Jaafari was the secretary-general of the Islamic Dawa Party when he was elected Prime Minister. Following the December 2005 Iraqi legislative election, his reelection as Prime Minister was blocked by Kurdish and Sunni Arab coalition partners. Nouri al-Maliki, also from the Islamic Dawa Party, was elected as a compromise candidate in his place, and Maliki replaced Jaafari as party secretary general in May 2007.[2]
For the 2010 Iraqi parliamentary elections they joined up with other Shi'a religious parties to form the National Iraqi Alliance, Jaafari was placed prominently as number one on their list for Baghdad and was made chairman of the alliance. They however only managed to win one seat and that was the seat of Jaafari himself, who got over 100,000 votes.
Parliamentary elections 2014
National Reform Trend took part in the 2014 Iraqi parliamentary election as a coalition under the banner of Tayyar al islah and headed by Ibrahim al-Jaafari winning 6 seats in the Iraqi Parliament out of a total of 327 seats.