While Sadr seems far from adopting Soleimani’s vision and new demands, the other parties, including the State of Law coalition and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, have not exactly given Iran a “blank check” either, according to Al-Monitor's sources.
The same confirmed as well that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki also believes that Iraq must keep an adequate distance from the Iranian position on Syria. He feels that close engagement in regional confrontations will not help Iraqis, who are sharply divided along sectarian lines and are already paying the price of regional conflict on their own territory.
This position may be one of the reasons behind Soleimani’s resentment toward the Iraqi government, which has been subjected to continuous pressure from Tehran to support the Bashar al-Assad regime.
It is not easy for an Iraqi party, even inside Iraq, to dismiss Soleimani. This is particularly difficult now that the militias’ are more organized and capable of engaging in conflicts across the border. In the meantime, the Iraqi Shiite parties, which have been engaged in a political struggle over who will rule the country, will maneuver as best they can. Their aim is to reduce Iranian pressure until the Syrian issue is resolved or until the nature of the political conflict regarding the government in Iraq is decided in the 2014 elections.
Mushreq Abbas is a contributing writer for Al-Monitor’s Iraq Pulse. He has been managing editor of Al-Hayat’s Iraq bureau since 2005 and has written studies and articles on Iraqi crises for domestic and international publication.
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