Maliki waits for Obama to sign SOFA

This is very impor­tant and not reported be the for­eign media. Reported today on the Green Zone news­pa­per Sabaah that Maliki ordered to acti­vate his pre­vi­ous deci­sion of halt­ing all the raids on Sadr fol­low­ers [which means Mahdi Army] and con­di­tion­ally release of Sadr fol­low­ers who are in pris­ons [the con­di­tion here is pris­on­ers have to swear to not to break the law next time. Notice the tim­ing of this action].

In his arti­cle on Jor­dan­ian news­pa­per Al-Ghad, Kur­dish for­mer min­is­ter Sami Shourash argues that Maliki will sign the secu­rity agree­ment sooner or later but he bar­gains on Obama and the U.S. Democ­rats not only because the Iran­ian pres­sure but for his own per­sonal reasons:

With Iran pres­sures Maliki to not to sign SOFA, It is well known that Iran don’t want to give Bush and the Repub­li­cans a vic­tory, but it is a mes­sage to the U.S. that Iran is the coun­try who pulls the strings in Iraq and not the U.S.

There is also Maliki’s own ambi­tion to secure his future as a politi­cian and stay at the head of the gov­ern­ment with a green light from the new Amer­i­can admin­is­tra­tion which is for sure going to be a Democ­rats admin­is­tra­tion headed by Obama.