Are the Iraqi elections a victory for the United States or Iran? Maybe both?

My nominee for the silliest comment on the Iraqi provincial elections comes from — no surprise here — former UN Ambassador John Bolton. After praising the elections as a vindication of the “surge” and characterizing them as a setback for Iran, Bolton warned that the elections will not “put an end to Iran’s ambitions. Tehran appears to believe that its influence in the region is expanding and that its neighbors and the United States have failed to respond effectively. This belief is unsurprising, given the Obama administration’s acquiescent attitude toward Tehran.”

Let me get this straight. Obama has been in office for about two weeks, and Iran has already drawn the lesson from that brief period that “its influence is expanding.” Has Bolton forgotten about the Bush administration, whose mishandling of Mideast policy failed to slow Iran’s nuclear program and strengthened Iran’s position in the Gulf, in Lebanon, and possibly in Gaza as well? The neoconservatives who ran our Mideast policy couldn’t have done more to help Iran if they had been on Tehran’s payroll.

Better get used to Bolton’s line of argument, because we are going to hear it over and over and over. As the new administration wrestles with the mess that Bush & Co. bequeathed them, neoconservative stalwarts will be rewriting history at every opportunity. They will try to portray our position on January 21, 2009, as basically sound, pin every subsequent bit of bad news on Obama, and hope we all forget who we got us into this situation. I have no doubt that Obama and his team will make some mistakes of their own — and I’ll be happy to criticize them when they do — but let’s not forget who dealt them the hand they are being forced to play now.

My take on the elections? They contain some encouraging signs but also some disturbing features, notably the growing accusations of fraud and the fact that exceptional measures had to be taken to prevent violent disruptions. A substantial number of Iraqis seem to be rallying around more secular parties and around Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in particular, which may make it easier for the United States to stick to the withdrawal timetable agreed to in the Status of Forces agreement signed last November. (Don’t forget that a majority of Iraqis want us out either immediately or soon, and Maliki’s toughminded handling of the SOFA negotiations probably boosted his popularity, even among some Sunnis.) Maliki’s Dawa Party and his main coalition partners (the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq) aren’t going to be Tehran’s lackeys, but as Juan Cole points out (directly contradicting Bolton’s claims), both groups have good relations with Tehran and are viewed much more favorably by Tehran than Saddam ever was.

One aspect of the results give me pause. Iraq’s voters appear to have endorsed parties who favor a strong central state, as opposed to those who might favor greater regional autonomy. On the one hand, a unified Iraq is in the U.S. interest, and we want a central government that is strong enough to maintain order after U.S. forces withdraw. But on the other hand, the stronger the central government becomes, the more that the contending groups will want to control it and greater the potential for trouble with Iraq’s Kurds, who still want autonomy if not independence. If Iraq’s Sunni population thinks it is getting shut out of power again, then prospects for genuine political reconciliation will remain bleak and renewed violence is likely after we are gone. And that has been the $64,000 question ever since the idea of invading Iraq was first proposed: What is the political formula by which Iraq will be governed now that Saddam’s brutal dictatorship is gone?

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