Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said that Iraqis were encouraged by what he called change after 2003, but they collided with terrorism, mismanagement and rampant corruption, stressing in another context that the Arabs made a strategic mistake by moving away from Iraq in the post-occupation phase.

Al-Sudani, who was a guest on the episode (2023/4/9) of the "The Interview" program, compared pre-occupation Iraq with post-occupation Iraq, and said that a minority was ruling before 2003 and there was unclear sectarianism confined to decision-makers, and there were no freedoms to the extent that the citizen is arrested as soon as he dreamed about the regime, while after 2003 there became freedoms and expression of opinion, and power became based on the people, and the most important thing is that Iraqis were able to maintain peaceful deliberation. of power, maturity in the political process and understanding of the political system.

Despite the beautiful picture he painted of the post-Saddam Hussein regime, the Iraqi Prime Minister acknowledged that the country witnessed chaos that affected development and services, as there was a decline in the level of the economy, mismanagement, rampant corruption, and popular reluctance to participate in the elections, but he said that Iraqis have learned the lesson in light of the political and security crises that they have experienced, and have begun to understand the limits of democracy and freedoms and to live together in their country without canceling the other.

In the same context, he ruled out that the Shiite component has dominated the political process in post-2003 Iraq, stressing that this component in all elections obtains half plus one, which enables him, for example, to form a government alone and elect a prime minister, but he believes that things cannot be managed without the participation of the rest of the components, and said that he personally as prime minister does not have absolute power, and there is a separation of parliamentary and judicial powers.

No targeting of the Sunni component

He also denied the existence of targeting the Sunni component in Iraq as part of the former regime, and said that part of this component was rejecting what he called the process of change, but with the passage of time everyone believed that the political process remained, highlighting that the component was also oppressed by the former regime and was subjected to oppression by the Islamic State, which infiltrated the Sunni areas.

He considered that it is in the interest of the current political system in Iraq not to go behind national or religious backgrounds, and that he personally makes his decisions not according to a personal tendency and a special vision, but out of the interest of Iraq and Iraqis, pointing out that diversity is a factor of strength for Iraqis and not a factor of weakness.

Regarding the return of Iraq to the Arab, regional and international arena, the Iraqi official saw that his country was subjected to occupation by a decision of the United Nations Security Council, and after 2011 it began to govern its institutions, and the Arab summit was held in Baghdad in 2012 and this was not by Iranian or American will, saying that "one of the strategic mistakes committed by the Arabs was their distance from Iraq" in that period, and that the Arabs were convinced of the need for their return to Iraq and not the return of Iraq to the Arabs.

The Arabs also admitted – according to al-Sudani – that the threat of ISIS was not a threat to Iraq alone but to the entire region, stressing that Iraq fought the organization on behalf of the region.

In the second part of his interview with the "interview" program, the Prime Minister of Iraq touched on his personal and professional career, revealing that his father was executed by the former regime because of his membership in the Dawa Party, and he was ten years old, which affected his psyche. He talked about his activity in the Dawa Party and the positions he held, leading to his nomination by the Coordination Framework in July 2022 to assume the position of prime minister, succeeding Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, who assumed the presidency of the government in May 2020.