[..]With the ascendancy of Muqtada and Mutlak in the fragmented political spectrum, the calls for American troops to leave Iraq can be expected to become more strident. In the new climate, the incoming parliament itself may well make such a formal demand on the Americans. The hurried visit by US Vice President Dick Cheney to Baghdad on Sunday, his first ever since the US invasion in 2003, underscores the disarray surfacing in Washington.

Iran has, therefore, every reason to be pleased with the outcome of the election. Tehran sees that Iraq is now irreversibly on the verge of profound change, and transition is already in the air. The US is increasingly finding that it must come up with a clear plan to withdraw its troops from Iraq. As prominent Lebanese political observer Rami Khouri wrote on Saturday, "Starting the American military retreat from Iraq is important because American troops will continue to be a divisive and destabilizing force, just as the American military presence in Saudi Arabia after the 1991 war was a major provocation leading to Osama bin Laden-type resistance and terror."

Khouri (who cannot be described even remotely as "anti-American" on the intellectual plane) suggested 18 months as a "target date" for Washington to pull out its troops from Iraq. Tehran is conscious that any American withdrawal from Iraq cannot be summarily done. It will have to be preceded by a broader regional understanding over Iraq's stability and cohesion, which inevitably involves Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Equally so, new regional security arrangements also become necessary.

No less important for Tehran were the local Palestinian elections last week in West Bank cities. According to the preliminary results, the Islamic militant group Hamas won resounding victories. Coming as it does barely six weeks ahead of crucial parliamentary elections (scheduled for January 25), this development significantly impacts on the Palestinian problem and also alters the scope and dimensions of Middle East politics as a whole.

Hamas remains committed to the destruction of Israel, and is considered a terrorist group by Israel, the US and the European Union. The implications for the tepid peace process with Israel are bound to be serious. An existential dilemma forthwith arises for the "international community": can it any longer remain myopic and exclude Hamas from the the Middle East's political landscape?

But, more importantly, along with the significant showing by the Muslim Brotherhood in last month's elections in Egypt and the incremental "Islamization" of Iraq that is unmistakably under way (and that will get a fillip from the Iraqi elections), Hamas' emergence at the forefront of Palestinian politics signifies a huge eruption of popular disenchantment with the prevailing governance systems. Simply put, Islamism has placed itself in the vanguard of the Middle East's democratization - like "liberation theology" did at one time in Latin America.

There was a great deal of political symbolism in the fact that Hamas' chief, Khaled Meshaal, happened to be visiting Tehran as the results of the Palestinian elections became known. (Interestingly, Rafsanjani was among those in the top echelons of the Iranian leadership who received Meshaal.)

The Hamas leader seized the opportunity to hold a press conference, during which he said: "If Israel attacks Iran, then Hamas will widen and step up its confrontation of Israelis inside Palestine ... Hamas and other Islamic groups will stand by Iran's side. We are defenders of Iran's obvious right [to have a nuclear program] ... Iran is our source of pride." [...]