Iraq's PM-designate Allawi withdraws from race

Mohammed Allawi, the designated candidate to be Iraq’s new prime minister, has announced his withdrawal, hours after parliament adjourned a session to approve his cabinet choices.
Allawi made the announcement on Twitter, saying that “certain politicians had placed obstacles in his way”. “If I agreed to offer concessions, I would be prime minister now, but I tried everything possible to save the country from sliding toward the unknown and resolve the current crisis. But the negotiations hit repeated snags”, Mallawi later said.
The announcement comes after two failed attempts to secure a plenum to vote on his cabinet in the parliament. Allawi was appointed by the country’s president Barham Salih for the post of PM-designate in February after lawmakers from rival parties failed to zero in on a successor to Abdul Mahdi who had resigned in December, following the pressure from anti-government protests.
Mahdi stayed on as the caretaker PM, and Allawi was given a month to form a government which was expected to organize early elections.
During the last five months, Iraq has seen anti-government protests against the political elite. The country is also caught in the middle of tensions between Iran and the United States, which rose after the US killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and Iran’s missile attack on an Iraqi base housing US troops as retaliation. Recently, there have been numerous rocket attacks in Bagdhad’s so-called Green Zone where the embassies of the US and several other countries are located.