there are three fac­tors that can affect the slow­down or the speed up of the for­ma­tion of the com­ing government:

The meet­ing between Maliki and Allawi:

once again Maliki revived this tac­tic to break the “iron cur­rtain” put by his INA allies to block his nom­i­na­tion. Since the Prime Min­is­ter knows that this alliance between the “State of Law” and INA is blessed by Iran and build in hurry through the pres­sure on all its com­po­nents, then the best way is to pres­sure on the Iran­ian side to exer­cise its role in per­suad­ing the Supreme Coun­cil, and the Sadrists to lift the veto and accept him as a candidate.

Unlike the last meet­ing between Maliki and Allawi, Al-Iraqiya showed dis­in­ter­ssts in the meet­ing between the lead­ers of the both coali­tions, and started to play down the impor­tance of the meet­ing. The best exam­ple is that Al-Iraqiya put con­di­tion before the meet­ing the meet­ing as reported by UAE news­pa­per Al-Ithad saying:

One of Al-Iraqiya’s con­di­tions to hold a meet­ing between Allawi and Maliki is the exclu­sion of three “Dawa Party” lead­ers: Ali Al-Adeeb, Haidar Abadi, Khalid al-Asadi, point­ing out that these fig­ures are try­ing to aggra­vate the rela­tions between the lead­ers of the two coalitions.

Reac­tion from INA sug­gests that the U.S. admin­is­tra­tion stands behind this renewed talks between Maliki and Allawi, as we under­stand from Al-Hakim reac­tion attack­ing the U.S. pol­icy saying:

The U.S. pol­icy in deal­ing with the polit­i­cal par­ties is vary­ing degrees and con­troled by its rela­tions, and it deals accord­ing to this basis with the polit­i­cal blocs. Wash­ing­ton is present in Iraq and has its own agenda and this may con­tinue for years to come and no one could deny that there are many files in the coun­try run by the Americans.

The supreme cler­ics in Najaf:

As they hinted few times in the last weeks, the supreme cler­ics will not be silence watch­ing the fail­ure of the Alliance of the “State of Law” and INA because of the per­son­al­iza­tion of the strug­gle for the posi­tion of prime minister.

The supreme cleric(s) will try to inter­fere in the cri­sis, and per­haps before the inter­na­tional inter­vene in form­ing the gov­ern­ment, because Iraq is still under the “Arti­cle VII”, which doesn’t sat­is­fay the top Shi’ite cleric, Grand Aya­tol­lah Sistani.

Sistani’s rep­re­sen­ti­tave noted that:

The spreme cler­ics are mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion and the polit­i­cal move­ments of the street with great inter­est and feel the prob­lems and the con­cerns of the cit­i­zens because of the delay hap­pened in the elec­tions and the for­ma­tion of the gov­ern­ment … The posi­tion of the supreme cleric(s) is a non-interference in the polit­i­cal affairs, but gives advice, but if the sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ues beyond the legal period for form­ing the gov­ern­ment, the supreme cleric(s) may intervene

The new Amer­i­can ambas­sador James Jeffrey:

The appoint­ment of the new Amer­i­can Ambas­sador James Jef­frey, in Bagh­dad, to replace Christo­pher Hill, came amid a sen­si­tive stage in Iraq, where the deci­sion to reduce U.S. forces in Iraq from the cur­rent 92,000 to 50,000 by the autumn, accord­ing to the grad­ual with­drawal strat­egy approved by Obama.

The appoint­ment of James Jef­frey, as an Amer­i­can ambas­sador in Iraq came under the plan to change the U.S. offi­cials in Afghanistan and Iraq, begun with the dis­miss­ing of the U.S. com­man­der in Afghanistan, Gen­eral McChrys­tal, which sug­gests that the process of replac­ing the Amer­i­can ambas­sador in Bagh­dad came as a result the cur­rent dead­lock that grips the polit­i­cal process in Iraq.