Press TV reports that Maliki will travel to Tehran this Sunday for the discussion of “a further expansion bilateral ties” and that he will meet with both President Ahmadinejad and, more importantly, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. So what are they going to discuss? Opening an Iraqi chamber of commerce in Tabriz or maybe expanding cultural ties? Hardly.
There is no doubt in my mind at all that what will really take place is a very serious discussion about the US SOFA. Since the sentence “existential threat” has become popular in recent times, I would suggest that having 50 US bases in Iraq would constitute an existential threat to Iran and that this is exactly what Supreme Leader Khamenei will tell Maliki.
