As Washington and Tehran want Maliki, Damascus will dictate the path of Iraqi politics

Many talks about the a con­fer­ence in Syria (as I reported about the Syr­ian role before), lead­ers of Iraq’s coali­tions will meet at Ramadan’s “Iftar” invi­ta­tion hosted by Bashar Al-Asad (in coor­di­na­tion with coor­di­na­tion of Iranian-Syria-Saudi Arabia-Turkey) to dis­cuss the gov­ern­ment for­ma­tion crisis.

While Allawi in his visit to Rus­sia, prob­a­bly will ask Russ­ian offi­cials to par­tic­i­pate in Dam­as­cus meet­ing, after the Amer­i­cans lost their neu­tral­ity in the Iraqi gov­ern­ment cri­sis, Maliki knows that the out­come of such con­fer­ence will exclude him from the gov­ern­ment. There­for, two “State of Law” offi­cials (Izzat Al-Shahbandir and Ali Al-Dabagh) are in “secret” vis­its to Jor­dan and Syria to nego­ti­ate Al-Iraqiya decision-makers abroad.

Inter­est­ing to see the U.S. offi­cials started to use indi­rect threat lan­guage, against Al-Iraqiya

U.S. Ambas­sador Felt­man against those who oper­ate within the polit­i­cal process and sup­port sup­port the recent vio­lence. Very clear this threat tar­geted, the improved rela­tion between Al-Iraqiya and the Sadrists.

The other one is U.S. Gen. Odierno who accused Iran of con­tin­u­ing to wage insta­bil­ity in Iraq. This is came after a rare com­pli­ment issued by the Vice-President Tariq Al-Hashimi to the role of the new Iran’s Ambas­sador in Iraq (Al-Iraqiya started to change its posi­tion from Iran).

Dif­fer­ences that are afflict­ing the direct rela­tion­ship between the two coun­tries varies, but strange enough they both agreed (by chance or a secret deal) to sup­port the sec­ond can­di­date of the par­lia­men­tary election.

U.S. and Iran agreed on this impor­tant point, because it is the com­mon points between them, lies in the desire of both coun­tries to offer indi­rect con­ces­sions to resolve the dis­puted issues between them.

Allawi explained this issue on the Russ­ian RTL TV more plainly:

Q– Talk about the U.S. activ­i­ties or the U.S. efforts to form the [Iraqi] gov­ern­ment, your oppo­nents say that Iyad Allawi is the U.S. man, how do you react to this? Dr. Iyad Allawi Is this expres­sion correct?

A– It is known in Iraqi soci­ety that Amer­ica is not with me in this mat­ter, and Amer­ica is def­i­nitely try­ing to sup­port those who come to power and has a good rela­tion­ship with Iran.

Q– This analy­sis is very seri­ous, that the United States is seek­ing to form a gov­ern­ment close to Iran. Does this mean; the rumors and some per­cep­tions that there a U.S. — Iran deal at the expense of Iraq?

A– I do not think so .. but they’re [Amer­i­cans] cer­tainly not with the Iraqi national line. I meet them [Amer­i­cans], and I see a dif­fer­ence in the views between us and the U.S. side, in all the meet­ings that took place .. I noted that they wanted to form some kind of gov­ern­ment which pleases Iran .. So they [Amer­i­cans] don’t get into trou­ble in Iraq after the withdrawal.