Gareth Porter, independent historian and journalist for IPS News, discusses the 3-way Shi’ite alliance of Moqtada al-Sadr, Nouri al-Maliki and Iran that formed in general opposition to U.S. occupation and attacks on Sadr’s Mahdi Army in particular, indications that Maliki had foreknowledge of the successful 2007 plot to kidnap U.S. soldiers in Karbala, the give-and-take exchange of political favors between Sadr and Maliki, the Bush administration’s attempt to exterminate the Mahdi Army — which they saw as an Iranian proxy, doubts about the SOFA 2011 withdrawal deadline and the possible future change in Iraq’s primary sectarian conflict from Shi’ite v. Sunni to Kurd v. Arab.
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