Why Iraq Is Changing Its Tune on Withdrawal

"In a surprising development, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his national security advisor Mowaffak al-Rubaie made a dramatic shift in their positions in the SOFA negotiations with the US.
By referring to the negotiated deal as a “memorandum of understanding” instead of using its official name, they are signaling that they are doing more than just taking a tougher stand: they are scrapping all that has been negotiated since February and starting new negotiations for a whole new deal.

In other words, Maliki is saying that he wants to negotiate the withdrawal of US forces, not their presence, after the UN mandate expires.
In order to understand why Maliki made this sharp turn from his formerly pragmatic neutral position, we need to examine three issues: the timing of the statements, the place from which they were made, and the parties that made them.

As to their source, it is noteworthy that the statements came from only religious Shiite leaders. Sunnis and Kurds who have been close to the negotiations and often spoke about the progress and obstacles concerning SOFA do not seem to share Maliki’s new demand.

The timing and location somewhat overlap with Maliki’s visit to the UAE, and almost coincides with Rubaie’s visit to Ayatollah Sistani in Najaf.
In my opinion, the only reason that Maliki made his demand from the UAE and not from Baghdad is that he wanted to send a message of reassurance to Tehran: basically to reassure the Iranians that recent reinforcement of ties with Arab states and the planned reopening of their embassies does not necessarily mean that Iraq has become part of a US-Arab alliance against them."
ITM