President Bush, with Secretaries Gates and Rice, made a surprise visit to Iraq on Monday although the main story in the UK this week has been the pull-out of troops from Basra City to the airport base.  There is now an expectation that there will be further military personnel cuts in Iraq in the coming weeks and months. The Government is talking this up as a shift from a ‘combat’ to an ‘overwatch’ role and still claims that Basra Province remains under UK control. It is also keen to stress that, far from cutting and running, the UK is only carrying out a plan announced by the former Prime Minister in February. There is so much 'spin' surrounding Britain's role in Iraq that it is hard to reconcile those bits of the story designed to reassure the US that 'we' are still on side and those bits that are designed to reassure the British people that we are getting out.

The success of the 'spin' depends on a lot of faith that the future will go the UK's way.  First, that the Iraqis will assert central control over the anarchy in the provinces and do so without causing a US-Saudi-backed revolt from the Sunni Provinces.  Second, that Al-Sadr will do what he says he will do and lay off fighting the occupiers in order to sort out his own militia - undoubtedly part of some implied deal that allows him to buy his way back in to power as a player in a Shia-dominated Iraqi state.  Third, that the Iranians, or rather the populist and Pasdaranwing of the Iranian system, do not decide to fill any vacuum too quickly.  And fourth that Washington respects the political pressures on the UK and does not expect the British to hang around for much longer. 

There must have been immense relief that Al-Sadr decided not to make a fight of it, no doubt in return for unrecorded or implicit assurances that the UK would pass the Province back to the Iraqis in a traditional imperial hand-over so long as it did not have to face a firefight at the airport.  Similarly, despite the sabre-rattling on both sides, the US and Iran are showing signs that each wants the other side to believe that they are ready for war but that they do not actually want it.  A lot of third country diplomats have been running around 'like blue-arsed flies' trying to keep various dialogues going whilst still appearing to support the position of their particular patron or ally.

For example, it seems that Khamenei may not be entirely sorry that the West's preferred man in Tehran, Rafsanjani, is now Chairman of the Assembly of Experts. This provides direct and regular access one to the other by the very nature of the job.  After all, if Rafsanjani can put the case for inclusion of the reformers within the political process and be in place when Ahmadinejad's economic populism needs reversing, Khamenei can put the squeeze on Rafsanjani to ensure a common national front against external aggression.  National unity against threats combined with maximum internal flexibility strikes us as a reasonable survival strategy.

President Bush does not have the luxury of even considering this strategy.  He apparently speaks for the West as a whole but half of it, the European half, is not so keen on NATO's involvement in Afghanistan, let alone the big stick directed at Iran, as its elites would like.  Polling shows that Europeans would not back the US in an assault on Iran.  Worse, European elites want to preserve the Atlantic Alliance but are seeing their peoples drift away towards a more euro-centric model which, as we have seen, Sarkozy is trying to square with Atlanticism.  Nor does Bush have an easy path towards flexibility.  The nature of the American political system means that he has to assert his stance aggressively in dealing with a highly formalised, internally aggressive and combative political system.  There is no easy institutional way of maintaining a consensus so that the transition from one set of policies to another can come at the 'right time' instead of at the time decided by the rules of a bunch of eighteenth century gentlemen.

Bush, in his visit to Anbar Province, was largely making political points for domestic consumption.  He hinted at less troops being required and his ‘hawkish’ speech appeared to be well received by the US troops on the ground. The US is now pressing the Al-Maliki Government to incorporate the pro-US Sunni fighters into the national Iraqi security structure as part of the ‘reconciliation' process.  This is a case of trying to ensure that the US looks stronger so that it is allowed to be weak.  Just as the British have managed to accept defeat but on terms where the defeat is not a rout and something good may (arguably) be left behind, so all US efforts are directed to the same end - a departure with honour from something that cannot be put down, at least without argument, as simply a catastrophe. 

There is now a militarised pro-US zone (in fact an unstable US-Saudi conservative zone) within Iraq that is being used as ‘bargaining chip’ in the primary game, which is a national reconciliation engineered so that the US can leave with its own Sunni allies in as strong a position as possible to counter Iranian influence amongst the Shia.  What is being sought here is an Iraqi internal balance of power to allow real constitutional politics to take hold - so that Republican neo-conservatives can prepare the ground for their own revisionists when the future history of the Administration is written. 

The question now is how much is it in the Iranian interest to connive in this future myth-making when its own national myth is based on nationalist resistance to the West.  Both sides have a great deal at stake.  The US 'hawks' can no longer even dream of controlling Iraq except through the back door of capital and their Sunni proxies.  On the other hand, Iranian 'hawks' may still harbour 'resistance' dreams of their own.  Threats of US or Israeli proxy attacks on Iran are designed to keep Iranian radicals contained (we are not convinced that the current hysteria is about nuclear weaponry alone) and to give a tool to conservative reformers for use inside Teheran. The wider fear, however, is that, just as in 1914, many military and political dispositions have now been made that require only a latter day Gavrilo Princip to trigger a regional holocaust through a peculiarly devastating terrorist act that gets pinned on Tehran.

Once Bush had left for Australia and the APEC Summit, it seemed that it was the US generals that were pressing as much as anyone else for troop reductions because of the strain on the military.  The Iranians may interpret this to mean that they can afford to wait - or that they need to hasten the process.  The uncertainty is unnerving smaller Gulf states and, perhaps, those whose primary interest is the maintenance of a highly vulnerable global financial system and restraints on a rising oil price.  Draw-downs of troops would start, all things being equal, according to Petraeus, in March 2008. 

So where are we?  The problem is that no-one knows.  It has become an elaborate regional chess game in which the US' only strategy is to buy time at home and force the pace on national reconciliation in Iraq.  Its major asset is almost unusable - its massively superior air power.  If that power is used unwisely, it will not be able to hold its allies because its allies will be under intolerable pressure from below while the effect on a weakened global financial system might have (literally) revolutionary effects if a major jump in the oil price precipitates a major economic melt-down.  There will be some long nights of scenario planning in Washington.  Perhaps the right sort of strike or even the threat of strike might allow the Iranian reformers to seize power and come to a deal.  Perhaps this.  Perhaps that.  But what is clear is that it may be a tense few weeks while the US President tries to re-build American national confidence in a plan which few seem to understand and less trust.