Politics & Power Quote by Jalal Talabani

A single sentence that tries to do three jobs at once: promise democracy, claim legitimacy, and draw a bright line against both occupation and autocracy. Jalal Talabani’s phrasing is careful in the way politicians get careful when the ground is moving under them. “We believe” signals coalition-building and plausible deniability; it’s not a decree, it’s a posture meant to sound consensual even when consensus is scarce. The insistence on a “founding national assembly” reaches for the prestige of state-making, a constitutional reset that implies Iraq can be re-authored rather than merely managed after dictatorship and war.

The real muscle sits in “freely elected” and “must decide.” “Freely elected” is a moral credential aimed outward, especially at audiences skeptical of foreign intervention and engineered outcomes. “Must decide” is aimed inward, at Iraqis who fear their future will be negotiated over their heads by militias, exiles, or external powers. It’s a small act of boundary-setting: Iraq’s fate belongs in an Iraqi forum, not in back rooms in Washington, Tehran, Ankara, or the Green Zone.

Talabani’s Kurdish background sharpens the subtext. He’s advocating national sovereignty while quietly protecting the idea that the new Iraq should be built through institutions where Kurds can bargain, veto, and formalize federal arrangements. The sentence sells procedure as destiny: if you can control the rules of the assembly, you can shape the country’s “future” without sounding like you’re carving it up. In a moment of fractured authority, the rhetoric turns legitimacy into a shield and a negotiating tool.