Update 14 February 11:05 CET: Today’s session of parliament, devoted to the law on presidential deputies and continued discussion of the budget, has been postponed until Wednesday due to a lack of quorum. Only some 130 deputies showed up.

The second government of Nuri al-Maliki that was confirmed by the Iraqi parliament on 21 December 2010 was in many respects an incomplete one. No security ministers had been nominated, and these portfolios, along with almost a dozen other ministries for which the parties in government had failed to nominate candidates, were left in the hands of caretaker ministers who were already heading other jobs. Notably, these arrangements included Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki himself with respect to his continued control of the security ministries. In today’s session in the Iraqi parliament, some further steps were finally taken after a long period of inaction, although the government-formation process remains far from complete… Full story here.

Thankfully, the numerous violations of both the relevant “replacement law” and the constitution in the process of substituting deputies who became ministers in the second Maliki government have prompted reactions in Iraqi political circles. So far, at least five cases have reportedly been submitted to the federal supreme court.

It seems fairly easy to predict the outcome of these cases as long as one can assume that the judiciary will manage to resist attempts at political pressure. Three of the five cases should lead to cancellation of the replacement candidates because both the law on replacement of deputies and the constitution are clearly violated since the seats have been given to candidates from different governorates than the deputies who left to become ministers. These are Daghir al-Musawi from Basra (replaced Hasan al-Sari from Maysan), Jawad Bulani from Baghdad (replaced Ali al-Sajri from Salahaddin) and Muhammad al-Hindawi (replaced Hassan al-Shammari who was a candidate in Dhi Qar). Musawi comes from the all-Shiite Iraqi National Alliance and is the longstanding leader of the controversial Sayyid al-Shuhada movement with particularly close ties to Iran; although he replaces someone who is from “Hizbollah in Iraq” with similarly close connections to Iran, the two formed a unified political entity in the March 2010 elections and are technically part of ISCI. Bulani is of course from Unity of Iraq but from a different sub-entity (the Constitutional Party) than Sajri, whereas both Hindawi and Shammari are from Fadila, meaning the intra-list dynamics will be unaffected either way in that case. But these replacements are likely to be invalidated by the court since the governorate balance gets affected and since the only exceptions to the principle of upholding the governorate quotas in the “replacement law” relate to 1.) cases where all the candidates of a list already have a seat in parliament; and 2.) cases where one of the seven compensation seats are being replaced. Additionally, this same logic should relate to two more cases not mentioned as having reached the federal supreme court yet, those of Jawad Ghanim Ali (a Sadrist who apparently was a candidate in Dahuk) and Salim al-Jibburi (who has taken a Salahaddin seat even though he was a Diyala candidate).

Two other reported cases are likely to be thrown out. There have been challenges to the seats given to Abdallah Khalaf Muhammad (Iraqiyya in Kirkuk) and Fuad Kazim al-Dawraki (State of Law in Karbala) from others within these alliances that got a higher number of personal votes. However, the number of personal votes has moral rather than legal significance in this case. The Iraqi elections commission previously attempted to introduce rules for computing the compensatory seats that would take into account personal votes and thereby make the system more in harmony with the open-list logic adopted in the revised elections law in 2009. However, on this they were overruled by the party leaderships and similarly no revised version of the “replacement law” better attuned to the open-list logic has been adopted. Accordingly, as of today, the party leaderships can decide the replacements themselves as long as they stick to the same governorate, as has been done in these two cases.

Meanwhile, these important questions have no chance of breaking through the Western mainstream media’s preferred dichotomy of Muqtada=bad; everything else=the charming wonders of Iraq’s interesting democracy. Today, enlisting the assistance of a “special correspondent”, the prestigious Washington Post wants us to believe that “Parliament met on 10 of the past 11 days to debate a national budget, nominees to head security ministries and other weighty topics”! The truth of the matter is that parliament hasn’t met since 27 December and won’t meet again until Sunday (9 January), but who are we to disturb the exciting narrative of the epic battle between Muqtada al-Sadr and the energetic US-sponsored democrats of the new Iraq?

The announcement of the partial Maliki II government on 21 December has transformed Iraqi politics into something of a chaotic construction site. As of today, no one knows who will be in government or how many ministers will eventually be named.

Additionally, due to the stream of deputies hastily leaving parliament in search of greener pastures in the executive branch of government, no one any longer has a complete list of deputies. Based on lists of new ministers and old deputies it is clear that at least 20 of the 325 deputies in Iraqi parliament will need replacement, probably with more to come as ministries held as deputyships by existing ministers will get distributed. As of today, the Kurds have yet to name any replacements (and have also yet to name several of their ministers), and Iraqiyya has apparently named only around half of their 7 replacements. Some glaring errors in the way the names of new deputies have been rendered in official statements from the Iraqi parliament also make analysis of the information released so far somewhat problematic.

Still, around a dozen of the replacements can be identified with reasonable certainty, as indicated in the table below.

The legal framework governing these replacements is a law on replacement of parliamentary deputies from 2006. It has not been adjusted to the realities of an open-list system, and basically leaves it to the relevant party leaderships to find a replacement candidate from the non-winning candidates – in the case of governorate seats (i.e. the 310 seats allocated to governorates) it should be someone from the same governorate; if it relates to one of the seven compensation seats, it does not matter where the replacement comes from. The women quota can be ignored, but the law makes a mess of the terminology when it comes to the question of bloc versus registered entity as the relevant framework for making the replacement: It mixes up “bloc” (kutla), “list” (qa’ima) and “entity” (kiyan) within the same paragraph, thus making it unclear what basic unit shall be used as point of departure for reckoning the potential candidates for replacement.

That in turn highlights the numerous problems and indeed constitutional infractions that have been committed through the replacement so far. Of the players involved, State of Law seems to be following the rules reasonably well, with replacement candidates apparently being brought in from the relevant governorates from which ministers were recruited. Additionally, Jasim Muhammad Jaafar had been given a compensation seat so he can be replaced by a candidate from anywhere in the country. Fewer replacement candidates are known for Iraqiyya but legally they seem fine so far, and one wonders whether perhaps the new deputy reported as Abbad Khalaf Muhammad in the parliamentary records might in fact refer to Abdallah Khalaf Muhammad of Iraqiyya from Kirkuk. On the other hand, there are problems with the way in which both the Sadrists and Fadila apparently have brought in people from other governorates (Karbala and Dahuk) to replace some of their Baghdad candidates. If true, that would be unconstitutional since the principle of 1 deputy per 100,000 Iraqis would be in jeopardy. In particular, one wonders about bringing in Jawad Ali Ghanim  with no more than 3 personal votes in Dahuk!

The same problems apply to some of the replacements for Unity of Iraq and Tawafuq which have more recently joined to form a single parliamentary bloc. Already there have been protests in Salahaddin about the way in which Jawad al-Bulani, the interior minister and a Baghdad candidate for the Iraqi Constitutional Party within Unity of Iraq, was given a replacement seat for Ali al-Sajri of the “People’s Current” within Unity of Iraq in Salahaddin governorate. The same kind of reactions have materialised regarding Salim al-Jibburi, a Diyala candidate, although it is noteworthy that this replacement is not due to anyone becoming a minister but rather relates to the retirement of Usama al-Tikriti of the Iraqi Islamic Party in Salahaddin. The first of these cases, i.e. that of Bulani, not only touches on the governorate balance but also on the perpetual question of the coherence of the parliamentary blocs: Wasat had just been formed from Unity of Iraq and Tawafuq, but here the constituent parts of Unity of Iraq are quarrelling among themselves!

Iraqiyya scored a significant victory when it secured the speakership of parliament on 11 November. The speakership offers a position of real importance and, not least, the possibility to speak, thereby giving Iraqiyya the opportunity to frame the Iraqi debate and position itself on the political stage in a way that no amount of “power-sharing” in the sense of owning ministries or fanciful “presidencies”, real or imagined, can do. So far every indication is that Usama al-Nujayfi will not shy away from using the speakership to speak with an independent voice in a way that can offer a corrective to the executive branch of government.

At the same time, as happened previously, developments in parliament since it began meeting regularly after Eid al-Adha suggest that Iraqiyya is continuing to give away leverage in matters relating to parliamentary procedure. Back in June, it surrendered  the temporary speakership of the inaugural session to the Kurdistan Alliance when Hasan al-Alawi declined the offer of chairing the first meeting as the oldest member of the assembly. On 11 November, after Nujayfi had received the speakership of the parliament, he himself proceeded to stage an election of the new president of the republic (Jalal Talabani) that was followed by a nomination of Nuri al-Maliki even though there was no compelling reason for him to do so since those items were not on the agenda of the session. As a result, Iraqiyya lost leverage and their current calls for legislation to be passed for the national council for political strategies prior to a vote of confidence on a new government is up against resistance from opponents who prefer to frame the budget for 2011 as a more pressing issue. And who of course know that contrary to the situation in the first minutes after Nujayfi was charged with the speakership, the votes of Iraqiyya are not strictly speaking needed anymore.

Today saw yet another development that can be classified as belonging to this category of challenges to the prospect of Iraqiyya dominating the national assembly. In a meeting chaired not by Nujayfi but by his deputy speaker, Qusay al-Suhayl (though apparently with Nujayfi’s consent), a meeting of political leaders agreed on the composition of a new committee that will revisit the existing bylaws of the Iraqi parliament passed in 2006. The committee will be chaired by Suhayl, who is a Sadrist.

The bylaws of parliament are interesting because the rules that were adopted in 2006 to some extent imposed a greater degree of power-sharing on the speakership “presidency” than called for by the constitution. True, the constitution includes the toxic number “3” in its stipulation for a speaker with two deputies, thus conjuring up the image of ethno-sectarian quotas to be held by Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. However, those three are not to be elected in a single list (like the transitional presidency council in the 2005–2010 period), and the constitution also does not impose any consensus requirement for the collective speakership. This is where the bylaws for 2006 go further in defining a considerable degree of collective decision-making for the speakership in terms of setting the agenda, although the speaker is still to some extent able to act independently, for example by calling a meeting of parliament without reference to the two others (however the two others operating together can do the same thing).

It is interesting that the idea that the new parliament had to adopt a new set of bylaws has gained traction. This is not something that is dictated by the constitution itself. Nonetheless, an attempt will now be made at revisiting the rules of the game, which could potentially influence even the new-won speakership of parliament held by Iraqiyya. In that respect, the composition of the new committee announced today is interesting in itself: It consists reportedly of no less than 7 members of the National Alliance (the coalition of Maliki, Chalabi, Jaafari and the Sadrists), 4 from Iraqiyya, 3 from the Kurdistan Alliance, 1 from the Tawafuq/Unity of Iraq bloc, 1 from Gorran plus minority representatives of the Yazidis and the Chistians.

This is essentially a non-story, but since it will be exploited by ignorant world leaders rushing to congratulate the Iraqis on their new wonderful “power-sharing arrangements”, a few words are in order.

Basically, nothing significant happened at today’s session of the Iraqi parliament. Yes, there was a majority vote expressing “support” for the “Barzani initiative” and the agreements that led to the nomination of Maliki for a second term. But then again, who doesn’t “support the Barzani initiative”? The obvious problem here is that declarations of support are not what matter here. Laws are what matter. That is the modus operandi of the parliament, and if the intention is to succeed with the “power-sharing” strategy, then the Iraqiyya coalition needs to make sure that the relevant legislation for their projected wing of the Iraqi government – the national council for strategic policies  – comes into existence sooner rather than later (some refer to a council for “high policies” instead, just to indicate how much this is just fiction right now).

The problems in this regard are pretty obvious. Maliki ally Hassan al-Sunayd was actually right when he said that this kind of endorsement of political agreements made outside parliament is not the kind of matter parliament would normally deal with. Of course, had there been agreement, there would have been a law! But there is no agreement. Even Humam Hammudi of ISCI, which has been flirting with Iraqiyya for the past year or so, indicated that the new national council would come into existence without taking power from any existing institution. That sounds  rather more like a think tank than the “power-sharing deal” the media write about. Additionally, there was bad news outside the assembly for Iraqiyya, where wild rumours concerning the status of the agreement signed by Barzani, Allawi and Maliki were floating around for some time, and at least some Kurds and State of Law members identified a link between Iraqiyya’s failure to support Jalal Talabani for president and the fate of the projected strategic council earmarked for Iraqiyya in the original deal. On top of that, there was also strong criticism from these corners against the acceptance speech by Usama al-Nujayfi, the new speaker – which in fact had featured numerous valid criticisms of the first Maliki government and the constitution adopted in 2005.

Some reports suggest that one implication of today’s vote is that the de-Bathification of three Iraqiyya leaders, Salih al-Mutlak, Zafir al-Ani and Rasim al-Awwadi, will definitely be reversed. In actual fact, if this came about as a result of parliamentary action, it would make matters worse! Unless one believes in some kind of parliamentary absolutism it simply is not the job of the Iraqi parliament to interfere on an ad hoc basis with the judiciary. Even though it was framed as a request for goodwill and involved “testing the waters”, it was clumsy and parochial of Iraqiyya to go ahead with the narrow request for three persons to be cleared in an extra-judicial way. The bigger problem is of course the whole de-Baathification process. It is true that Mutlak and Ani were clearly de-Baathified for no good reason, but the appropriate response would be to attack the system as a whole and work to change it. And again, one gets the impression that Iraqiyya does not get its priorities right. It had its moment of leverage for some 10 minutes on Thursday, after Nujayfi had been elected speaker and in theory could have filibustered the whole process of nominating Maliki. But then came the walkout and Maliki was nominated; now Iraqiyya will have to work through legislation if it wishes to achieve real guarantees of power-sharing.

The rest of today’s parliamentary proceedings did not bode well, with several raving speeches far away from the subject matters that were on the agenda. Turkmen deputies broke away from their ideological blocs to express demands for Turkmen positions in government. The Kurds in the assembly seemed mostly preoccupied with expressing panegyrics for their great leader, Masud Barzani and his wonderful “initiative”; Mahmud Uthman also wanted to talk about the Christians. As she always does, Safiya al-Suhayl managed to identify a lack of focus on women in the political agreement. One might wonder if it was all a deliberate plot to sabotage the proceedings, but it seemed to represent the same genuine basic incompetence that characterised the previous assembly.

Some in Iraqiyya are apparently trying to spin today’s fudge as a great success. That may give them peace of mind as Iraq closes down for Eid al-Adha next week. But in the long term it will be counter-productive and create disappointment; only firm legislative action once parliament reconvenes on 21 November can make a real change.

In a repeat of the procedure used in April 2006, the Iraqi parliament today met and elected not only its speaker (Usama al-Nujayfi of Iraqiyya) but also the president (Jalal Tabalani of the Kurdish alliance). Talabani went on to nominate Nuri al-Maliki as premier candidate of “the biggest bloc in parliament” – the National Alliance, consisting of Maliki’s own State of Law alliance (89 deputies) plus its newfound partners from the disintegrated Iraqi National Alliance including the Sadrists (40 deputies), Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Ahmad Chalabi. It is noteworthy that constitutionally speaking, parliament could have delayed the president election until one month after the speaker had been elected and then the president in theory would have had 15 days to nominate the premier candidate. For some ten minutes of the session, this appeared to be a real possibility as Iraqiyya deputies objected to persevering with the election before parliament had discussed the political deal by bloc leaders that brought about today’s meeting, including the question of the de-Baathification status of some of its leaders. They also correctly pointed out that the original invitation to the session did not have the presidency question on the agenda, only the speakership, and there were outright lies about the constitution from some Shiite Islamist leaders, with both Humam Hammudi and Hassan al-Shammari erroneously claiming the election of the president in the same meeting was stipulated in the constitution. However, instead of using his newfound authority to throw the session into disarray, Nujayfi continued to chair the session for a while even as many of his fellow Iraqiyya deputies stormed out (some reports say in the range of 50 to 60). Eventually Nujayfi himself temporarily withdrew, allowing his newly elected deputies, Qusay al-Suhayl (a Sadrist from Basra) and Arif Tayfur (of the Kurdish alliance and a deputy speaker also in the previous parliament) to go along with orchestrating vote on the president. Nujayfi returned to chair the final part of the session, and embraced Talabani as he entered the stage to make his acceptance speech.

Many will try to claim credit for the apparent “breakthrough” after more than 8 months of stalemate.  For example, ISCI leader Ammar al-Hakim has suggested that the recent flurry of talks reflected his own desire for a “roundtable”. The president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Masud Barzani, has tried to acquire ownership of the process by referring to it as his own initiative and demanding that the last round of meetings be held partly in Arbil, the Kurdish capital, and partly in Barzani’s private house in Baghdad. The United States will doubtless construe developments as a triumph for its own behind-the-scenes diplomacy!

The really significant developments took place on 1 October, when the Sadrists and State of Law with Iranian support agreed to nominate Nuri al-Maliki as premier candidate, and on 24 October, when the federal supreme court went ahead with a decision to bring an end to the open session of the parliament. Whereas that decision was the least the Iraqi voter could have asked for, its timing seemed pegged to Maliki’s calendar and the loud protests from Iraqiyya and others signified suspicion about political pressure on the courts once more. The 24 October decision, in turn, put pressure on the Kurds to make up their mind, and the “Barzani initiative” ended up as an attempt to maximise Kurdish gains within the parameters of a future Maliki government. For the past weeks, Maliki’s nomination as such has not appeared to be under realistic threat, and even if all the big winning lists are nominally committed to taking part in the next government, it is Maliki that is the big winner so far.

In analyzing the deal that was made, it may be useful to recap what the main players actually managed to achieve. Iraqiyya has moved the furthest away from its original position of demanding the premiership and is making a big gamble. Indeed, it is unclear whether it will return to the political process at all. True, it has ostensibly secured the powerful speakership, which is a more valuable asset than Iraqiyya (and, for that matter, the United States) seem to appreciate. But other than that, it has based its participation on the presidency of an institution that is not even in the constitution, and whose powers are ill-defined today: the so-called national council for strategic policies. That job will supposedly go to Ayad Allawi, and parliament is supposed to adopt the relevant legislation later on. But the position does not enjoy any constitutional protection, and until the council is up and running with truly effective powers, it could in a worst-case scenario end up as the fraud of the century , with Allawi as a minister without a real portfolio (symptomatically, unlike Nujayfi, Maliki and Talabani, Allawi was just an ordinary MP after today’s session).

Reportedly, Iraqiyya will also be shut out from all the security ministries, which makes it even more important to them that what is currently merely a fantasy institution will actually come into existence in the real world. Its voters may certainly want to reflect on how much better they would have come out in a bilateral deal with Maliki, and Iraqiyya leaders are already facing threats from the more militant elements of its electorate. Still, Iraqiyya has not formally withdrawn from the process. Until it does so, the newly formed “centrist” alliance of Tawafuq and Unity of Iraq (10 seats) will have a little less leverage as an alternative bloc to represent supposed “Sunni interests” and is looking a little stupid with the leak in the Iraqi media recently of its extravagant and explicitly sectarian demands for taking part in the next government. It is noteworthy in this context that Nujayfi, an Iraqi nationalist with a Sunni Arab background from Mosul who has faced frequent accusations about Baathist sympathies, eventually did return to the session to fulfil his duties as newly elected speaker and install a Kurdish president of Iraq. Nujayfi had managed to obtain 227 votes in the assembly for the speakership, in other words more than Talabani’s 195 for the presidency. At the same time did not shy away from talking frankly about problems in the previous government and the need for constitutional reform during his acceptance speech.

The media will make a big point out of the fact that the Kurds got the presidency, but many will fail to notice that, firstly, in the moment Jalal Talabani was elected he lost the veto power he had as a member of the transitional presidency council (which expired in that second), and, secondly, that he also lost every almost every other power when he some ten minutes later designated Nuri al-Maliki as the premier nominee. Absent a failure on Maliki’s part to put together a new government (in which case Talabani can designate whomever he pleases as a second candidate), Talabani henceforth will enjoy symbolic and ceremonial power only. The other big problem for the Kurds is the fact that their long list of demands for taking part in the next government refers to radical legislative action (including on an oil and gas law and a referendum on Kirkuk) that many parliamentarians continue to find unrealistic, so they may easily end up getting disappointed for a second time despite the promises from Maliki.

The big winner is of course Maliki, but it may be useful to see what the rest of the Shiite Islamist camp got from the deal. Relatively little attention has been accorded to the fact that the Sadrists look set to take over a number of governor positions (Maysan and Babel or Diwaniyya) in exchange for their participation. So much for decentralisation in Iraq! Inhabitants of the south are already expressing despair… In other news on this front, there are reports that Hadi al-Amiri is seeking to reconnect with the all-Shiite National Alliance to bring the Badr organization back into the fold, but right now the other INA defectors who rebelled against Maliki, especially ISCI, are looking a little lonely even though they say they intend to participate (Adil Abd al-Mahdi was prominent at today’s meeting).

As for the regional and international players involved in this, the outcome is a mixed one. In one way, the United States managed to secure its goal of having all the players “inside the tent”, if only just. Its mission civilatrice of teaching the rest of the world how to peacefully kick the can further down the road has apparently succeeded! But there are some major caveats too. Recently, the Obama administration spent an awful lot of energy trying to convince the Kurds to give up the presidency to Iraqiyya. This in itself signalled diplomatic incompetence since the presidency is more or less worthless in its current shape and cannot be upgraded to something more powerful except through constitutional change with a special majority in parliament and a subsequent popular referendum. Additionally, the failure of Washington to sway the Kurds, even after direct phone calls from President Barack Obama, did not play well in the region in terms of prestige. If the US president was unable to get what he wanted, he should have avoided such a humiliating sequence of events. Still, the most important problem lies in the fact that the United States has staked its policy on some kind of informal premiership for Ayad Allawi, with Tony Blinken even going as far as trying to portray today’s deal as an alliance of the Kurds and Iraqiyya against Maliki! That narrative, repeated in a series of hapless media reports that talk about “power-sharing between Allawi and Maliki” and even an Allawi–Maliki “coalition” (BBC) rather distorts the fact on the ground as of today, where Maliki remains premier and commander in chief of the armed forces with his constitutional prerogatives in good order and the support of the Sadrists, the Kurds and Iran. With the expiry of the presidency council today, no one has a veto power on laws passed by the legislature with even the smallest of majorities, and for the time being the new political council for strategic policies remains a projected annexe to the rest of the sprawling political architecture of Iraq – it remains to see whether the powers that be (and the neighbours!) will accept it. It is not totally unlikely that Maliki will try again what he did back in 2008, i.e. once more marginalizing the Kurds, the Sadrists and even Iran and try to be an Iraqi nationalist, but this kind of development will be despite the policies of the Obama administration, rather than a consequence of them.

Finally, as cannot be stressed enough, the government has not yet been formed. Beyond the major structural problem already referred to of actually empowering Iraqiyya in the next government, numerous smaller shoals lie ahead as well. One potential flashpoint is the oil ministry, where the Kurds and Maliki’s people, like Hussein al-Shahristani and Abd al-Hadi al-Hassani, have clashed in the past. It is also a little unclear whether the new president is cognizant of the fact that he has no power anymore. The only thing that seems certain is that once nominated, Maliki will probably not let go of this opportunity. In 2006, forming the complete government took a little less than two months from the prime ministerial nomination in April (the constitution says it should take one month); it is however not unrealistic that some time in the foreseeable future, and certainly in early 2011, Maliki should be able to come up with a list of ministers that will secure the 163 votes he needs in parliament.

The much-touted Arbil summit that took place earlier today as part of the “Barzani intiative” turned out to be a relatively brief event. Political leaders arrived from Baghdad in the morning, held a brief televised meeting dominated by boilerplate speeches on national unity and respect for the constitution, and decided to resume talking again tomorrow afternoon in Baghdad.

Beyond the nice talk about a “partnership government” there are two competing tendencies in motion here. On the one hand, Nuri al-Maliki seems focused on Thursday’s meeting in parliament at which he hopes to secure his own nomination as prime minister for a second term. In his view, all that is needed is agreement on the three major posts of prime minister, president and speaker of parliament. Based on his latest political moves, one would assume that he is aiming for himself as prime minister, Jalal Talabani for president and maybe someone from the new “Centrist” coalition of Tawafuq and Unity of Iraq as speaker, unless someone from Iraqiyya should signal their interest. This kind of scheme is sometimes labelled as a “political-majority” project, but that is misleading since it is based on an ethno-sectarian alliance full of ideological contradictions (on issues like state structure, federalism etc.). These issues would have been more pronounced had it not been for the invisible hand of Iran and its role in holding the alliance together.

On the other hand, Iraqiyya, apparently with increasing American support, is aiming for a power-sharing deal in which Ayad Allawi would obtain the presidency with enhanced powers. The main problem here is the constitution, which demands a special majority decision in parliament for this kind of constitutional change, to be followed by a popular referendum. Even if the other parties agreed on giving a beefed-up presidency to Iraqiyya, no one would know for sure whether the powers of the presidency would actually change until after a referendum some time in 2011.

The interesting aspect in all of this is the position of the Kurds. In theory, they could have picked a winner in the discussion; instead they seem to go on talking. Today they contributed an agenda reportedly consisting of 13 disputed points, including constitutional reform and revisiting the accountability and justice law! Evidently, they are fearful that Maliki is giving them empty promises and for that reason they would probably prefer to have ISCI and Iraqiyya inside the government to make it as polycephalous as possible. Their dilemma is that whereas this kind of posture may play well with Washington, it is disliked by Iran. Additionally, as time passes by, there is also the danger of growing revulsion against the extensive Kurdish demands for taking part in the government. The longer time this takes, the greater the likelihood of some kind of showdown in a sensitive area of policy, say, about who should be oil minister.

To Washington, this is a situation with no good alternatives. If it supports an early meeting of parliament, it will get the Shiite–Kurdish government that Iran has been working for. If it supports the Iraqiyya alternative, it may not get a new government at all anytime soon. Certainly, resolving all the issues between Iraqiyya and Maliki within three days seems unrealistic. Arguably, then, by continuing to lull Iraqiyya into constitutionally problematic scenarios, the Obama administration is becoming a spoiler in the Iraqi government-formation process against its own will. But since it never supported the viable alternative of a Maliki–Allawi coalition and instead pressed for a scenario which involves government formation and constitutional change at the same time, there really are no good alternatives either. The fear is that over coming months, the US government will spend most of its Middle East energies on partitioning Sudan and that once more, Iraq will get back-burnered.