BAGHDAD — Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, has suffered a stroke and was in intensive care at a Baghdad hospital Tuesday, injecting new uncertainty into the country’s political future a year after the US military left.

Although his official powers are limited, Talabani, 79, is respected by many Iraqis as a rare unifying figure seen as able to rise above the ethnic and sectarian rifts that divide the country. Talabani has been actively involved in trying to mediate an ongoing crisis between Iraq’s central government and the country’s ethnic Kurdish minority, from which he hails.