As the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq ended Dec. 18, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched a political offensive against high-level Sunni officials. The crisis came rapidly but was also a long time coming, as Iraq's Shiite majority — and by extension Iran — have been waiting to exploit the vacuum left by the United States to consolidate influence in Iraq. The main regional stakeholders opposed to Iran's expanding influence — the United States, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — are poorly positioned to counter the Shia, leaving open the question of how far Iran will go in trying to use Mesopotamia to reshape the region's politics.

Stratfor forecast nearly one year ago that a political crisis would erupt once the United States withdrew its last troops from Iraq, and would reverberate throughout the region. The geopolitical trend centered on Iran's opportunity to fill the power vacuum the United States would leave in Baghdad, ending centuries of Sunni rule over Mesopotamia. For Iran to fully realize this historic opportunity, it would first need to enhance its hold over Shiite groups in Iraq. Tehran would also need to consolidate its power within Iraq's government, allowing Iran both to secure its western flank and to use Iraq as a base from which to project influence in the wider Arab world.

The political fury emanating from Baghdad in recent days can thus best be understood as Iraq's entering a wrenching, albeit predictable, phase of Shiite consolidation. Leading this transformation is al-Maliki, who is fast becoming Iraq's Shiite authoritarian.

Ever since al-Maliki became prime minister in 2006, he has been working to monopolize Iraq's military as well as its security and intelligence services, mostly through purges and through the creation of loyal parallel security agencies. After he won a second term in 2010 following nearly a year of intense political wrangling over electoral results, al-Maliki concentrated on cementing his authority over the political, security and economic affairs of the state. The makeup of the current Cabinet clearly illustrates al-Maliki's prowess; he holds the positions of acting defense minister, interior minister and minister of state for national security. But in order for al-Maliki to effectively wield his influence in each of these arenas, he needed to go beyond Baghdad politics and whittle down whatever tenuous influence Iraq's Kurdish and Sunni factions maintained.

Desperate Times for Iraq's Sunnis and Kurds

Al-Maliki's political battles against the Kurds mostly occurred in the field of energy. Mountainous geography, significant energy assets and U.S. protection provided the foundation for Kurdish political autonomy — but the United States is no longer part of that framework. Previously, the Kurds could use foreign investment in the northern oil fields to resist al-Maliki's campaign to control the right to sign contracts independently and to manage the share and distribution of oil revenues. Now the Kurds must deal alone with their Arab rivals. This dynamic manifested itself most recently in October, when U.S. energy major ExxonMobil struck a natural gas exploration deal with the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) without Baghdad's consent. The ExxonMobil move was intended as a signal to the Iraqi central government of U.S. support for the Kurds. Rather than acceding to Kurdish demands in energy negotiations, however, the al-Maliki government (knowing that U.S. forces were on their way out of the country) retaliated by threatening to blacklist ExxonMobil from deals elsewhere in the country. By mid-December, al-Maliki was meeting personally with ExxonMobil executives and he announced that the energy firm had decided to "reconsider" its deal with the KRG.

The Sunnis are in an even more desperate situation than the Kurds. Iraqi Sunnis chose the bullet over the ballot in 2005, boycotting elections and waging an insurgency. By doing so, they allowed Shia and Kurds to garner disproportionate power in parliament. When Sunnis tried to re-enter the political scene in 2010, they did so under the banner of al-Iraqiya, a centrist political bloc with heavy Sunni representation. Though al-Iraqiya won the largest number of seats in the 2010 elections, al-Maliki and his Shiite allies maneuvered to deny al-Iraqiya an electoral victory. In the early stages of its formation the government half-heartedly promised al-Iraqiya various appeasements, but it did not take al-Maliki long to begin purging the government of Sunni power. While resisting U.S. pressure to integrate Sunni Awakening Council members into the security apparatus, al-Maliki used the Shiite-led Justice and Accountability Commission as a vehicle for targeting Sunnis and former Baathists.

The Sunnis, who unlike the Kurds have no energy assets or autonomous territory, tried to loosen Baghdad's grip with their own autonomy drive — first in the mainly Sunni Anbar and Salahuddin provinces and then in the more ethnically mixed Diyala province. The autonomy push in Diyala province came about through Sunni-Kurdish collaboration: Sunni council members allegedly promised the KRG control of the Khanaqin district in exchange for Kurdish council member votes in favor of Diyala's autonomy. This gave some indication that the Sunnis and Kurds were finding reasons to align against a more significant Shiite threat.

But the Shiite response was fast and fierce. Al-Maliki declared the province's proclamation illegal. Shiite militias were deployed to the province and Shiite rallies quickly broke out in Diyala to protest the Sunni autonomy drive. Al-Iraqiya announced Dec. 17 that, in response to the events in Diyala and to the growing centralization of government powers, the party was boycotting parliament. A day later, al-Maliki launched his political offensive against high-level Sunni officials.

The Shiite Offensive

On Dec. 18, al-Maliki urged parliament to pass a vote of no confidence against Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlak, who described al-Maliki in an interview as "worse than Saddam Hussein." The same day, Iraq's Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi was escorted off a plane at the Baghdad airport and two of his bodyguards were detained on terrorism charges. Al-Hashemi was permitted to fly to Iraqi Kurdistan but on Dec. 19, an arrest warrant was issued against al-Hashemi alleging that he and his security detail had commissioned assassinations of Iraqi political and security officials. One of the charges to which al-Hashemi's detained bodyguards confessed involved an assassination plot three weeks ago against al-Maliki. Al-Hashemi, banned from traveling abroad, is now in Kurdish territory in the north, trying to evade the arrest warrant. The KRG, still resisting pressure from Baghdad, announced Dec. 21 that it would not hand over al-Hashemi to the central government authorities.

Al-Maliki's drive against the Sunnis is designed to achieve Shiite preeminence in Iraq. Al-Maliki now has every Sunni politician in Iraq wondering who will be arrested next. The Sunnis are faced with stark choices: accommodate the Shia, attempt to flee the country or resist. Power in Iraq rests largely with the Shia, and the United States is no longer in the country to assist the Sunnis, making resistance — political, militant or both — difficult to sustain.

The Kurds also have a big decision to make in response to al-Maliki's latest power surge. The Kurds face opposition from both Sunni and Shiite Arabs, but the Shia (given their disproportionate power) currently pose the greater threat. The Kurds and Sunnis have thus found common cause for collaboration and reportedly are discussing an attempt to form a new government. With their combined parliamentary clout, the Sunnis and Kurds could trigger a collapse of the al-Maliki government in an attempt to slow the Shiite consolidation drive.

However, a Sunni-Kurdish move to collapse the government could end up strengthening al-Maliki's hand even more. The prime minister already has broken out of parliamentary bounds in asserting his dominance over the political system. The Sunni and Kurdish political blocs have the ability to bring down the government but lack the numbers to form a new government on their own. Al-Maliki, who has already leaked rumors about running for a third term, may not mind a government collapse, since parliamentary paralysis would leave the effective governance of the security, military and intelligence establishment open to the Shiite leader at the helm. If the Kurds view the Shiite show of strength as too formidable to resist, and they are still involved in territorial disputes with the Sunnis in the north (especially over the oil-rich province of Kirkuk), they may have to reconsider their options and reluctantly move toward accommodation with their Shiite rivals in Baghdad.

Iran's Role

Iran is crucial to the outcome of this crisis. Al-Maliki may have strong political ambitions of his own, but his actions clearly align with Iran's strategic interest in consolidating Shiite control in Iraq. With the United States now out of Iraq, Iran needs to exploit the growing sense of vulnerability felt by the region's Sunni Arabs if Tehran is to reshape the politics of the region in its favor. Iran's strongest hand is in Iraq, where it has been building up assets since well before Hussein's fall. Iran can thus exploit the political fire in Baghdad to make a show of Shiite strength at this critical time. Iran's need to demonstrate its growing leverage in the region, in order to fend off pressure from the Saudis, Americans and Turks in Syria, makes this even more important.

For now, al-Maliki's actions help Iran meet its imperative of consolidating Shiite strength in Iraq during this sensitive transitional period. In the longer run, Iran likely will work to temper al-Maliki's authority, to avoid having to contend with a more independent-minded leader in exerting influence in Baghdad. The question moving forward is how far al-Maliki intends to take this offensive against the Sunnis and the degree to which Iran is directly manipulating the crisis. Al-Iraqiya is trying to involve the Arab League and Turkey to build some foreign backing against Iran's Shiite expansionist agenda, but neither Turkey nor Saudi Arabia is well-positioned to compete effectively with Iran in Iraqi politics. This political crisis far transcends the desires of a single Iraqi politician like al-Maliki; it exemplifies a long-standing Iranian strategy to shift the balance of power in the region firmly in its favor.