I noticed that with Liberman's urging, Petraus and Crocker were keen to blame Iran for the violence in Baghdad. And yet....



"... Once again, it was Iran that stepped into the political vacuum and urged a halt to militia attacks into the heavily fortified Green Zone, where U.S. and Iraqi officials, including Petraeus and Crocker, have their offices.

The Iranian foreign ministry called for "restraint and prudence of various Iraqi groups," an implicit rebuke of Sadr, who is living and studying in Iran .

The violence began two weeks ago when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki launched an ill-prepared offensive against militias in the southern port city of Basra. It ebbed after a delegation of the Iraqi governing parties traveled to Iran for talks with a top commander of the Qods force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.


Tuesday was the last day of Maliki's ultimatum for militias, mainly the Mahdi Army, to turn in weapons for cash or face a battle. Far from disarming itself and handing its weapons to forces dominated by Shiites in Maliki's Dawa party, Sadr threatened to end the ceasefire he declared in August.

"

Petraeus acknowledged, though almost in passing, that the clash between the Iraqi government and militias loyal to Sadr and other Shiite leaders— known as "Special Groups"— is one of the biggest threats to Iraqi stability.

"Unchecked, the Special Groups pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq ," he said.

Although he was speaking in the context of the threat Iran posed through its support of militia groups, he did not mention that Iran also backs the Shiite-led government and that the government sanctions a variety of militias.



Besides playing down Iran's sometimes positive role in the Iraqi dynamics, Petraeus and Crocker seemed to overplay the political progress in Iraq during the period when "surged" U.S. forces and a new U.S. counter-insurgency strategy had contributed to a drop in overall violence.

One act of progress, according to Crocker, was the passage of a provincial powers law, passed days before Maliki's Basra offensive. But that law, calling for provincial elections in October, may have been a catalyst that led to the offensive.

Many Sadr loyalists viewed the offensive as an attempt by Maliki's Dawa party and the Shiite rivals of the Sadr movement to undercut the much more popular Shiite movement prior to elections in October."