During the 1950s and ’60s, the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) was a major force in Iraqi politics and one of the largest communist parties in any Arab country. But it was savagely repressed under the long period of Baathist rule and was only able to reemerge as a legal organization after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Although the ICP is much weaker than in its heyday, it has still been a real player on the Iraqi political scene in recent years. The party formed an alliance for the 2018 parliamentary elections with the movement led by Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr that won nearly 15 percent of the vote — more than any of its rivals.

This interview with Ra’id Fahmi, general secretary of the ICP and a former minister of science and technology, took place on February 15, 2026, at the ICP headquarters in Baghdad. He spoke about the need to replace Iraq’s sectarian political system with a state based on citizenship, the challenges of organizing in Baghdad’s impoverished peripheral quarters, and the ICP’s own strategic choices since the US invasion of 2003.