U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates speaks to the U.S. Army 25th Infantry Division troops from Hawaii during a visit to Camp Victory in Baghdad April 7, 2011. Gates arrived on Wednesday in Baghdad where he will urge Iraq to cement political stability ahead of plans to complete a U.S. withdrawal this year. REUTERS/Chip Somodevilla

WASHINGTON (IPS) — President Barack Obama has given his
approval to a Pentagon plan to station U.S. combat troops in Iraq beyond 2011,
provided that Iraqi Premier Nouri al-Maliki officially requests it, according
to U.S. and Iraqi sources.

But both U.S. and Iraqi officials acknowledge that Maliki
may now be reluctant to make the official request. Maliki faces severe
political constraints at home, and his government is being forced by recent
moves by Saudi Arabia to move even closer to Iran.

And it is no longer taken for granted by U.S. or Iraqi
officials that Maliki can survive the rising tide of opposition through the
summer.

As early as September 2010, the White House informed the
Iraqi government that it was willing to consider keeping between 15,000 and
20,000 troops in Iraq, in addition to thousands of unacknowledged Special
Operations Forces. But Obama insisted that it could only happen if Maliki
requested it, according to a senior Iraqi intelligence official.

And the White House, which was worried about losing support
from the Democratic Party’s anti-war base as Congressional mid-term elections
approached, insisted that the acknowledged troops would have to be put at least
ostensibly under a State Department-run security force.

Several days after Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak, the key
U.S. strategic ally in the Middle East for 30 years, was forced by the
pro-democracy movement to resign in early February, Iraqi officials were
informed that Obama was now more convinced than before that he could not afford
to be tagged with having “lost” Iraq, the intelligence official told
IPS.

Proponents of a post-2011 U.S. presence in Iraq within the
Obama administration had taken advantage of the generally accepted view that
the Iraq War was turned around from a dismal failure into a success in 2007-08
by the troop surge and the strategy of Gen. David Petraeus.

The Defense Department officials had indicated to the Iraqis
in February that Obama was now prepared to support the stationing of 17,000
U.S. combat troops beyond 2011, contingent on Maliki’s sending an official
letter of request to Obama, according to the Iraqi intelligence official.

The Pentagon also began making contingency plans for the
stationing of the 3rd Infantry Division in the tense city of Kirkuk, according
to the official.

But since those signs of greater determination by Obama to
leave a semi-permanent military presence in Iraq, the likelihood of Maliki’s
making the official request for the troops has come increasingly into question.

Both U.S. and Iraqi officials now acknowledge that Maliki’s
need for Moqtada al-Sadr’s political support and the degree to which Sadr has
regained influence in the Shi’a south after having lost it in mid-2008
represent serious political constraints on his position regarding a possible continuation
of the U.S. troop presence.

Sadr’s calling on his followers to stay away from a mass
demonstration against Maliki’s government Feb. 25 may have saved Maliki’s
government from collapsing, the Iraqi intelligence official told IPS.

And Sadr continues to oppose a U.S. military presence in
Iraq.  After returning to Iraq in
January, Sadr had issued a fiery message reaffirming that the “first
objective should be to get rid of the occupation.”

“If al-Maliki were to ask for U.S. troops, the Sadrists
would try to unseat him,” said the Iraqi intelligence official, who added
that Maliki’s survival through the summer is no longer taken for granted.

An official U.S. source also suggested that Maliki’s
government could collapse before a decision is made on a request for a
continuing U.S. troop presence.

But the Saudi dispatch of combat troops to Bahrain last
month to repress the pro-democracy movement that represented the Shi’a majority
in that country may have made a move toward the United States difficult, if not
impossible for Maliki.

That aggressive Saudi action against the Shi’a of Bahrain
has made it clearer that Saudi Arabia must be regarded as Iraq’s primary enemy,
according to the Iraqi intelligence official.

But it is only part of a larger problem of the Iraqi
conflict with Saudi Arabia. Iraqi intelligence has indications that the
original al Qaeda in Iraq network is in the process of leaving the country for
Libya, but that another organization now operating under the name of al Qaeda
in Iraq is actually a Saudi-supported Baathist paramilitary group run from
Jordan by a former high-ranking general under Saddam Hussein.

The need to defend against Saudi infiltration of Iraq and be
fully committed on one side of the Sunni-Shi’a divide in the region means that
Maliki has had to move even closer to Iran.

Political unrest in Iraq in the form of popular protests,
mainly over the failure of his government to improve basic services to the
population, has also forced Maliki to reduce the priority his government had
previously put on military cooperation with the U.S.

One indicator of Maliki’s intentions is his apparent
hesitation about proceeding with the purchase of 18 of the latest model U.S.
F-16 fighter planes. Complete with advanced air-to-ground and air-to-air
munitions, the deal was estimated to be worth 4.2 billion dollars.

When the deal was officially announced last September, the
Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the Pentagon’s office for foreign arms
sales, had crowed that it would “ensure a U.S. military presence in Iraq
for years to come.”

In late January, the U.S. command in Iraq was so convinced
that Maliki was about to sign the agreement that it mistakenly put out a press
release announcing that the signing had already taken place.

But after protests began in Baghdad and Karbala in February,
Iraqi government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said the F-16 contract had been
“postponed this year.” 
He explained that the 900 million dollars required as a down payment on
the F- 16 deal would be spent on increasing the total amount spent on food
rations for needy people from three billion to four billion dollars.

Even though the Iraqi government announced Mar. 1 that
higher oil prices would add eight billion dollars to Iraq’s budget this year,
the F-16 fighter deal has nevertheless been downgraded to 12 planes, with less
sophisticated weapons systems. The deal is now estimated to be worth just over
one-fourth of the original, with a down payment that has shrunk to 250 million
dollars.

But it is still far from certain that Maliki will sign the
deal, according to the Iraqi military source, because Maliki has decided on the
building of a multi-billion-dollar national electric power grid.

If the Iraqi premier does not ask for U.S. troops to remain
after the expiration of the November 2008 U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement, it
will be a major blow to the assertion made over the past three years portraying
Maliki as an ally of the United States who wants U.S. help in keeping Iraq out
of the Iranian sphere of influence.

The reality is much less favorable to the rosy view of U.S.
influence in Iraq. Press accounts have revealed that key events in that period
— including the selection of Maliki as prime minister in 2006, the 2007
ceasefires in Basra and Baghdad, and the renewed political alliance between
Maliki and Sadr in 2010 — were all brokered by Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander
of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Close security and political relations between Maliki’s
government and Iran are based not only on a shared past of Shi’a activism but
continuing conflict between Shi’a states and a Saudi-led anti-Shi’a coalition.