper. Read against the cabinet beside him, each pledge names a constituency that loses cash if it lands. Baghdad opened an IMF financing conversation 2 weeks ago in connection with the regional conflict. That door is open before al-Sari writes his first letter into it.

For Readers Tracking The Dinar

Many of you have been on this ride since the rate moved 1,182 to 1,460 in late 2020, then back to 1,300 in 2023. You have read every cycle that delete-the-zeros is ready and waiting. You have watched the IMF, World Bank, and G7 open and close their working rooms at every cabinet transition.

What separates this iteration from the previous five is not rhetoric. It is a stack of six concrete conditions standing at the same time for the first time since 2003.

al-Zaidi is a businessman, not a career politician dependent on patronage flows. He has never held a government post. al-Sari is a Hikma nominee from outside the patronage centre. The cabinet was seated under a live US sanctions calendar that named a sitting Iraqi minister 7 days before the confidence vote.

The IMF financing conversation is already open. The Coordination Framework majority that defended the spread is fracturing rather than blocking from within. And the 2026 federal budget is constitutionally overdue, the 2025 budget never passed, so the first budget al-Sari signs is the first parliament has received in 2 cycles.

Watch for in order: al-Sari's opening letter to the IMF, the 2026 budget package tabled in parliament, the 2026 Article IV mission landing on the calendar, the post-Eid chamber session that seats Interior and Defence, a federal Oil and Gas Law tabled for its 167-vote confirmation. Each one is a Finance signature event or its consequence.

Allawi's white paper has sat on the shelf for 6 years. The hydrocarbon law has stalled for 19. IMF engagement has been in and out of Iraq for 10. The variable that changed this week is the man holding the pen.

The Read

Reform from an Iraqi cabinet has been the most over-invoked word in 22 years of post-invasion vocabulary because the people who promised the outcome did not control the desk that signed the file.

Five Iraqi cabinets have named it. Five Finance Ministers have carried it on a budget cover page that did not deliver it. The version that arrived at the Finance desk on Sunday did not arrive on the strength of new rhetoric.

It arrived because US Treasury designated a sitting Iraqi cabinet member by name 7 days before the chamber voted on the new government, and the sanctions sequence made every alternative to seating this cabinet more expensive than seating it.

None of the moves that matter to our event happen as a press release. They will flow sequentially and with a freedom not seen in over 2 decades.

A federal Oil and Gas Law passes when the cabinet sponsoring it carries 167 votes on the parliamentary floor. A repricing executes when the Central Bank moves on a budget the Finance Minister has signed. Delete-the-zeros activates only after the surrounding conditions al-Alaq has named publicly are met.

Each step requires a Finance Minister willing to put his signature where 22 years of his predecessors would not. That signature took the chair on Sunday.

When Iraq moves with the conditions aligned, it moves fast. The 2003 currency exchange put new dinars in 25 million hands across 240 sites in 3 months. The February 7, 2023 repricing from 1,450 to 1,300 executed overnight on a single CBI announcement. The cabinet vote that ended 5 months of deadlock cleared 14 ministers in a single chamber session once the sanctions calendar broke the hold.

The blockers are off the chair. The six conditions are standing at the same time for the first time in 22 years.

The working window opens this week. Let's see how fast they move this time, and whether the alignment holds long enough for the 6th attempt to be the one that finally lands.

Sources & References

• 2003 CPA currency replacement - CNN
• 2007 federal Oil and Gas Law stall - CFR
• 2016 IMF Stand-By Arrangement Abadi - IMF PR16321 (paywalled)
• 2019 Tishreen + Abdul-Mahdi resignation - NPR
• 2020 Kadhimi-Allawi White Paper + Dec 2020 devaluation 1,190 to 1,460 + Feb 7 2023 repricing 1,450 to 1,300 - Iraqi Economists Network | Jummar
• 2026 official rate 1,300 / 1,310 / 1,320 + parallel 1,440-1,450 - INA (paywalled)
• Three-zero deletion preconditions - Iraq Business News (paywalled)
• al-Sari Sunday May 17 first general managers meeting + pledges - Search 4 Dinar
• al-Sari (Hikma Movement) Finance Minister + first pledges - The National May 14
• al-Zaidi parliament confidence vote May 14 + Government Palace handover Sudani May 16 - Al Jazeera | Saudi Gazette
• al-Zaidi PM-designate by President Nizar Amedi April 27 - Al Jazeera
• al-Zaidi banker background - The National
• Iraq IMF financing conversation in connection with regional conflict - Al-Arabiya May 14 (paywalled)
• 2025 IMF Article IV mission concluding statement (May 15 2025) - IMF (paywalled)
• May 7 Treasury sb0492 Al-Bahadly designation - Treasury sb0492
• Internal callbacks - The Pittance and the Pen | Fourteen Ministers in Baghdad
• Book - Head of the Snake