By Ted Belman, Israpundit

What is going on? You certainly wouldn’t know from the partisan debates in Washington.

It is generally conceded that the US is not quelling the insurgency and the chances for a stable Iraq are non existent. For the last few months the conversation focused on an exit strategy. Now it is focused on preventing Iran from getting the Bomb and on the PA dominated by Hamas.

So what is the US doing about it? What is the grand strategy?

In US shifts Iraq Loyalties we learn that the US is now negotiating with the Sunnis at all levels to strengthen them in order to avoid a Shiite dominated Iraq influenced by Iran.

“US concern about the pro-Iranian leanings of the militant Shi’ite parties that will dominate the next government has grown as the Bush administration presses a campaign to take Iran’s nuclear program to the United Nations Security Council, with the military option “on the table”. A Western diplomat told Associated Press that the United States needed to find “some other allies who will not turn against them if things heat up with Iran”.

”Even the possibility of a separate peace between the United States and the Sunni insurgency, which is inherent in these negotiations, signals to the Shi’ites that the US is no longer wedded to the option of supporting Shi’ite military and police.”

In this regard,

“the United States is only part of a much bigger coalition of interests opposing Shi’ite political power in Iraq, which includes Britain, the Iraqi Sunnis and the Arab League.”

Obviously this policy will result in a Shiite blowback.

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