Iraq's finance minister resigns over political crisis

Iraq’s finance minister resigned on Tuesday, two government officials said, over the country’s worst political crisis in years involving an influential Shiite cleric and his Iran-aligned rivals.

The officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said Finance Minister Ali Allawi resigned during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday to protest the political conditions.

They said Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul-Jabbar will become acting finance minister.

Allawi’s decision came weeks after members of influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s parliamentary bloc resigned from parliament and his supporters stormed the parliament building in Baghdad.

Al-Sadr later demanded that parliament be dissolved and early elections held. He had won the largest share of seats in the election last October but failed to form a majority government that excluded his Iran-aligned rivals.

Al-Sadr’s political rivals in the Coordination Framework, an alliance of Iran-backed parties, said earlier that parliament would have to convene to dissolve itself.

They called the al-Sadr supporters’ storming of parliament a “coup” and have held demonstrations in support of the government.

Earlier in the day, al-Sadr postponed demonstrations that were planned by his supporters on Saturday after Iran-backed groups called for similar rallies the same day. That raised concerns about clashes between the two main Shiite rivals in Iraq.

“If you are betting on civil war, I am betting on civil peace. Iraqi blood is invaluable for me,” al-Sadr said in a statement calling for postponing the protests until further notice.

Iraq’s political impasse, now in its 10th month, is the longest in the country since the 2003 US-led invasion reset the political order.