For the people who are paying for it, belongs the Spoiled Brat.

Following up on what Siun wrote last night, I remember when Bush claimed the Qods Force was the worst thing ever. Now they're trying to save Bush's Potemkin Country.

The backdrop to Sadr's dramatic statement was a secret trip Friday by Iraqi lawmakers to Qom, Iran's holy city and headquarters for the Iranian clergy who run the country.

There the Iraqi lawmakers held talks with Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Qods (Jerusalem) brigades of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps and signed an agreement with Sadr, which formed the basis of his statement Sunday, members of parliament said.

Ali al Adeeb, a member of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's Dawa party, and Hadi al Ameri, the head of the Badr Organization, the military wing of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, had two aims, lawmakers said: to ask Sadr to stand down his militia and to ask Iranian officials to stop supplying weapons to Shiite militants in Iraq.

So basically, Iran's calling the shots.

And what of Bush of Mesopotamia?

The Qom discussions may or may not bring an end to the fighting but they almost certainly have undermined Maliki - who made repeated declarations that there would be no negotiations and that he would treat as outlaws those who did not turn in their weapons for cash. The blow to his own credibility was worsened by the fact that members of his own party had helped organize the Iran initiative.

"The delegation was from the United Iraqi Alliance (dominated by the Dawa party and the Supreme Council of Iraq), and the Prime Minister was only informed. It was a political maneuver by us," said Haider al Abadi, a legislator from Maliki's Dawa party.

And as Juan Cole notes, one of the big reasons for the negotiation was to save the political organizations of rival Shiia groups from the Mahdi Army:

As a result of those parleys, Muqtada al-Sadr called on his followers to stand down, though I read his statement as permitting continued armed self-defense, as at Basra where the Iraqi Army is attacking them and the US is bombing them. Significantly, he calls on the Mahdi Army to stop attacking the HQs of rival political parties. That language suggests that the parties are suffering from such attacks and are worried that party infrasture is being degraded ahead of the October 1 provincial elections. The southern parties have essentially defied al-Maliki and Bush to make a separate peace.

This is not the first time the Qods force has played peacemaker with al Sadr either. The fact is, to maintain some stability in Iraq, Iran is more important and more effective than Americans. It is the main reason, Bush's saber rattling (and especially Cheney's) is so deceitful and so reliant upon a media that generally doesn't report such matters to the public. Like it or not, Iran is the big winner of Bush's War and it was all on the American taxpayer's tab and with the sacrifice of thousands of lives.

This "truce" may or may not hold -- and the real the political loser in it all is al Maliki -- but if it does hold it will not be because of George Bush, it will be because of Iran.

Oh well, at least Bush can still rely on the "love" of the American people.

(video courtesy of Think Progress)