I Won’t Back Down»

Cernig on the Sadr City ceasefire:

News reports and statements from Iraqi government members say that once again Iran played a big role in getting Maliki to back off from wiping out his main political rival, through pressure on Sadr as well as on the ISCI and Dawa parties. The deal thus consolidates Iran as the main Big Brother neighbour for Iraq’s Shiite majority and makes it’s influence there well-nigh unshakeable. Witness Maliki’s back-pedalling on U.S. claims of Iranian weaponry.

As to Sadr, winning an armed conflict with the U.S. and the Iraqi central government was never an option for him. He’s succeeded in splitting the Iraqi Army off from U.S. aid against his movement - thus neutralising the threat to his militia, as Crittenden notes, because the Iraqi Army on its own cannot defeat the Mahdi Army despite U.S. spin to the contrary. Maliki has backed off from earlier demands that the Mahi Army be dissolved and there will, it seems, be a four day ceasefire before the Iraqi Army begins to search the teeming slum for heavy weapons. Best of luck to them with that, after giving the militias so much time to hide everything.

But far more important for him is that he now keeps his political hopes alive, with elections where his movement can expect to make considerable inroads against his ISCI rivals looming. That was always the prize, and he has taken it.