After the 2005 parliamentary elections, he was pushed to prime ministership by the Americans, who saw the interim prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, as being too close to Tehran and the Shia militia sponsored by Iran. Within a few years, Nouri al-Maliki had made himself the most powerful figure in Iraq by attacking the Mahdi Army of the cleric, Muqtada Sadr, both in the south of Iraq and in Baghdad. However, after Nouri al-Maliki came into power, his interests and those of the Americans began to diverge – while the latter prioritized attacks on jihadi extremists by mobilizing a formidable
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