BAGHDAD — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki concluded a three-day visit to Iran after meeting Monday with Ayatollah Ali Khameni, who warned that the continued presence of U.S. troops was “the main obstacle on the way to progress and prosperity in Iraq.”
The session with Khameni, Iran’s top religious and political authority, served to further highlight the delicate position of the Iraqi government — caught between the U.S. and Iran, enemies seeking to pull Iraq out of the other’s sphere of influence.
U.S. officials have long accused Shiite Muslim-dominated Iran of playing a negative role in the affairs of its neighbor to the west, which has had a Shiite-run government since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein. Some members of a Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army, which recently fought U.S. and Iraqi troops in Baghdad and Basra, openly have admitted to receiving Iranian weapons.
Khameni said Iraq’s “most important problem” isn’t the still-active Sunni insurgency or the reining in of Shiite Muslim militias but rather the continued presence of “occupying troops.” Khameni and other Iranian politicians have urged al-Maliki’s government not to sign a status-of-forces agreement, or SOFA, being negotiated with the U.S. The agreement would provide a legal framework for the continued presence of U.S. troops in Iraq after the current U.N. mandate expires at the end of this year.
Iran accuses the U.S. of seeking to formalize its permanent domination of Iraq through the SOFA pact. The U.S. charges that Iran is working to destabilize Iraq by supplying weapons to Shiite militias.
Al-Maliki’s government is caught in the middle.
“Iran is accusing America, and America is accusing Iran,” said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish politician in Iraq. “Nobody would want to be in al-Maliki’s shoes right now.”
The Iraqi and Iranian ministers of defense signed a memorandum of understanding during al-Maliki’s visit to boost defense cooperation.
The seeming incompatibility of Iraq simultaneously signing defense pacts with Iran and the U.S. underscores Baghdad’s difficult position.
Al-Maliki, like many Iraqi Shiite politicians, spent time in exile in Shiite Iran during Hussein’s reign.
