Word: iran
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...will al-Maliki be unhappy about the efforts of others to trim Allawi's advantage before then. The Justice and Accountability (formerly De-Baathification) Commission, which operates under the guidance of Ahmed Chalabi - the onetime Pentagon favorite now running on the Iran-backed Iraqi National Alliance (INA) slate - announced on Tuesday its intention to demand that the Supreme Court disqualify as ineligible three candidates on Allawi's list because of alleged ties to the former regime of Saddam Hussein. If the court upholds this challenge - and it has sympathetically received the commission's previous effort to expel Sunni candidates...
Allawi may be stoking resentment by blaming any move to keep him out of power on meddling by Tehran. "Iran is interfering quite heavily, and this is worrying," he told the BBC on Tuesday, noting that the Iranian leadership had invited the other major factions but not his own for talks in Tehran over the shape of the next Iraqi government...
There may be an element of truth in that charge, because Iran has previously backed the broad Shi'ite-Kurdish alliance that brought al-Maliki to power, and is clearly pressing for another friendly, Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad. Allawi is fiercely antagonistic toward Tehran, and his bloc was strongly backed by Sunni Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, which are leery of Iranian influence in Arab lands. (Those governments have been standoffish toward al-Maliki.) (See pictures of the U.S. troops in Iraq...
...back. Not only is the White House frustrated over the rampant corruption in Karzai's government, whose ability to earn the support of its own people is the linchpin of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, it is also increasingly concerned over the Afghan leader's growing coziness with Iran. (See "Obama Makes Surprise Visit to Afghanistan...
...probably in May, to interview members of the Bush Administration and U.S. military figures of similar heft to the inquiry's British witnesses, who have included not only Blair but also Britain's serving Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. (See "Unbowed on Iraq, Blair Argues for Targeting Iran...