Abadi, Haidar Jawad Kadhim al-, 1952–, Iraqi political leader. A Shiite, Abadi received a doctorate in electrical engineering from the Univ. of Manchester (1981), then lived and worked in exile in Britain during the rule of Saddam Hussein. Returning to Iraq (2003), he was named communications minister (2003–4). A member of the Dawa party, he was first elected to parliament in 2005, and chaired that body's economic, investment, and reconstruction committee (2006–10) and the finance committee (2011–13), then was deputy speaker of parliament (2014). In 2014, he became Iraqi prime minister, succeeding Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, whose government had experienced battlefield reverses against the Islamic State (IS) and who had lost the confidence of Kurds and Sunni Muslims. A compromise choice, Abadi oversaw the defeat of the IS, successfully balancing relations with the United States and Iran, and generally reduced sectarian and ethnic tensions, although he also forcefully quashed a Kurdish bid for independence. In the 2018 elections, his coalition placed third, and he stepped aside as prime minister.
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