Nizar Amidi

Iraqi President Nizar Amidi personally received Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's funeral cortege at Najaf airport on 8 July, the first head-of-state reception on Iraqi soil, before a procession to the Imam Ali shrine and a helicopter transfer to Karbala. It is the first time Baghdad has been pulled directly into Iran's succession.

Amidi, an engineer and former environment minister under Prime Minister al-Sudani (2022-24), was elected president on 11 April 2026 by the Council of Representatives, winning a second-round vote 227-15 over rival Muthanna Amin after falling short of the two-thirds threshold in round one. He is a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and succeeded Abdul Latif Rashid. Under Iraq's post-2003 power-sharing convention the presidency is reserved for a Kurdish candidate, but his own party's rival, the KDP, has said it does not recognise him as representing the Kurdish majority.

The Iraqi presidency is largely ceremonial, so Amidi's personal role at Najaf is a deliberate signal of alignment rather than a constitutional requirement. It ties Baghdad, which has tried to stay neutral through the Iran war, more closely to Tehran's internal transition at a moment when Iraq's own Kurdish bloc is split over his legitimacy.