The United States and Iraq continue to negotiate about how long U.S. troops will be allowed to stay in the country they invaded in 2003. The two sides seemed to have agreed to a deal that would require U.S. troops to come home by 2011, but influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr rebelled, his supporters organized massive protests, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki lost the political courage to agree to the deal and push it through Parliament.

Since the U.S. truly wants both sides to agree to a deal, it is now putting severe pressure on the Iraqi government to agree to a compromise.

According to the latest reports, the United States threatened Iraq that it would cut off all aid, all weapon deliveries, all training of Iraqi security personnel, if Baghdad would continue opposing a two year long presence of U.S. troops.

Although Iraq is certainly owned by Iraqis and not by the United States, as conservative blogger Jules Crittenden correctly put it, the U.S. is right not to give in too easily. Iraq is trying to use the tyranny of the weak to its advantage, which should be opposed by the United States, of course. In the end, both sides are fighting to protect their own interests.

Furthermore, although the U.S. should leave if Iraqi politicians truly want it to do so, it is not 100% clear whether this is the case. A lot of the actions and words of al-Maliki and others can be explained as posturing. They are required to publicly rebel against the U.S. every now and then in order to remain somewhat popular. If they would behave like puppets of the United States, they would lose popular support, and extremists on both sides would be able to recruit more members, possibly resulting in yet more chaos and perhaps even in a new civil war, leading to the take-over of one group of extremists, probably Shiites.

One can, however, wonder whether the U.S. should cut off all programs aimed at training Iraqi security forces if Baghdad does not agree to a deal that would prolong the U.N. mandate to 2011. After all, if the Iraqi government is not able to fight extremists, they will take over, which is certainly not in the interest of the United States.

Since Washington undoubtedly also realizes the above, we can safely assume that both sides are bluffing and posturing right now, which is logical in any negotiation process. Both sides use threats, even though they know they will never turn those threats into policies.

Meanwhile, Washington would be wise to push through a deal before Obama becomes president. If he wins the election, he will not fight for a long presence in Iraq if doing so if necessary to leave a stable and peaceful rather than unstable Iraq behind.