Rising along the Baghdad Airport Road in Iraq’s capital are scores of billboards of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani, under the Donald Trump-inspired campaign slogan “Iraq First.”
Interspersed among them are giant portraits of Iran’s dour-faced Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis — both killed in a Trump-ordered drone strike in 2020, just off the airport road. They read: “We won’t forget our martyrs’ blood.”
The dueling displays illustrate the seminal moment currently facing Iraq, a nation of 47 million people and OPEC’s second-largest oil producer. The Arab country ...
