Resident Fellow  Thomas Donnelly

The approval by the Iraqi parliament of a strategic framework agreement, which includes a status of forces agreement defining the role of U.S. military in Iraq whose current United Nations (UN) mandate expires at the end of the year, represents a tremendous success for the United States and for a free Iraq. To focus, as the media have done, on the timetable for withdrawal of American troops at the end of 2011 is to miss the forest for a single tree: agreements such as these define the relationships between strategic partners, based on their sovereignty but recognizing shared geopolitical interests. Five-and-a-half years is a long time, and the United States has paid a high price in blood and treasure. But make no mistake, this is what we have been fighting for: an Iraq with an increasingly legitimate, effective, and representative central government; an Iraq increasingly aligned with the United States instead of constantly at war with us; and a bulwark of strategic stability in a volatile region.

The agreement itself protects vital immediate and enduring U.S. interests in Iraq. To begin with, allowing the UN mandate to expire without at least a bridging arrangement permitting U.S. operations in Iraq to go forward would have been a disaster, risking the loss of the initiative so arduously won during the "surge season." And, as successful as U.S. operations have been and as marked as Iraqis rejection of extremist elements has been--both in regard to al Qaeda and Sunni jihadists but also Iranian influence and Shiite militias--the situation remains fragile. The fundamental truth that everyone in Washington, Baghdad, and the larger region knows but rarely acknowledges publicly is that the surge represented, above all, a renewed American commitment to success in Iraq. This agreement is one of the fruits of that strategic decision.

Likewise, the agreement represents a serious setback for Iran. The Islamic Republic has lost and apparently still is losing influence in Iraq. The Tehran regime has been vehemently opposed to this agreement, strongly pressuring the Maliki government and portraying the negotiations as evidence of U.S. and Western neocolonialism. When Prime Minister Maliki visited Tehran this past June, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, lectured him on the subject and pressed the Iraqis for a "memorandum of understanding" on defense cooperation. Maliki has remained steadfast, and his position has been immensely strengthened since he launched "Operations Charge of the Knights" in Basra last March, cleaning out Shiite militias and Iranian "special groups."

Tehran also intensely lobbied and, reportedly, even bribed Iraqi politicians to oppose the agreement. The Iranian government has been sponsoring an extensive propaganda campaign since last May, circulating rumors that Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, arguably the most revered figure in all of Shia Islam, opposed the pact. In early October, Maliki visited the reclusive cleric in Najaf to discuss the agreement, and recently, an Iraqi parliamentary delegation returned with what a spokesman for the ayatollah described as a "green light" of support from Sistani, thus thoroughly undercutting Tehran's position. Nearly as important, the agreement is a defeat for the firebrand Iraqi cleric Moqtada al Sadr, whose populist movement has been losing support for more than a year. While the Sadrist bloc in the Iraqi parliament continues to oppose the agreement, Sadr himself has been increasingly marginalized, and combined U.S.-Iraqi operations in Baghdad's Sadr City slum have decimated the leadership cadres of Sadr's militia, the so-called Jaysh al-Mahdi, or "Mahdi Army." 

Looking forward, there are reasons to hope for a continued transformation of the U.S.-Iraqi partnership. The upcoming Iraqi elections are nearly certain to bring to power a more responsive and representative group of legislators, especially from the Sunni community. This will also be critical to the successful implementation of the agreement, and in many ways, it is the Sunnis who have the most at stake in continued U.S. engagement in Iraq. To be sure, stability in Iraq is fragile, and the path of progress depends upon additional accommodation between Iraq's communities. Americans in Iraq have never been simple "occupiers," but rather--both now and in the future--"interlocutors," the most trustworthy arbiters among people who have had little reason to trust each other.

These agreements must not, however, become a suicide pact; there is no formal agreement about what happens after 2011. Neither must Barack Obama's campaign pledge to withdraw U.S. forces on a rigid, sixteen-month timetable become a suicide pact. The agreements mark the end of a new beginning in relations between the United States and Iraq, not the beginning of the end.

Thomas Donnelly is a resident fellow at AEI.