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05/12/2006 | Iraq's Evolving Relationship with Iran

Stratfor Staff

Wednesday was a tumultuous day in and around Iraq. U.S. President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki were supposed to meet in Jordan, but the meeting was postponed until Thursday, without a coherent explanation from the White House for the delay.

 

Meanwhile, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who was in Tehran on a two-day visit, announced after meeting with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that a security agreement had been reached. Almost simultaneously, Iran released a letter from Ahmadinejad to the American public that referred to Americans as "noble." The letter seemed to strike a conciliatory note, yet without actually offering anything new (and as usual, Ahmadinejad made sure to vilify the Bush administration.)

It is now clear that Bush is trying to shift al-Maliki's position. A government report, leaked to The New York Times and timed to coincide with their meeting, characterized al-Maliki more as a Shiite leader with ties to Iran than as an Iraqi leader who is trying to reconcile the country's various factions. Given Talabani's visit to Tehran and the security agreement that was reached, prior to the prime minister's planned visit with Bush, the central question of Thursday's talks clearly will be whether al-Maliki and the Iraqi government are prepared to move toward a reconciliation platform with the United States, or whether they intend to act on behalf of the Iraqi Shia and Iran.

The problem is that, judging by the actions of individual members of the Iraqi government, that decision has already been made. The shift toward Iran is both pronounced and logical. The perception in the Iraqi government is clearly that Bush is extremely weak and that the U.S. future in Iraq is uncertain at best. Iran, however, is not going anywhere, and it does not appear weak. The relative balance of power has tilted toward Iran -- certainly as far as the Shia are concerned.

The very fact that Jordanian King Abdullah II is clearly brokering the Bush-al-Maliki meeting in Amman reads as an indication that the dynamics have radically shifted. The Iraqi government is no longer the creation of the United States. Now the Iraqi prime minister is meeting the president of the United States on neutral ground, and the meeting can and does get cancelled. This is a measure of how far things have gone.

Iran, of course, is the winner in all this. Wednesday's announcement of the security agreement with Iraq demonstrates how far the country has come. This is also reflected in Ahmadinejad's letter to the American people: It is self-confident and unyielding, yet magnanimous in tone, and it is careful to distinguish the American public from the Bush administration, inviting the Democrats to change course and so on. It sounds like a letter written by someone who knows he is winning, and who now wants to build bridges between himself and his strong but losing opponent.

Obviously, the game is far from over. There are still powerful interests in the region that do not want to see an Iranian-dominated Iraq, most obviously Saudi Arabia, which did not respond well to the Iranian-Iraqi security deal. The Saudis can spin up the Sunnis and support them with money, but it is not yet clear whether money will be enough to compensate for their numeric weakness relative to the Shia. In the end, it is not money, but the U.S. Army, that can block Iran's ambitions in Iraq and the region.

Bush has long quibbled over whether a civil war is taking place in Iraq. The president cannot afford to acknowledge the obvious because the political and diplomatic consequences of such an acknowledgement would not be worth the price of his honesty. He has said what he has to say. But the fact is that the situation in Baghdad is out of U.S. control, and the Sunnis and Shia are at some level of war. Iran is the big winner from that war, and it will not help to end it until after Tehran has gotten what it wants. The Iranians might not know yet how much they can have, or even how much they want, but it is clear that, at this moment, they are driving the situation.

Stratfor (Estados Unidos)

 


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