Can the US and Iraq Have a Long-Term Relationship?

"The debate over immediate security conditions is taking a back seat in Iraq now as the debate over long-term fixes, particularly the U.S.-Iraq agreement, takes the lead.

The national scope of this debate goes beyond the talk of politicians –who are trying to use their position on the agreement for electoral campaigning– and people’s talk in the streets to Friday prayer sermons. Interestingly, the issue has also attracted curiously broad attention from Arab and regional leaders and media. Most notably, in his first speech following a crisis that brought Lebanon to the brink of a new civil war and on a day no less than the anniversary of his “victory” in the south, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah dedicated a significant portion of his speech to the U.S.-Iraq agreement. In Iran, hard-line cleric Ahmed Khatami also denounced the proposed treaty in an earlier Friday sermon, warning Baghdad’s government that signing the agreement would be a betrayal of the Muslim world and particularly of the Shia faith. This frenzy with which Iran and allies scramble to preempt the agreement has a downside — their speeches embarrassed their allies in Iraq, making them appear as mere puppets.

It’s neither strange nor ironic that the pro-Iran extremists have made such a fuss about an agreement whose terms are yet to be fully made public — rumors and exaggerations of half-truths are enough to make the public in a place like the Middle East feel uneasy about any given issue. It’s enough for an aide of Sadr to tell fanatic followers that the treaty would grant the U.S. control over 99% of Iraq’s riches to make them take to the streets to denounce the agreement. This cleric didn’t need to find facts to back his argument: the crowd is easy to convince, thanks to widespread ignorance; sentimental rhetoric is more attractive to them than facts, numbers, and science."
ITM