'... Maliki is forced by recent moves by Saudi Arabia, to move even closer to Iran!"

"... both U.S. and Iraqi officials acknowledge that Maliki may now be reluctant to make the official request. Maliki faces severe political constraints at home, and his government is being forced by recent moves by Saudi Arabia to move even closer to Iran...

Several days after Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak, the key U.S. strategic ally in the Middle East for 30 years, was forced by the pro-democracy movement to resign in early February, Iraqi officials were informed that Obama was now more convinced than before that he could not afford to be tagged with having "lost" Iraq, the intelligence official told IPS.... contingent on Maliki's sending an official letter of request to Obama, according to the Iraqi intelligence official. The Pentagon also began making contingency plans for the stationing of the 3rd Infantry Division in the tense city of Kirkuk, according to the official.

But since those signs of greater determination by Obama to leave a semi-permanent military presence in Iraq, the likelihood of Maliki's making the official request for the troops has come increasingly into question. Both U.S. and Iraqi officials now acknowledge that Maliki's need for Moqtada al-Sadr's political support and the degree to which Sadr has regained influence in the Shi'a south after having lost it in mid-2008 represent serious political constraints on his position regarding a possible continuation of the U.S. troop presence. Sadr's calling on his followers to stay away from a mass demonstration against Maliki's government Feb. 25 may have saved Maliki's government from collapsing, the Iraqi intelligence official told IPS. And Sadr continues to oppose a U.S. military presence in Iraq....

"If al-Maliki were to ask for U.S. troops, the Sadrists would try to unseat him," said the Iraqi intelligence official, who added that Maliki's survival through the summer is no longer taken for granted. An official U.S. source also suggested that Maliki's government could collapse before a decision is made on a request for a continuing U.S. troop presence.

But the Saudi dispatch of combat troops to Bahrain last month to repress the pro-democracy movement that represented the Shi'a majority in that country may have made a move toward the United States difficult, if not impossible for Maliki. That aggressive Saudi action against the Shi’a of Bahrain has made it clearer that Saudi Arabia must be regarded as Iraq's primary enemy, according to the Iraqi intelligence official. But it is only part of a larger problem of Iraqi conflict with Saudi Arabia. Iraqi intelligence has indications that the original al Qaeda in Iraq network is in the process of leaving the country for Libya, but that another organisation now operating under the name of al Qaeda in Iraq is actually a Saudi-supported Baathist paramilitary group run from Jordan by a former high-ranking general under Saddam Hussein. The need to defend against Saudi infiltration of Iraq and be fully committed on one side of the Sunni-Shi'a divide in the region means that Maliki has had to move even closer to Iran.

If the Iraqi premier does not ask for U.S. troops to remain after the expiration of the November 2008 U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement, it will be a major blow to the assertion made over the past three years portraying Maliki as an ally of the United States who wants U.S. help in keeping Iraq out of the Iranian sphere of influence..."