Reuters reported Wednesday that Iraqi Shiite leaders are increasingly becoming critical of what they see as an alignment between the country's Sunni minority and the United States. The report cited several Shiite sources saying that Washington wants the Shiite militias disbanded, so that Iran will not be able to use them in a potential U.S-Iranian conflict. We predicted in our fourth-quarter forecast that Iran might instigate militant attacks by the Iraqi Shia against U.S. troops. Recent political developments appear to be setting the stage for just such a scenario. Washington has a lot riding on Iraq, and needs to show that it can steer the country out of its current pandemonium and toward some minimum semblance of security and stability. As recently as January, the main obstacles in the way of that goal were Sunni nationalist insurgents and al Qaeda-led transnational (Sunni) jihadists. Then came the destruction of the Shiite al-Askariyah shrine in As Samarra by suspected jihadist militants, which led to reprisals by Shiite "death squads" against Sunnis. The anti-Sunni violence and the Shiite-Kurdish push toward federalism brought the Sunnis and the United States closer together. The Sunnis needed U.S. support to counter the political and military aggressiveness of the Shia; the Americans needed to contain the Sunni insurgency and find a way to blunt Iran's influence in Iraq. Washington made disbanding Shiite militias a top priority — bringing it on par with the need to contain the Sunni insurgents, and perhaps even a notch higher. All of this was bound to irritate the Shia — which would explain the events of the past two weeks. Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, chief of the largest Shiite political group the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), has been aggressively calling for the creation of an autonomous Shiite federal zone composed of nine southern Iraq governorates, but U.S. President George W. Bush came out strongly against the idea Oct. 18. Meanwhile, Washington, under pressure on the domestic front, continued to press the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to disband the Shiite militias and to agree to a timetable for a U.S. troop drawdown. Al-Maliki said in an interview published in USA Today that his government will not force militias to disarm until later this year or early next year. He also criticized a U.S. raid against a Mehdi Army stronghold in the capital — saying he had not been consulted on the operation — and slammed the top U.S. military and diplomatic representatives in Iraq for calling for a timetable to curb violence. On Tuesday, he ordered U.S. military checkpoints removed from Sadr City and other parts of Baghdad. Ahmed Chalabi on Monday criticized secret talks between Sunni insurgents and U.S. officials. Chalabi — a controversial Shiite politician who once enjoyed strong ties with the Pentagon and remains close to Tehran — urged the United States to open talks with Iran, saying it is the only way out of the current problems. What we have here is a conflict in the making between the United States and the Iraqi Shia. Iraqi Sunnis and the governments of other Arab states don't want to see the departure of U.S. troops from Iraq; Iran, meanwhile, has begun the mantra that the occupation must end. Given the current circumstances, Iraqi Shia agitating for a U.S. withdrawal does not seem to be beyond the pale.