Shafaq News- Baghdad

Leaders of Iraq's Coordination Framework were due to meet at Humam Hamoudi's home in Baghdad on November 2, but so many stayed away that the regular session gave way to an informal consultation. The main item on its agenda was Hamoudi's plan to turn the ruling Shiite alliance into a formal institution with a leadership council, internal rules, and binding decisions, and it came out of the evening weaker than it went in.

Most of the Framework's leaders had initially backed the idea, a source told Shafaq News at the time. The holdout was Nouri al-Maliki, the former prime minister whose State of Law Coalition holds 29 seats, second within the alliance only to the 46 held by Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, Iraq's prime minister until May, and most of the Framework has since come round to his view.

Politicians and researchers inside and close to the alliance now doubt it will become a unified body under a single leadership any time soon.

The decision reaches well beyond the alliance's internal housekeeping. The Framework brings together Shiite parties, several of them tied to Iran-aligned armed factions. It formed in 2021 in opposition to Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Patriotic Shiite Movement, formerly known as the Sadrist Movement, whose bloc won that year's election outright before he pulled his lawmakers out of parliament and sat out the 2025 vote. Since 2022, the alliance has played the decisive role in government formation, and this spring it chose Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi as a compromise candidate.

Read more: Explainer: Iraq’s Coordination Framework and Its Rise to Power

Hamoudi, who heads the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, floated what he called a "state leadership council" in August. Sources within the Framework told Shafaq News that the body would oversee government work through the alliance's own committees and give its senior figures greater say over major state decisions, a role Iraq's constitution does not provide for, while some members, according to Shafaq News sources, see it as a way to keep the door shut to any return by al-Sadr. Hamoudi has described the division of labor bluntly: the Framework sets "visions and policies," and al-Zaidi carries them out.

The idea is not new. In February, Ammar al-Hakim, who leads the Al-Hikma Movement, urged the alliance to move from ad hoc coordination to an organized, rules-based body, arguing that formal structure would protect its recent gains and sharpen accountability.

Read more: Iraq's Coordination Framework is weakening, but no rival is ready to replace it

Al-Maliki's argument, as the source relayed it, is that a fixed structure would open fights over who leads, what powers the leadership holds and how votes are counted, while costing the alliance the flexibility that has carried it through repeated crises.

Hassan Fadaam, a senior figure in the movement, told Shafaq News that much of the debate misreads the Framework, which he described as a meeting place for Shiite parties that each keep their own ideology, program, and independent decision-making, not a party or an alliance in the organizational sense.

“Its members gather under its umbrella to reach understandings on shared issues and the running of the country, without merging into a single entity or giving up what distinguishes each of them,” he said, comparing it to the State Administration Coalition, which brings the Framework together with Sunni and Kurdish parties to settle national issues.

Abu Mithaq al-Masari, an independent politician, called the project ambitious but short of consensus. The Framework does not necessarily take up every dispute among its members, he said, and much of its work involves coordinating positions agreed in advance, with a leadership of 12 figures deciding by majority vote.

He credits that mechanism with helping settle major questions, including the choice of a prime minister, and warned that full institutionalization would load formal correspondence and bureaucratic routine onto a body whose strength is speed. In his reading, the harder issues concern how much authority a unified leadership would hold and how far parties would honor its decisions while each keeps its own political weight and calculations.

The record is messier than that account suggests. In April, with a constitutional deadline approaching, the Framework ended meeting after meeting without agreeing on a candidate for premiership or even on a way to choose one, at one point suspending formal sessions altogether until consensus emerged. Al-Zaidi's nomination finally came as a compromise between the al-Maliki and al-Sudani camps rather than from a clean vote.

Read more: The Shiite Coordination Framework: Can govern Iraq, but cannot agree on a primeminister

That episode helps explain why some members see little point in formal rules, since the looser the arrangement, the easier it is to withhold consent without breaking ranks. Aqeel al-Rudaini is spokesman for the Al-Nasr (Victory) Coalition of former Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, one of the Framework's founding components. He said the current format lets each party voice its view, vote or abstain, skip meetings or object to positions without bringing down the understandings that hold the alliance together. “A single umbrella of around ten parties spares partners, particularly Sunni forces, from negotiating with each Shiite party separately, and allows the alliance to agree on major issues, set general policy and back the government and state institutions.”

Al-Rudaini acknowledged there is still no merger or common internal code, though committees have been formed to develop the Framework's work and strengthen its support for the premiership, since the head of government emerges from within its ranks.

For researcher and academic Alaa Najah, the Framework has grown into a coalition umbrella of parties and movements. “Its members differ in interests as well as outlook; their leaders hold alliances and understandings elsewhere in Iraqi politics, and they still disagree over how influence, posts and the running of the state should be shared.”

A leadership able to issue decisions binding on all would sooner or later collide with some member's interests or alliances, he argued, and several forces deliberately avoid firm positions to protect their room for maneuver.

That pattern has already surfaced in the open. In May, as al-Zaidi's cabinet took shape, Shafaq News reported that five influential Shiite leaders were in advanced talks on a new parliamentary alliance, a sign of the competition over the Framework's future leadership. Najah explained that the core of the dispute is how much independence, influence, and outside connection each party is willing to surrender to a single body.

The Framework has not needed a council to shape the government. Al-Zaidi took office in May with nine of 23 ministries vacant, and through the summer the alliance’s leaders blocked any minister from resigning or being dismissed until those posts were filled. When parliament finally completed the cabinet on October 15, it approved 11 ministers alongside three newly created deputy prime minister posts, one of them filled by Laith al-Khazali, a senior figure in the Iran-aligned armed faction Asaib Ahl al-Haq, over objections from some lawmakers that the new positions were products of partisan quota-sharing. That bargaining ran through the Framework’s informal channels, reinforcing the argument among some members that formal rules could constrain a system they consider more flexible.

Where the absence of binding authority does matter is on the issue Washington watches most closely. Al-Zaidi has set June 30, 2027, as the deadline for bringing weapons held outside state institutions under government control. Ramadan al-Badran, a Washington-based political analyst, told Shafaq News this month that the Framework negotiates with the armed factions on the government's behalf but holds no decisive authority over them.

Read more: Iraq's armed factions dispute arms deals as June 2027 deadline looms

The institutionalization debate and the disarmament file ultimately turn on a similar issue: how far the Framework’s members are willing to accept collective decisions and bind themselves to them.

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.