Mohammed Shia' Al Sudani

Mohammed Shia' Al Sudani (محمد شياع السوداني; born 1970) is an Iraqi politician who has been the Prime Minister of Iraq since 27 October 2022.

Al-Sudani was born in 1970 to a Shia Muslim family in Baghdad.

At the age of 10, he witnessed his father and five other family members being executed for membership of the Islamic Dawa Party.

Al-Sudani holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Baghdad in Agricultural Science and a master's degree in Project Management.

He is married and has four sons.

Sudani participated in the 1991 uprisings that began after the end of the Gulf War.

In 1997, he was appointed to Maysan Agriculture Office, in which he was the Head of Kumait City Agriculture department, Head of Ali Al-Sharqi City Agriculture department, Head of Agricultural Production department and the supervisor Engineer in the National Research Program with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

After the invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies in 2003, Sudani worked as a coordinator between the Maysan Province administration and the Coalition Provisional Authority.

In 2004 he was appointed Mayor of Amarah City.

In 2005 he was elected as a member of Maysan Province Council.

He was Governor of Maysan Province in 2009 and 2010.

He was reelected in 2009 and appointed governor by the council.

He was the Human Rights Minister of Iraq in the Council of Ministers of Prime Minister NOURI al-Maliki from 2010 to October 2014.

He was appointed by Prime Minister NOURI al-Maliki as the Minister of Human Rights after the 2010 parliamentary election, being approved by parliament on 21 December 2010.

During 2011, he was briefly chairman of the Supreme National De-Baathification Commission|Justice and Accountability Commission for De-Ba'athification, which had the power to bar individuals from government for links to the former ruling Ba'ath Party.

He was minister in August 2014 when thousands of Yazidis were massacred in northern Iraq by the Islamic State (ISIS or Daesh).

He described it as "a vicious atrocity" and said it was the "responsibility of the international community to take a firm stand against the Daesh" and to "start the war on Daesh to stop genocides and atrocities against civilians".

He asked the United Nations Human Rights Council to launch an investigation into crimes against civilians committed by ISIS.

He described their crimes as amounting to genocide and crimes against humanity.

"We are facing a terrorist monster", he explained.

"Their movement must be curbed. Their assets should be frozen and confiscated. Their military capacities must be destroyed."

He was succeeded by Mohammed Mahdi Ameen al-Bayati in October 2014, when the government of Haider al-Abadi took office.

In a bid to end the 2022 Iraqi political crisis, the coordination framework officially nominated al-Sudani for the post of prime minister in May 2022.

He succeeded in forming a government, which was approved by the Council of Representatives on 27 October.

In January 2023, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, al-Sudani defended the presence of U.S. troops in his country and set no timetable for their withdrawal, referring to the U.S. and NATO troop contingents that train and assist Iraqi units in countering Islamic State, but largely stay out of combat, though he mentioned that the U.S.-led military coalition in Iraq is no longer needed.

The Economist has said that al-Sudani is affiliated with the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), and his tenure has seen their influence further increase in Iraq.

His government has increased the number of troops for the PMF by 116,000, increasing the total number to around 230,000, and has set its budget to US$2.7 billion.

It has also launched a building company affiliated with the PMF, named after killed PMF commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis; the company gives preferential access to government contractors and the government has awarded the company with strategic land.

On 20 July 2023, al-Sudani expelled the Swedish ambassador to Iraq and revoked work permits for Swedish companies after Sweden approved a planned Quran burning.

On 10 October 2023, al-Sudani arrived in Moscow and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On 21 October 2023, he called for a ceasefire in the Israel–Hamas war.

During a meeting with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, he described the Hamas attack on Israel as "a result of years of criminal policies of the Zionist regime against the people of Gaza."

On 17 February 2024, he met with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Munich while he was attending the Munich Security Conference where he met with various world leaders.