Replies to post #110238 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[SoxFan]

Not only that but you have the Kurds selling oil and gasoline to Iran against the US sanctions.

[StephanieVanbryce]

Job well done bush!.. Prime Minister al-Maliki meets with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as with
first vice president Muhammad Rida Rahimi and minister of foreign affairs Manuchehr Muttaqi, along with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.



Posted on October 19, 2010

During his welcome to al-Maliki, Khamenei said, “Iraq is an awake people, and there is no Sunni-Shiite dispute among the children of this people. They live together in various regions of Iraq . . . The security situation in Iraq is better than it was , , , we praise and thank God that the fire of sectarian turmoil has been extinguished . . . and security has been achieved . . . and we are looking forward today to the formation of a government . . . and the speeding up of reconstruction operations, which were idled in the era of dictatorship, which wasted the wealth of Iraq.”

According to PressTV, Khamenei slammed the US for continuing turmoil in Iraq, saying, “Despite relative stability in Iraq, the country is still suffering from insecurity and part of this insecurity is resulted from the pressures that are exerted by some powers whose political interests lie in creating insecurity in Iraq …” He added, “The Iraqi nation is a vigilant nation and there is not a possibility of another domination over the country whatsoever…”

IRNA gives a more extended paraphrase of Khamenei’s remarks:

“The Supreme Leader expressed concern about the delay in establishment of new Iraqi government and said that formation of Iraqi government, restoration of security in Iraq should be expedited as these are the prerequisite to attain sustainable development to help Iraqi people find their desired status among world countries. . . .

The current security status of Iraq is much better than before, said Ayatollah Khamenei adding that under the current stability, the country still suffers from minor insecurities which has roots in the interference of big powers who feel their political interests might be at risk.

Iraq is a very rich country with deep rooted culture and civilization, said Ayatollah Khamenei adding that the Iraqi people with such glorious background do not deserve to experience the current hardship.

The Islamic Republic of Iran sympathizes with the Iraqi nation in the face of pains and sufferings and that their victory makes the Iranian nation very happy, said the Supreme Leader adding that the Iraqi nation are vigilant and never let the aggressors dominate their country.

The Supreme Leader also expressed the hope to witness the US hands to be cut off from Iraq and the country’s problems to be resolved as soon as possible. ‘

The Guardian alleges that Iran began a campaign for al-Maliki in September, after US troop strength fell below 50,000 and the US had announced an end to combat operations. They used Grand Ayatollah Kazem al-Hairi, an Iraqi resident in Qom, to pressure his sometime protege, Muqtada al-Sadr, into throwing his support to al-Maliki. Iran then tried to get Syria and the Lebanese Hizbullah to back al-Maliki, beginning a move toward regional consensus. The Guardian says, “Throughout September Maliki sent his chief of staff to Qom along with a key leader in his Dawa party, Abdul Halim al-Zuhairi. They were, according to the Guardian’s source, joined by a senior figure in Lebanese Hezbollah’s politburo, Mohamed Kawtharani, as well as arch-US foe General Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Al-Quds Brigades…”

Al-Maliki on Monday made visit to the Iranian holy city of Qom for further consultations. He met there with Shiite clerical leader Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Sadr Movement, which has around 40 seats in the parliament elected on March 7. Some seven months later, the parliament is still hung, and no government has been formed. Al-Maliki needs 163 seats out of 325 to have a majority, but has only been able to pick up a little less than 140, including with the recently declared support of al-Sadr.

Al-Maliki is seeking Iranian support for his candidacy because another bloc of some 30 seats could become available to him if Ammar al-Hakim of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq were to swing behind him. ISCI has long been close to Iran but is bucking it on its recent decision to back al-Maliki, and presumably the latter is hoping Iran will apply further pressure and perhaps inducements to al-Hakim to get him to play ball.

Ra’uf Shaybani, the deputy foreign minister of Iran, is quoted by al-Hayat as saying, “In present circumstances, and taking into account the departure of foreign military forces, the choice of al-Maliki, who has long experience in leading the country … appears best for Iraq.” This is the most open endorsement yet by a high Iranian official of al-Maliki.

Al-Maliki from 2008 seems to have gained some control over the army and security forces and has deployed them fairly effectively in cities such as Basra and Baghdad, where he is popular as a result. Both Khamenei and Shaybani appear to be signalling that they are afraid of Iraq falling into chaos as the US military withdraws its final 50,000 troops over the next 15 months. They seem to feel that of all the candidates for prime minister, al-Maliki has the best chance of keeping a lid on renewed sectarian violence.

Iran is also presumably nervous about the possibility that the Americans will find a way to shoehorn into power Iyad Allawi, an ex-Baathist former CIA asset who is anti-Iranian. On CNN on Sunday, Allawi accuse Iran of upsetting the stability of the Middle East. Allawi has the largest single bloc of seats, 91, in the new parliament, but it is highly unlikely that he can put together the required 163 so as to come to power. The Shiites seem to be congealing around al-Maliki, with the exception so far of ISCI, which only has a handful of seats on its own. And the Kurdistan Alliance has signalled that al-Maliki is the most palatable to Irbil.

Iran’s ambassador in Baghdad reject Allawi’s charge of undue interference in domestic Iraqi affairs.

Al-Maliki has visited Jordan and Syria on this round of diplomacy concerning his candidacy, and plans trips to Turkey, Egypt and some Gulf countries, as well.

Al-Maliki has bad relations with Saudi Arabia because his Da’wa Party (Shiite Islamic Call Party) has waged a campaign of protest against the Wahhabi branch of Islam predominating in Saudi Arabia, accusing it of intolerance and bigotry toward Shiites. Saudi Arabia is supporting Allawi, who although he is of Shiite heritage garnered 80% of the Sunni vote last March.

Embedded Links
http://www.juancole.com/2010/10/iran-backs-al-maliki-in-iran-for-iraqi-pm.html

[fuagf]

Sunni Arabs Return to Parliament but Shiite-Kurdish Ascendancy Holds: Ahmadinejad Congratulates his Candidate, al-Maliki

Posted on November 14, 2010 by Juan

Game, set, match update .. inching closer .. 8 links inside .. .. emphasis mine ..

Al-Hayat writing in Arabic reports on Saturday’s successful parliamentary session in Baghdad, which was joined by the Iraqiya Party, for which most Sunni Arabs had voted. The parliament had elected Jalal Talabani of the Kurdistan Alliance as president and has put in Usama al-Nujayfi of Iraqiya as speaker of parliament.

Apparently Iraqiya leader Iyad Allawi had hoped as late as early Thursday that he could find a higher post for his party. He had wanted to be president, and the Obama administration had apparently put enormous pressure on the Kurds to step aside and allow an Allawi presidency. Allawi, a secular ex-Baathist from a Shiite background, had emerged as leader of what was largely a Sunni bloc in parliament, with 91 seats out of 325. If Allawi could not get the presidency, he plumped for an alternating prime ministership, with himself first, for 8 months, after which incumbent al-Maliki could return to the post.

The USG Open Source Center translated the following passage, which sheds light on this issue:

“Al-Bayyinah al-Jadidah on 11 November publishes on page 2 a 200-word report citing Iraqi National Congress Chairman Ahmad Chalabi as saying that Kurdish President Mas’ud Barzani and President Jalal Talabani came under great US pressures recently and that Talabani informed President Barak Obama that they will not allow the Trojan horse (Ba’th Party) to infiltrate the political process.”

In other words, the Kurds, who were the swing vote, viewed Allawi and his Iraqiya as far too close to the Arab nationalist emphases of the old Baath Party, and so they joined with the Shiites to deny Allawi either the presidency or an alternating prime ministership.

The election of Talabani as president on Thursday angered most of the Sunni Arab members of parliament, insofar as it reduced them to holding the office of speaker, which they saw as a lesser position incommensurate with their having won the largest bloc of seats last March. Some Sunni Arab tribal leaders were saying that they would henceforth forbid their tribesmen to vote, since the exercise had only led to their loss of face.

In contrast, most other MPs thought they were doing Iraqiya a big favor in overlooking Nujayfi’s strident Arab nationalism, his fights with the Kurds, and his abrasive style. His speech to parliament lambasted Iraq for its poor security and corruption, and neglected to condemn terrorism, which angered the other MPs. (Many Shiites and Kurds suspect Sunni Arab nationalists and fundamentalists in parliament of having shadowy ties to Sunni Arab guerrilla groups.) Nujayfi is from a prominent and wealthy Mosul family and his brother is governor of Ninevah Province, a Sunni Arab stronghold in the north.

Then, the Iraqiya deputies had understood that on their agreement to join the new government, parliament would immediately reinstate three Iraqiya members who had been excluded by the Shiite-dominated Justice and Accountability Commission (formerly the De-Baathification Commission) for their alleged closeness to the now-banned Baath Party, which had ruled Iraq 1968-2003. When the other MPs said that they weren’t ready to vote for such a reversal immediately, many of the Sunni Iraqiya representatives staged a walkout, led by Iyad Allawi himself. Although the spin doctors in the US government and the Iraqi government tried to suggest that the walkout was not serious, some MPs told al-Sharq al-Awsat on background that it was deadly serious and could have led to a collapse of the proposed national unity government. Allawi himself went on CNN and angrily charged that the ‘power-sharing’ agreements reached the previous week were a joke. He threatened to sit in the opposition benches rather than to join the new government.

The NYT says that this walkout put al-Nujayfi in a bind. If he joined it, he abandoned his leadership of parliament, to which he had committed himself. If he did not, he risked a split in his own party. Al-Nujayfi handled this crisis by absenting himself briefly to consult with those who had walked out. But then he returned to chair the remainder of the session, during which parliament nominated al-Maliki for a second term (apparently a suggestion to the new president, who actually is the one who asks a candidate to form a government)

And on Friday Nujayfi managed to convince the furious Iraqiya leaders to return for the Saturday session. Or at least most of them. (And it is possible that he is using his new office to usurp leadership of Iraqiya from a sulking Allawi, who got none of the high posts he had imagined for himself and clearly doesn’t think the proposed national security council that he is supposed to head will be allowed to amount to anything by the Shiites and Kurds). Nujayfi worked out an agreement with the other parties that they would at least begin taking up the issue of the excluded Iraqiya MPs. There are other issues that parliament will take up, to nail down the power-sharing agreement hammered out last week. Al-Hayat says that Nujayfi opened parliament on Saturday with an address that forthrightly condemned terrorism, no matter who committed it.

According to al-Hayat, and contrary to what many Western news services are reporting, President Talabani has not yet formally asked incumbent Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to form a government, though he has indicated that he will do so. The request will come in the form of a signed letter. Talabani has 15 days to make the request, and then al-Maliki would have a month to put together a cabinet and ensure he has a majority in parliament. By letting al-Maliki work on the deals for a while before the formal request is made, al-Hayat says, Talabani is in effect extending al-Maliki’s deadline. It is a little worrisome that Talabani should think that al-Maliki will need an extra week. But presumably he would need it not for a majority (the Shiites and Kurds in parliament give him that) but rather needs the time to ensure the formation of a government of national unity that includes the Iraqiya and thus the Sunnis. Given that Allawi is in a snit and the walk-out on Thursday, Iraqiya may now play hard ball about what cabinet posts it gets.

Al-Maliki, according to WaPo, also accepted an American demand that the Sadr Movement, with 40 seats, be given no security-related cabinet posts, and it is not clear to me that the Sadrists, who are key to al-Maliki’s post-election coalition, will be willing to accept an American dictat of that sort. (The Sadrists did get a post of deputy speaker of parliament).

As far as I can see, Washington lost big. Talabani is relatively close to Iran, and he is president, not Allawi, as Obama had apparently wanted. The American dream of stripping al-Maliki of his control of the security forces on suspicion of being too close to Iran will be difficult to achieve, as Allawi recognized with his cynical comments on the power-sharing deal being dead. The Iraqiya is just very unlikely to be able effectively to block Iranian interests in Baghdad or to place effective constraints on al-Maliki. Talabani clearly still sees the Iraqiya as Baathism lite, and he will use his powers as president and the powerful Kurdistan Alliance to promote al-Maliki as long as the latter is seen as the lesser of two evils. That Nujayfi is now the face of the Iraqiya in parliament doesn’t actually bode well for its relations with the Kurdistan Alliance. (The Kurds would like to annex Kirkuk Province and parts of Ninevah Province, perhaps even the major city of Mosul, to their Kurdistan Regional Government, and Nujayfi asserts Arab rights over that territory).

How badly the Americans have lost is clearly in this Iranian news report:

‘Ahmadinejad in a phone call with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki congratulated him on formation of new Iraqi government. “Formation of new government is a great victory for Iraqi government, parliament, nation and political groups,” Ahmadinejad said on Saturday night. “The Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to deepen ties with the neighboring and friendly country of Iraq,” Ahmadinejad continued. Al-Maliki on his part appreciated the Islamic Republic of Iran’s assistance to Iraqi nation and government and said, “expansion of ties with Iran is demanded by Iraq as well.” “Important steps will be taken for development and welfare of Iraqi people through introducing cabinet members in near future,” al-Maliki added.‘

Ahmadinejad, in other words, is saying ‘ka-ching!’ Iranian support was key to al-Maliki’s having gradually put together so many seats in parliament in post-election coalitions to make himself the clear front-runner. Their guy won. America’s guy, Allawi, got only a little more than bupkes. Which explains Allawi’s outburst on CNN.

http://www.juancole.com/2010/11/sunni-arabs-return-to-parliament-but-shiite-kurdish-ascendancy-holds-ahmadinejad-congratulates-his-candidate-al-maliki.html

Inching closer to the start of the 2nd match. Iran will serve first.

[fuagf]

Nouri Maliki starts work on forming Iraq government
25 November 2010 Last updated at 09:13 GMT


It is hoped the new administration will bridge
the many political divisions in Iraq

Struggle for Iraq

* Guide to political groups in Iraq
* Iraqi hopes and fears for government
* Press mixed on Iraq coalition
* Lives of fear for Iraqi Christians

The Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has formally asked Nouri Maliki to form a new government.

The move gives the caretaker prime minister 30 days in which to negotiate yet more potential hurdles as he hands out ministerial portfolios to Iraq's various political factions.

Parliamentary elections in March returned an inconclusive result.

The country has been without a new government for more than eight months - a record delay - following elections.

This is one more step along the tortuous road to a new government, says the BBC's Gabriel Gatehouse in Baghdad.

After more than eight months of limbo, squabbling and back-room negotiations, a deal was finally struck two weeks ago, which would allow Mr Maliki to remain in his post.

He is now tasked with putting together a government in 30 days.

Allawi fear

But the road ahead is littered with potential pitfalls, our correspondent says - dividing up ministries among Iraq's notoriously fractious parties and factions will not be easy.

The new government is expected to include all the major factions, including the Kurds and Shia political parties aligned with Iran.

It should also include Iyad Allawi's Sunni-backed al-Iraqiyya coalition bloc, which won more seats than Mr Maliki's largely Shia National Alliance, but lost out in the negotiations.

But there are fears he could withdraw from the process if he feels he is being sidelined.

Such a move would be a setback for reconciliation, just one year before the US is scheduled to withdraw the last of its troops from Iraq, our correspondent says.

More on This Story .. mucho más, some old .. some fresh ..