In Iraq, you can replace the name of Ali Falih al-Zaidi—the current prime minister—with any prime minister since 2003, and nothing in meaning or outcome would change. Every leader has made the same promise, every leader has spoken of a “turning point,” and every leader has left office without moving the national power grid a single step forward.

Al-Zaidi’s claim that 2027 will mark a doubling of electricity production and transmission capacity is not a vision; it is simply another number added to a long archive of empty promises whose endings Iraqis already know.

The irony is scorching. These promises are repeated while Iraqis endure summer temperatures exceeding fifty degrees Celsius, replaying old video clips of Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Adel Abdul Mahdi, Nouri al-Maliki, and Ibrahim al-Jaafari—each of whom said the same words and left the same unresolved crisis behind. Electricity in Iraq is not a public service; it is a political curse.

The irony is scorching. These promises are repeated while Iraqis endure summer temperatures exceeding fifty degrees Celsius, replaying old video clips of Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Adel Abdul Mahdi, Nouri al-Maliki, and Ibrahim al-Jaafari—each of whom said the same words and left the same unresolved crisis behind. Electricity in Iraq is not a public service; it is a political curse.

One of the most absurd moments in the country’s collective memory came in 2011, when Hussein al-Shahristani, then deputy prime minister for energy, confidently announced that Iraq would “soon” begin exporting electricity to neighboring countries. It was a statement so detached from reality that Shakespeare’s rebuke—“O shame, where is thy blush?”—feels tailor-made for........

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