The text of the speech stated that “Barham Ahmed Salih from the Republic of Iraq will assume the position for a term of five years starting from January 1, 2026,” according to the Iraqi National News Agency (NINA).
He was born in the city of Sulaymaniyah, the largest province in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, in 1960. He is married and has two children. He joined the “Patriotic Union of Kurdistan” in 1976 under the leadership of the late Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.
In 1979, he was arrested twice by the Ba’ath Party regime in Iraq on charges of being involved with the Kurdish national movement, which led him to leave Iraq and settle in Britain.
In the 1980s, he became a member of the European organizations of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and was responsible for the Union’s foreign relations in London. He earned a bachelor’s degree in civil and construction engineering from Cardiff University in 1983 and a Ph.D. from the University of Liverpool in 1987, specializing in statistics and computer applications in engineering.
In the same year, he became responsible for foreign relations and a representative for the first Iraqi government in Washington. He was the Prime Minister of Kurdistan from January 2001 until mid-2004, after which he took the position of Prime Minister in the interim Iraqi government.
In 2009, he became the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region once again and held the position until 2011. He returned to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan after the 2018 elections, leaving his new party after receiving assurances from the Union of his candidacy for the presidency.
In 2018, he was elected after receiving 219 votes against 22 votes for his competitor Fuad Hussein.
