Last week's protests in Basra appear to have ended Haider al-Abadi's bid to return as Iraq's prime minister once coalition negotiations wrap up. Al-Abadi had already been reeling after his bloc finished third in May's parliamentary elections and the reported defection of some of his allies afterward. But the final nail in the coffin was probably hammered in on Sept. 11 when Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite cleric, said neither of the country's two previous prime ministers — al-Abadi and Nouri al-Maliki — should be the country's next leader. Two days later on Sept. 13, al-Abadi announced during a news conference, "We respect and obey the instructions of the religious authority Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. I did not and will not request the post of prime minister in the second term.