Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki Baghdad – Jafar Alnasrawi On July 12th 2011, Iqbal Abdel Zahraa Baqer Al-Rabe’ie was been awarded a PhD with honors by the Deanship of the Political Sciences College at the University of Baghdad for her dissertation titled “Iraqi Government leaders between confusion and achieving.”  Iqbal carried out a poll in her dissertation which asked 1000 Iraqi citizens to vote for the person they think was the biggest failure as an Iraqi Prime Minister in the history of Iraq; Nouri al-Maliki got the most votes with 511 votes calling him the “biggest failyre”, and ex Prime Minister Saddam Hussein came in second place with 470 votes, whereas the late Abdul Salam Arif came in third with 19 votes. Abdul Karim Kassem won the vote for best Iraqi President with 976 votes.
Upon awarding Iqbal the dissertation and taking it to the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research for approval and stamping; the Ministry decided against it after an order from its Minister Ali Aladeeb requesting to do that, claiming that Iqbal has targeted al-Maliki in the poll she carried out in Chapter 9 of her dissertation.  Dr. Iqbal told ArabsToday that as she arrived at the Ministry to ask about what had happened, Aladeeb personally requested her to leave out the results of the poll against Al-Maliki or to change them in his favour - which she refused to do entirely.
This led to Iqbal turning to her University Council and raising a complaint about what had happened, which resulted in a meeting between the President of the University and Musa al-Musawi who unanimously agreed to approve and stamp Dr. Iqbal’s dissertation. They described the Minister’s interference as a dangerous incident.  Dr. Iqbal is a refugee from the city of Baqubah.  Her house was bombed in 2006 by armed groups after she took part in the Anti-United Iraqi Alliance in the General Elections, which resulted in the victory of the Parliamentary Coalition.