BAGHDAD: Iraq's move to inspect Iranian aircraft flying to Syria may appease the United States but also shows how crisis in Damascus has pushed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki into an ever more delicate balancing act between his two main allies.
When he faced a parliamentary revolt this year, he could count on Tehran to pull strings of influence over restive fellow Shi'ite politicians in Iraq's majority community that saw the Iraqis quickly fall in line again behind the Shi'ite premier.
But after the United States complained publicly that Iran was using Iraqi airspace to fly arms and men to help President Bashar al-Assad fight Western-backed rebels, Iraq's government has told Washington it will inspect Iranian flights at random.
Nine years after US forces ousted Iraq's Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein, and nine months after they finally pulled out of the country, Maliki is heavily reliant on Tehran, Washington's enemy. He leans on Iran for political support at home and for backing in a Sunni-dominated region where he has few friends.
But he still needs the Americans, too - for military aid, in part, but also as Iraq seeks global investment and trading access for an oil industry it is struggling to rebuild.
And all the while, with the Syrian civil war inflaming historic confrontations in the Middle East between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims, and between Arab and Persian, Maliki is trying to carve out space for Iraq's - and his own interests.
"We are trying to take a independent position, based on our national interests," Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters recently in explaining Iraq's Syria policy. "We are trying to differentiate ourselves. Things are not black and white."
Iraq says it has a policy of non-interference in Syria - but stays close to Tehran's position by refusing to endorse Western and Arab League demands for the removal of Assad, whose Alawite minority faith is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.
For Maliki, who once found refuge in Syria and Iran as a Shi'ite Islamist activist fleeing Saddam, a defeat for Assad that put Damascus under the control of Sunni Islamists could add to the threat he already faces from a Sunni insurgency blamed for the kind of attacks that killed over 30 Iraqis on Sunday.
"We reject attempts to bring down the regime by force, because it will leave a wider crisis in the region," Maliki has said.
That concern, rather than any pressure from Tehran, appears to drive the Iraqi premier, diplomats and Iraqi officials say. "Maliki is fundamentally looking after Maliki's interests," one diplomat involved in the region said.
"Relations with Iran may be part of that. But I don't think Iran's interest will trump Maliki's domestic interests."
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