After the end of the vot­ing pro­ce­dures, Iraqi elec­tion entered a new phase. A mes­sage from Saudi Ara­bia King Abdul­lah to Syr­ian pres­i­dent Bashar Al-Asad to update him on the cur­rent issue in the Mid­dle East, at the same day of the Iraqi elec­tion is not a nor­mal event in the ME.

First, some analy­sis of the sit­u­a­tion before and after the elec­tion. Based on the strengths and weak­nesses the Iraqi elec­tion con­flict, will undergo two phases:

- A strate­gic con­flict: We already passed this stage, which took place dur­ing the eve of elec­tions. Each block tries to resolve the con­flict through access to a ratio of 51% of the total par­lia­men­tary seats.

- A tac­ti­cal con­flict: This phase will start after the announce­ment of the results of the elec­tions. Two “major” blocs will emerge, each one will try to form an alliance with a “sec­ondary” bloc so as to high­light the impor­tance of sec­ondary blocs, and, accord­ingly, each major bloc will start to offer the nec­es­sary con­ces­sions in order to attract a “sec­ondary” bloc.

If the strate­gic phase focused on the use of the media as a polit­i­cal mar­ket­ing medium, in addi­tion to the use of “polit­i­cal finance” in terms of access to the sup­port of the Iraqis, then the con­flict of the tac­ti­cal phase will highly inten­si­fies after the announce­ment of the elec­tion results.

The expected main lines of the com­ing con­flict:

i- Maliki’s camp (SoL) will seek con­sen­sus and coali­tion with INA camp, on the basis of the for­ma­tion of a coali­tion gov­ern­ment of the two big Shi­ite blocs that will ensure the for­ma­tion of an Iraqi gov­ern­ment that enjoys a par­lia­men­tary majority.

The crit­i­cal ques­tion in the above sce­nario: Who will become the Prime Min­is­ter? Maliki, Adil Abdul Mehdi or Al-Jaafari. Maliki will not accept any gov­ern­ment coali­tion which does not include him­self as Prime Min­is­ter, and the Sadrists would not accept Al-Maliki as a Prime Min­is­ter only if he aban­doned his sup­port to the U.S. agenda, at least to aban­don the US-Iraqi secu­rity agree­ment SOFA.

ii- The increase of the dif­fer­ences between Al-Maliki “SoL” and INA. Each coali­tion will seek an alliance with one of the two other “sec­u­lar” coali­tions (Allawi’s Al-Iraqiya or Bolani’s “Unity of Iraq”), which means that the major Shi­ite blocs will offer more con­ces­sions to sec­u­lar parties.

Splits among Shi­ite par­ties, for the fol­low­ing rea­sons:

i- SoL: The Kur­dish alliance will not allow Maliki to aban­don the U.S. agenda towards Iraq, in addi­tion to the pre­vi­ous, join­ing Kirkuk with Kur­dis­tan is a pri­or­ity demand of the Kur­dish Coalition.

If Maliki wants the sup­port of any of the sec­u­lar coali­tion, then he needs to take a firm stand from Kirkuk and Kurdistan.

ii- INA: There are many dif­fer­ences among Iraqi Shi­ite forces affil­i­ated under this coali­tion, espe­cially the Supreme Coun­cil vs Al-Sadr Trend, on issues relat­ing to South Iraq and the rela­tion­ship with the United States.

Chances for a post-election regional con­flict:

i- Saudi Ara­bia and Gulf coun­tries will seek to over­throw Maliki by bet­ting on Iyad Allawi (Al-Iraqiya).

ii- Iran will seek to boost INA camp as a first option, and prob­a­bly to con­tain and boost Maliki as a sec­ond option.

iii- The U.S. will seek to keep Maliki “SoL”, while it will try to con­vince a lead­ing fig­ure from INA (prob­a­bly Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, or Adil Abdul Mehdi) to form a gov­ern­ment of national unity with Maliki, as well as to give other blocs (sec­u­lar) some small roles.

Washington’s worst sce­nario right now, is that any under­stand­ing occurs between Syr­ian — Saudi Ara­bia dur­ing the con­flict tac­tics will lead to the rise of a unity gov­ern­ment and a new Iraqi nation­al­ism, leads to the emer­gence of unex­pected elec­tion results sim­i­lar to the results cre­ated by the new Lebanese cab­i­net recently, which are formed as a back­ground of an under­stand­ing between Syria — Saudi Ara­bia, and led to a major coup in the agenda of regional Mid­dle East policy.

In other words, if a Syr­ian — Saudi Ara­bia agree­ment occurs on Iraq, it will lead to an agree­ment between Allawi’s Al-Iraqiya and INA (Adil Abdul Mehdi as a neu­tral choice) — Rumors already started to emerge, but both coali­tions denied them.

Accord­ingly, Maliki (SoL) will have no choice only to go to the oppo­si­tion seats, and cer­tainly he will not go alone, but he will take SOFA with him, which would be dam­ag­ing to the future of the U.S. pres­ence in Iraq and the region.