Examiner columnist Diana West notes on her blog multiple overseas press reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whose State of Law Party placed second in the recent national elections, dispatched aides to seek supporters for a new governing coalition.
Nothing curious about the second place party looking for allies with which to coalesce in a new governing coalition. Happens all the time in parliamentary democracies.
What makes this particular outreach notable, however, is that al-Maliki sent his aides to Iran in seach of new coalition partners. Iran, of course, is the world’s leading Shiite Muslim nation, and Shiites also form a majority of Iraqi citizens, so Tehran is bound to have influence in Baghdad, regardless of the wishes of the U.S.
But there is another angle involved here, according to West:
“You’ve heard of the Sino-Soviet split? What if Iraq becomes the epicenter of the Saudi-Iranian split? In some ways it already is. Indeed, if Maliki is still Iran’s boy, Allawi, as mentioned below, is heavily funded by Saudi Arabia. Such a split, of course, would be an awful drag on both Iran and Saudi Arabia — and that would be just too darn bad, wouldn’t it?”
Hmmm. Go here for Diana’s full post, including links to various overseas papers with further details.
