Iraqi care-taker Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Thursday night that he had agreed to relinquish power, state television reported.
Maliki’s decision came after days of negotiations with his former allies, who urged him to abide by growing international opposition to his rule.
The Iraqiya television network said al-Maliki has “relinquished the post of prime minister.” It did not elaborate.
Iraq’s President Fouad Massoum named al-Abadi on Monday to form the next government, but al-Maliki had until now refused to step aside.
Al-Maliki has been struggling for weeks to stay for a third four-year term as prime minister amid an attempt by opponents to push him out.
Al-Maliki had grown increasingly isolated that his top ally the Iranian regime backed al-Abadi, who has 30-days to put together a Cabinet for parliament’s approval.
The U.N. Security Council urged al-Abadi to work swiftly to form “an inclusive government that represents all segments of the Iraqi population and that contributes to finding a viable and sustainable solution to the country’s current challenges.”
The U.S. and other countries have been pushing for an inclusive government that will ease anger among Sunnis, who felt marginalized by al-Maliki’s.
In the past eight years, under the command of the Iranian regime’s terrorist Qods Force, Maliki had stayed in power through bloodshed and the systemic purge of the Sunnis.
Through mass murder and bombings, he confronted the widespread revolution by the Iraqi tribes and people, who were seeking a non-sectarian democratic system.
On the other hand, the conditions created by the mullahs’ regime and its puppet government of Maliki in Iraq have provided opportunity to and empowered an extremist terrorist group to divert the Iraqi people’s revolution and massacre the innocent, the minorities and assault the honor and dignity of women.
The end of Maliki, the hated Prime Minister of Iraq, who in the past eight years was engaged, at the behest of the Iranian regime, in killings and crimes, including three massacres against members of the Iranian Resistance represents an irremediable strategic defeat for the mullahs and the wasting of their eight-year political investment in Iraq.
