Allawi, Maliki and the political message of the meeting

Despite the announce­ment of a merge between the “State of Law” and the Iraqi National Alliance”, the sched­uled meet­ing between Maliki, Allawi has dom­i­nated the polit­i­cal scene in Iraq. Both lead­ers have their own agen­das for this meet­ing, the dif­fer­ence between the two is very clear, which makes it dif­fi­cult for this meet­ing to achieve its goals.

Maliki, aims to inform Allawi that all the attempt car­ried out by Al-Iraqiya to head the next gov­ern­ment are fruit­less, and the list should rec­og­nize the de-facto. But Maliki also seeks to send a mes­sage to his INA allies that the “State of Law” could play Allawi’s card, if they insist on not to choose him for Prime Minister.

As for Allawi, he felt betrayed by some polit­i­cal fig­ures, telling news­pa­per Al-Sharq Al-Awsat the following:

When we sit with them face to face, we don’t hear any objec­tion, and they always say we will stand by you, but in the media they say this is a Sunni List.

Very clear, Allawi indi­rectly means Ammar Al-Hakim, who went to ask Sistani’s opin­ion, hour after mak­ing some kind of agree­ment with Allawi, and prob­a­bly objected by Sistani.

Al-Hakim also stabbed Allawi in the back, by secur­ing an agree­ment with the Kur­dish Alliance to share the three pres­i­dency offices with them (as I reported before, PM for the Shi­ites, Pres­i­dent for the Kurds, leav­ing the head of the Par­lia­ment to the “Al-Iraqiya List” or the “Sun­nis”), as reported by Al-Hayat.

The U.S. response came as an accep­tance to the new formed Shi­ite Alliance, by post­pon­ing U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden (the most hated U.S. offi­cial by the Iraqi Shi­ite politi­cians) visit to Bagh­dad, send­ing much quite U.S. offi­cial Jef­frey Feltman.

A pos­i­tive mes­sage towards the Shi­ite polit­i­cal coali­tions, who do not want to see the U.S. posi­tion to influ­ence and pres­sure the for­ma­tion of the gov­ern­ment and a neg­a­tive mes­sage to Ayad Allawi, who was look­ing for­ward to clear and deci­sive U.S. posi­tion sup­port­ing his pres­i­dency demand, as the num­ber one win­ner in the elec­tions. But this devel­op­ment did not hap­pen, which means that the Amer­i­cans do not want a con­fronta­tion with Iran because of Allawi.

No cards left for Al-Iraqiya List to play against its oppo­nents (except their own illu­sions), as con­firmed by Al-Hashimi in today’s inter­view. The inter­viewer asks:

Q– What are other options avail­able for Al-Iraqiya?

A– We still can ask the Amer­i­cans to inter­vene, morally, it is the U.S. oblig­a­tion to find a solu­tion … Inter­na­tion­al­ize the cri­sis … Go the Untited Nationa Secu­rity Council.

Per­son­ally, I think Allawi’s next step is play one of the most dan­ger­ous polit­i­cal game, which is to bet on Al-Iraqiya weight in the street, espe­cially in the Sunni street, at the same wait­ing for the col­lapse of the Shi­ite Alliance between “SoL” and “INA”.