Over the weekend Muqtada al-Sadr, the young Shiite cleric, released a statement in which he stated that if the violence towards and the targeting of his followers by Prime Minister Maliki’s U.S. backed forces does not stop, he will release his soldiers from the recently renewed cease-fire to wage an “open war until liberation.”

Essentially what Al-Sadr is saying is that he would flip the switch from defense to offense. And the offense would not stop until Iraq is free from United States occupation and oppression by the Iraqi government.

The relative stabilization and progress in Iraq, so often eluded to by Republican politicians back in Washington, was largely tied to Al-Sadr’s compliance with the cease-fire which dated back to last August and was extended past what would have been the recent February expiration.

Whether or not U.S. and Iraqi forces could handle an all out uprising by Al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army is a question that can be debated, however, it is a certainty that neither Washington nor the leadership in Baghdad could afford the political fallout from such an uprising.

Maliki’s government has proved itself to be weak and it is clear that after Maliki’s embarrassing defeat in Basra, Iran smells blood. And while Iran is not working directly with Al-Sadr, the Mehdi Army’s rogue elements are giving Iranian interests the conduit needed to test the waters.

It is important to remember that Al-Sadr followers/supporters do currently hold 30 seats in the Iraq parliament. And as he continues to stand up to the American occupation, he continues to gain popularity in Iraq and would likely gain more seats if the cease-fire would simply continue until elections in October. This would prop the front door of the Iraqi government wide open to Iranian interests while at the same time slamming the back door on U.S. interests while the government is run by an openly anti-American faction of the Shiite sect. This will not be tolerated, thus the current offensive.

It will be interesting to watch just how much violence Al-Sadr will tolerate before he completely lifts the cease-fire, because he knows just as well as both U.S. and Iraqi forces that once the cease-fire is lifted it will be very difficult to reverse the violence that will surely escalate.

In the chaos and violence that would result from an end to the cease-fire Iran might very well find their way into Iraq but not as the Bush administration has painted them as the force stirring up the violence in Iraq, but rather as the role they played in Basra, as the mediator.