Bush SOFA push collapsing

The attempt by the Bush administration to impose an extremely unfair SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) onto the Iraqi government before July 31 now seems clearly destined for failure, if it has not already, actually, failed.
Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki is on the second day of his current visit to Iran, where he has reassured his host, Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that the present Iraqi government “will not allow Iraq to become a launching pad for an attack on Iran.” That AP report there also says the following:

Al-Maliki also appeared to signal that Tehran would not be squeezed out by any agreement, saying Iraq’s “development and stability will be provided through more bilateral cooperation” with Iran.
Ahmadinejad, in turn, underlined that Iran had a key role in Iraq’s security. “The responsibility of (Iraq’s) neighbors is doubled in this regard,” he said, according to [Ahmadinejad’s presidential] Web site.
The Iranian president hinted at concerns that the security agreement would mean U.S. domination in Iraq. “Iraq must reach a certain level of stability so that its enemies are not able to impose their influence,” he said, without specifically mentioning the deal.
Iran fiercely opposes the U.S.-Iraqi security agreement, saying it will lead to permanent American bases on its doorstep in Iraq, reflecting Tehran’s fears U.S. forces could attack it. Last week, powerful Iranian politician Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said the deal would “enslave” Iraqis and vowed it would not be permitted to be passed, and Iran’s pro-government press has frequently railed against it.

The Iranian government has acted persistently and skilfully in Iraq over the past six-plus years. First, it worked with its longterm allies and friends among Iraq’s Shiites and Kurds to help push the US government into toppling Saddam Hussein and installing those allies and friends as leaders of the replacement regime there. Then it was careful to increase the effectiveness and visibility of the influence it has continued to exert over those allies so gradually that the Bush administration people either didn’t really realize what was going on, or found themselves unable to react effectively once they did. (The “boil the frog slowly” method.)
In this regard, we could note that Iran was one of the first governments to recognize the US-installed “government” in Baghdad and send an ambassador to post-invasion Baghdad. That, while most Arab states continued to protest the illegality of the US invasion and of the Iraqi “government” that had flowed from it. As a result only a few Arab states have diplomatic representation in Baghdad. Those that do include, not surprisingly, Iran’s ally Syria.
What the Iranians have done in post-invasion Iraq reminds me of the way my Aunty Katy would help me when I was learning to knit… She would patiently work along behind me to pick up all the stitches I had dropped and return my work to something like what was intended. In the case of the Iran-Iraq-US triangle, however, what is emerging is much more what Iran intended than what the Bushists intended.
Hey, for now, having 160,000 US troops tied down as sitting ducks in Iraq is the best guarantee the Iranians have that the US won’t undertake or allow any military attack against them. And meantime, in the vast expanses of Iraq that exist outside the US military cantonments, Iran’s influence is considerably stronger than that of the very distant US.
By the way, I think this is the most interesting portion of the broad range of reporting on Iraqi developments that Al-Hayat carries today.
(Why on earth won’t the folks at Hayat upgrade the English-language portion of their website so it includes some of their excellent news coverage????? I have repeatedly urged them to do that. Meantime, I struggle along trying to read as much of the Arabic as my poor brain can. Google Translate is sometimes of some help, but not much yet I fear… Okay, end of rant.)
Basically that story indicates that Patrick Cockburn’s important recent reporting on the Bushists’ threat to use as a bargaining chip in the SOFA “negotiations”, Iraq’s access to the $50 billion of Iraqi government funds that are held by the US Federal Reserve Bank has drawn excited considerable attention (and pushback) inside Iraq.
The US’s manipulative use of these funds is, of course, strongly analogous to the Israeli government’s quite illegal use of the tax and customs revenues it has collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (under the terms of the Oslo Accords), as a bargaining chip in its ever-stagnant “peace negotiations” with the PA.
Wonder where the Bushists got the idea for this?
Of course, given the present windfall increases in oil prices, Iran is currently quite cash-heavy and probably in a good position to “outbid” whatever economic incentives the Bushists might be trying to offer the Iraqi politicians. For that reason and also because of its obligations under international law, the degree of control Washington can exercise over Iraq’s finances is actually far less than the control Israel exercises over the PA’s. So Washington ends up looking (and being) sleazy and manipulative. It ends up harming Iraq’s hard-pressed citizens. And with all that, it can’t even achieve what it has been seeking in terms of this highly coercive SOFA agreement. What an absolute fiasco of “diplomacy”.
The Bushists have shown themselves quite incapable of converting the overwhelming superiority over all comers that they exhibited in the military realm during the invasion of Iraq (“Shock and Awe”) into any kind of lasting political-strategic gains inside the country. It is quite possible that, in today’s hyperlinked global environment, their use of overwhelming “Shock and Awe” itself meant that they could not win what they wanted at the political level in Iraq thereafter. But I really don’t think the extent and depth of their political failure there was foreordained. Most of it, they have brought completely upon themselves.
US troops out now! No to any coercive SOFA with Iraq!

Addendum relevant to the “Boil a Frog” issue I discussed above:

I see that the Wall Street Journal had a hilariously misdirected editorial on Friday (hat-tip “Gloomy Gus”) in which they argued:

It’s crucial for Americans to understand that, apart from the Sadrists, all factions of Iraqi politics now support some kind of U.S.-Iraq status of forces agreement to succeed the U.N. mandate that expires later this year.
We are winning in Iraq. Indeed, we can now say with certainty that we will win…

My goodness, if that’s the smartest analysis Wall Street can offer, no wonder this country’s economy is in such chaos…