I’ve been predicting this since at least 2006:
June 27, 2006: “Of course, Ahmadinejad may be jumping the gun a bit as far as that is concerned, but he is certainly doing all he can to bring into being a Shi’ite client state in Iraq.”
September 13, 2006: “Here we see looming in Iraq the Shi’ite client state of Iran that the U.S. has unwittingly helped put into place with its short-sighted democracy project.”
October 31, 2006: “Is al-Maliki on the road to creating the Shi’ite client state that the Iranians have been trying to foster in Iraq for quite some time now?”
February 11, 2007: “Iran continues its efforts to create a Shi’ite client state in Iraq.”
June 10, 2008: “Or are U.S. troops the main obstacle to Iraq’s becoming a full-fledged client state of Iran?”
November 12, 2008: “Very soon now the President of the United States and the President of Iran will sit down, without preconditions, and hash this out, and clear everything up before Iraq turns fully into the Shi’ite client state that the Iranians covet.”
July 1, 2009: “Their goal of creating a Shi’ite client state is closer than ever to being realized.”
July 30, 2009: “Was this what we have been fighting for in Iraq all these years? An Iranian Shi’ite client state in Baghdad?”
“Iraq, siding with Iran, sends essential aid to Syria’s Assad,” by Joby Warrick in the Washington Post, October 8:
More than six months after the start of the Syrian uprising, Iraq is offering key moral and financial support to the country”s embattled president, undermining a central U.S. policy objective and raising fresh concerns that Iraq is drifting further into the orbit of an American arch rival “” Iran.
Iraq’s stance has dealt an embarrassing setback to the Obama administration, which has sought to enlist Muslim allies in its campaign to isolate Syrian autocrat Bashar al-Assad. While other Arab states have downgraded ties with Assad, Iraq has moved in the opposite direction, hosting official visits by Syrians, signing pacts to expand business ties and offering political support.
After Iraq sent conflicting signals about its support for Assad last month, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki spoke firmly against regime change in Syria in an interview broadcast on Iraqi television Sept. 30. “We believe that Syria will be able to overcome its crisis through reforms,” Maliki said, rejecting U.S. calls for the Syrian leader to step down. His words echoed those of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who weeks earlier proposed that Syrians should “implement the necessary reforms by themselves.”
On other issues as well, the Maliki government in recent months has hewed closer to Iran’s stance “” Iraq, for example, has supported Iran’s right to nuclear technology and advocated U.N. membership for Palestinians “” as the U.S. military races to complete its troop withdrawal over the coming months….