#️⃣ PART ONE
In a mobilizing speech from Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, held to commemorate the second anniversary of the martyrdom of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine, Hadi al-Ameri, Secretary-General of the Badr Organization, condemned the
“unjust blockade” i
mposed on Iran and called on the Iraqi government to
“reverse the unjust decision”
regarding the suspension of Iranian flights.
But the question that imposes itself is: Who actually holds the decision-making power?
Al-Ameri and the Ministry of Transport: An Institutional Connection
Hadi al-Ameri is not simply a politician criticizing the Ministry of Transport from the outside.
He previously served as Iraq’s Minister of Transport (2010–2014), while the Badr Organization he leads secured the Ministry of Transport in the al-Zaidi government and retained it for 8 of the 14 years that followed.
The ministry that should, in principle, have primary jurisdiction over the decision to suspend flights is therefore a ministry administered by the very organization whose leader is now publicly condemning the decision.
Inside Government and in Opposition: A Structural Duality
This duality is not a personal contradiction on al-Ameri’s part. It is a structural feature of Iraq’s sectarian power-sharing system.
The Badr Organization is part of the government, holding ministries, parliamentary seats, and influence within state institutions. At the same time, it can act as an opposition force when populist rhetoric offers greater political returns than assuming responsibility for an actual government decision.
The Badr parliamentary bloc had previously warned the Iraqi government against
“the consequences of responding to directives from the U.S. Treasury Department regarding the imposition of an air embargo on Iranian civil aviation,”
and demanded an “explicit position” on the ban on Iranian flights.
Yet that position was not translated into an executive decision.
The Nature of the Decision: Who Actually Issued It?
The decision did not originate from the Civil Aviation Authority, nor from the Ministry of Transport.
Rather, a direct executive order was issued by the Prime Minister’s Office following meetings between the Iraqi delegation and U.S. officials in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, where the Iraqi side was reportedly informed that secondary sanctions would target any civilian facility allowing Iranian aircraft to land.
This means that the ministry with formal jurisdiction was bypassed, and that the government treated the matter as a political-security crisis rather than a regulatory issue.
Who Governs Iraq? Private Companies… and the Federal Reserve
It was private companies that actually halted the flights.
The British company Menzies and the Kuwaiti-British company NAS, through their joint venture MASIL, informed Iranian airlines that they could no longer provide ground-handling services,
“for fear of being subjected to sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department.”
The Ministry of Transport, which should theoretically possess the infrastructure necessary to provide an alternative, was unable to fill the gap because it had never built that infrastructure in the first place.
Iraqi Airways is the “local partner” in the MASIL project, but the foreign partner provides the technical and operational management, equipment, and expertise.
This reflects a deeper structural reality: just as Iraq’s funds are held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, its sovereign decision-making over its airspace is effectively constrained by foreign companies over which the state has limited practical control.
Suspended Sovereignty and Mobilizing Rhetoric: Who Holds the Decision and Who Is Managing the Crisis?
#️⃣ PART TWO
The Ministry’s Failure to Build Infrastructure: 14 Years of Absence
The harshest irony is that the Ministry of Transport, which was controlled by Badr for eight years, failed to develop a national civil aviation fleet or an independent infrastructure for ground-handling services.
Even the Baghdad Airport development project, approved in 2025 at a cost of $764 million, is being implemented through a consortium of foreign companies, Corprovision America for Aviation and Amwaj International, rather than through national capabilities. The ministry manages the land and licensing, not the actual operations.
The Tanker Crisis: Another Face of the Same Failure
This failure is not limited to civil aviation. In the context of oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz, MP Hiyam al-Yasiri revealed a dispute between the Ministries of Oil and Transport that prevented the activation of Iraq’s maritime fleet, despite the availability of “the necessary technical capabilities and security approvals.”
The State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO) refused to assign the transportation of crude oil to Iraqi tankers belonging to the Ministry of Transport and was accused of “suspicions of corruption and domination over the oil transportation portfolio.”
The Result: Iraq loses billions of dollars annually because it does not possess a national tanker fleet, while the Ministry of Transport, which owns the General Company for Maritime Transport, is unable to assert its role.
From the “Finger Signal” to “Walking Out of the Hall”: Lebanon and Iraq
The occasion on which al-Ameri made his statements is not incidental. The assassination of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon and the killing of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in Iraq represented devastating blows to the leadership structure of the Axis of Resistance.
Al-Muhandis was not merely a military commander. He was the organizational mind connecting the factions with the state and translating mobilizing rhetoric into tangible decisions. With his departure, Iraq lost a mechanism of decision-making, not merely an individual.
In Lebanon, the picture becomes complete when viewed alongside its Iraqi counterpart.
In Beirut, Parliament granted confidence to Nawaf Salam’s government with 68 votes against 12. But the significant point was not the numbers. It was what happened within the Shiite duo itself. MPs from the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc (Hezbollah) walked out of the chamber immediately before the vote. They neither granted confidence nor voted against it.
This rupture is not a procedural detail. It is a precise indicator of the loss of the “finger signal.”
During Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s era, it was difficult to imagine a government formation or confidence vote proceeding without his approval. Nasrallah had openly stated that “the party would accept only a government” meeting its conditions, and that “we must be in the government to protect the back of the resistance.”
Today, Hezbollah is unable to bring down the government, prevent it from receiving confidence, or even persuade its traditional ally, the Amal Movement, to walk out alongside it. It therefore chose to withdraw in order to “save face.”
In Baghdad, the same logic is repeated in another form. During Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis’s era, he was regarded as the “linchpin of consensus among all Iraqi factions,” managing coordination between the factions and the government so that internal disputes would not spiral beyond control.
With his departure, Iraq lost not only a commander but also a decision-making mechanism capable of transforming fragmentation into an actionable consensus.
Today, the Coordination Framework, despite holding a parliamentary majority, ministries, and extensive influence, is unable to select a prime minister in the face of an American veto, impose a sovereign decision over the airspace issue, or resolve the question of placing weapons exclusively under state control, which has instead become an open-ended negotiation.
Conclusion: Leadership Is Not Measured by Rhetoric
The difference between the era of the founding leaders and those who came after them is clear:
The former made decisions and assumed responsibility for their consequences. The latter wait for decisions to be made for them and prefer the safety of rhetoric.
Those who control the Ministry of Transport cannot prevent a single decision concerning sovereignty, while those who raise the slogan of
“full sovereignty”
allow a sovereign matter as critical as control of the airspace to be managed through foreign companies.
The result is the same in both arenas: those who possess the majority do not possess the decision, and those who control the ministries do not possess the tools.
Neither side is betraying nor resisting, because neither side any longer possesses the authority that can transform rhetoric into action.
What remains is the same scene repeating itself: condemnation, withdrawal, and then waiting.