Is SOFA approval, an Iran­ian ges­ture to Obama to improve the rela­tions between Iran and the U.S.?

Sur­pris­ingly, we can not find the “usual” Iran­ian inflam­ma­tory crit­i­cism and the “daily” attacks on SOFA today.

Con­trary to all media report say­ing that Sis­tani gave Maliki’s gov­ern­ment [espe­cially, Al-Hakim’s Supreme Coun­cil] the green light (to say the “Yes” word approv­ing SOFA), Kuwaiti news­pa­per says that Sistani’s role is very exaggerated:

Sistani’s refused to give his own opin­ion to the Shi­ites United Iraqi Alliance’s del­e­ga­tion. Accord­ing to an Iraqi source Sis­tani said that the duty of the Iraqi gov­ern­ment is to main­tain Iraq’s sov­er­eignty, and he will leave the details to the gov­ern­ment and the Iraqi peo­ple through their rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the gov­ern­ment to approve the agreement.

Polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions should depend on them­selves and not wait for the opin­ions issued by the Supreme-references.

The link to Iran is reported by Azza­man:

Adbul Al-Aziz Al-Hakim the leader of the Supreme Coun­cil, [who is already in Iran for can­cer treat­ment], gave his fol­low­ers in the Iraqi gov­ern­ment the green light to vote in favor of the agreement.

And here is Obama in the whole story:

The same sources told the news­pa­per that the American-side informed Maliki that that Amer­i­can nego­tia­tors briefed Obama on the final draft of the secu­rity agree­ment and he showed his com­mit­ment to agree on George Bush’s sig­na­ture and the imple­men­ta­tion of SOFA.

Al-Akhbar con­nects the miss­ing dots saying:

The real “green light” came from Tehran with its silence. Even the Iran­ian TV described the agree­ment as “a big achieve­ment for Maliki’s government”.

Muq­tada Al-Sadr wrote a let­ter shows his rejec­tion to the approval [notice that he men­tioned Al-Hakim’s United Iraqi Alliance by name]:

This is the first humil­i­a­tion and shame mark, printed by the cur­rent Iraqi gov­ern­ment with the help of [United Iraqi] Alliance and the Kur­dish par­ties who agreed to sign the agree­ment with the occupiers.

Point­ing out that” The with­drawal of the occu­pier”, while their with­drawal is a legit­i­mate national duty needs no agree­ment with those who don’t have a honor or religion.

God never allowed the unbe­liev­ers to dom­i­nate over the Mus­lims. This agree­ment is can­celed ….I invites the Iraqi par­lia­ment to reject it, with­out any hes­i­ta­tion, this [agree­ment] means to sell Iraq and its peo­ple as other Mus­lim states and peo­ple are sold before.

The Sadrists made a real buzz today in the par­lia­ment first SOFA dis­cus­sion ses­sion, claim­ing that the “SOFA dis­cus­sion” is on today’s sched­ule and suc­cess­fully man­aged to can­cel the ses­sion [and I per­son­ally expect that the Sadrists will use much such harass­ment in the com­ing days].

As for Zebari and the U.S. ambas­sador Ryan Crocker to put their sig­na­ture today, Iraqi MP Al-Samarai said that this psy­cho­log­i­cal stunt to pres­sure the Iraqi par­lia­ment saying:

This is a mes­sage to the par­lia­ment means that the approval or the rejec­tion of SOFA by the par­lia­ment has no meaning.

Kur­dish MP Mah­mud Oth­man told Fars News that the Iraqi gov­ern­ment gave the par­lia­ment one week to approve the agree­ment, but the Sunni MP from the “Accor­dance Front” says that SOFA approval in the par­lia­ment is not that easy; SOFA must pass five stages before the final approval:

There are only 30 days to approve the agree­ment [before 31 Decem­ber], is this enough for all these procedures?

Kur­dish spokesman told Iraqalaan that the Amer­i­cans agreed on some amend­ments demanded by the Kurds on the Kur­dis­tan region rela­tions with the cen­tral governemnt.