Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki will not run out of maneuvers to elude the movement protesting his government's performance, as well as the movement demanding that the imbalance in the country be corrected. Yet he may well now be facing his most serious challenge since he managed to seize the position of Prime Minister from his rival Ayad Allawi, whose formation had won the majority at the last legislative elections. It is no secret that Maliki was able to obtain the post by virtue of the United States and Iran agreeing over it, each of them for their own reasons. The Iraqi Prime Minister has relied on such agreement in order to establish a rule characterized by monopoly, both at the personal and sectarian levels, doing away with the core meaning of the process that began after the collapse of the former regime. And aside from the lawsuits that were fabricated against his Sunni political rivals on charges of terrorism, which allow for bypassing numerous legal procedures, Maliki has not been able to attract consensus among the Shiites domestically, even if pressure from Iran has sometimes driven Shiite parties to support him at certain points. He has thus had to increasingly adhere to Iranian strategy, which took on a new dimension with the eruption of the crisis in Syria and the effective threat to Iran's ally in Damascus. A violent crisis thus erupted with Kurdistan Province, and especially with the province's President, Massoud Barzani, who has made no secret of his sympathy towards the protest movement in Syria. President Jalal Talabani, on the other hand, could have different considerations, in view of the proximity of his zone of influence to Iran. In fact, Maliki had made use of Talabani's considerations in order to save himself from a vote of no confidence in Parliament. Yet it seems that a change has occurred to these factors that had worked to Maliki's benefit in the past, even if there has been no change to Iran's constant pressure on the Iraqi government to maintain it under the umbrella of Iranian strategy in the region. It is true that Maliki heads a political party with a sectarian ideology and that he has built his career on such a basis. Yet he never rose to the status of sole representative of the Shiites, as there are other Shiite parties competing against him for such representation. He therefore seemed, especially in confronting leaders from long-established religious families, such as the Al-Sadr and Al-Hakim families, as one seeking after religious legitimacy which he is lacking, and thus went on to make use of his position in the state to attract the Shiites on the one hand, and of force and revenge against his rivals on the other. This has led him to cement his repressive and dictatorial tendencies, and thus to in effect clash with all of Iraq's constituents. This is why the current movement of protests and demands has taken on a new and unprecedented dimension, as it concerns all parties suffering harm from Maliki's policies, even if it is based essentially among the Sunnis, who have been the ones to bear the greatest burden under his policies. On a background of near-unanimity among Iraqis in opposing the current government and its policies, Tehran will have to choose between clinging to Maliki, who has been loyal to it despite growing opposition across the regional and confessional spectrum, and seeking to save what can be saved of its strategy through middle-of-the-road solutions. In fact, current talk of anticipated parliamentary elections may well fall within the framework of such efforts. Indeed, such a step would allow for buying some time, reshuffling the cards and reordering them in a manner that would preserve Iran's interests, with the problem being recycled and the crisis deferred to a later time. Yet the current crisis, even if has been linked to Maliki by name, is essentially connected to the manner of dealing with the political process in Iraq. Such a process was sought to provide all of the Mesopotamian country's constituents with equal rights and obligations, without exclusion or monopoly, something which Maliki's policies have done away with. And if there indeed is a possibility to overcome the current crisis, it resides in returning to the core of this process, and in the coming elections representing the frank expression of such a core. This process will not be saved by taking superficial measures here and there under pressure from the movement in the street, even if some of them would remove some of the injustice that has been suffered at the hands of Maliki's apparatus.
