Time & Perspective Quote by Iyad Allawi

"Free sovereign state" is doing heavy lifting here, less a description than a political spell meant to make an unstable moment feel inevitable. Iyad Allawi is speaking in the narrow corridor before the June 2004 handover, when the U.S.-led occupation planned to transfer formal authority to an interim Iraqi government. The countdown language ("nearly 20 days") turns nationhood into a scheduled product delivery: sovereignty as a date on the calendar, not a condition secured on the ground.

The sentence frames violence as proof of progress. By claiming "terrorists have increasingly targeted our country's infrastructure", Allawi doesn’t just condemn attacks; he recruits them into his narrative. If insurgents are sabotaging power lines and pipelines, it’s because a legitimate state is about to be born and its enemies are panicking. That’s strategic: it casts opponents as nihilistic "terrorists" rather than nationalists or resistance fighters, shrinking the moral and political space in which they could claim legitimacy.

There’s also a subtle rebranding of ownership. "Our country's infrastructure" implies an intact national "we" in a country fractured by sectarian tension, foreign troops, and institutional collapse. It’s an attempt to stitch together a shared public interest around basics like electricity and water, where ideology matters less than daily life.

The line’s real audience isn’t only Iraqis; it’s Washington, allies, and a global press corps hungry for a clean story arc. Allawi offers one: sovereignty is coming, the enemy is desperate, and the interim state deserves protection, patience, and continued support.