How Iran's Disputed Election is Playing in Iraq: Via Newsweek International | Newsweek.com .

Iraq's leaders are trying to say as little as possible about Iran's post-election problems—in public, anyway.

It's been hard not to laugh at some Iraqi officials' poses of complete indifference to the upheaval in Tehran. They're trying their best to pretend they don't know or care what's happening there, unwilling to commit themselves until they know which side will prevail—but the act isn't very convincing. "Nothing is going on in Iran," says Sheik Jalal al-Deen al-Sagheer, a senior parliamentarian from Iraq's ruling Shiite coalition, the Unified Iraqi Alliance. And he says it with almost perfect seriousness. Some officials do admit when pushed hard enough that "nothing" may not be the precise term for street riots in Tehran, deaths, arrests, and signs of revolt among Iran's senior clergy. But beyond that, they don't want to say anything too specific. "The Iranian election is an internal issue," the Iraqi prime minister told local journalists a few days ago. "Any confusion that happens in it will affect Iraq because it is a neighboring country and its stability matters to us."

No matter what Iraq's leaders may think of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, they don't want to antagonize Iran's Supreme Leader. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the man who makes the big decisions, and after six years of war and insurgency, Iraq is in no condition to challenge him and his armed forces.
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