It won’t take long to understand what lies ahead for Iraq—and for the Iran‑aligned militias—after President Donald Trump appointed Tom Barrack as his Special Presidential Envoy for Syria and Iraq. All one needs is the paragraph Barrack published just hours after the announcement. He wrote that “the balance of power around which the United States operates works best when allies become more self‑reliant and share the burden—always within a framework that preserves American influence, stability, and alignment with core U.S. strategic objectives.”

That single sentence makes something unmistakably clear: Washington no longer views Iraq as a political file requiring relationship management, but as a security file requiring decision management.

The irony is that the focus on Barrack’s name obscures the real shift. The issue is not the replacement of one envoy with another, nor the illusion—long cultivated by Iraq’s militias—that U.S. policy changes every time Washington rotates a mid‑level official. That illusion fed a false sense of victory for years, as if Iraq’s fate hinged on the temperament of a bureaucrat. But Barrack is not that type. He is not a practitioner of soft diplomacy. He calls things by their real names. He insults publicly. He speaks without silk gloves.

American media have repeatedly described him as the “man for the dirty jobs” in U.S. foreign policy—one of the few capable of convincing Trump to take on complicated files personally.

Before his appointment,........

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