With news of a sudden breakthrough in Iraq’s entrenched political scene making headlines late last week – and signs that the end of the latest government paralysis may be over – it would appear that the status quo has, once again, won out in the battle of wills over who decides Iraq’s future trajectory. Kurdish politician Abdul Latif Rashid was appointed as president last Thursday after more than a year of political gridlock. Almost immediately thereafter, Rashid appointed the Shia Islamist politician Mohammed Shia al-Sudani to the post of prime minister and charged him with forming a new gove…