With sectarian violence continuing in Iraq, I decided to call up Vali Nasr, who is an expert on the region, and who has written extensively about Shias in the Middle East. Nasr, the Dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins, is also the author of The Shia Revival and, more recently, The Dispensable Nation.

During our conversation we discussed Nouri al-Maliki's political standing, Iran's role in choosing the next Iraqi government, and whether nuclear negotiations will destroy any chance of an American-Iranian alliance.

Isaac Chotiner: It seems like the issue that everyone is focusing on is, for the long term, is how to get Maliki out of there.

Vali Nasr: I would put this in perspective. I think there’s no doubt that leadership matters here, but it’s not everything. It’s being treated as a silver bullet solution to Iraq’s problems. So I would say Maliki at some level is personally sectarian, but he also is reflecting the sectarian anxieties and fears of his community. He’s not alone. There’s a lot of support in his community for the purge of Sunnis out of the military. These guys are not stupid.

In some ways, yes he is a sectarian leader. I’ve seen a lot of evidence of it: He harbors fear against Sunnis, he’s deeply, deeply worried about a Sunni restoration in Baghdad, and he has been since 2008. The way he sees it is that we’re not there to protect a young Shia government, the whole Sunni region doesn’t recognize the government, doesn’t treat Shiites well, and is also supporting Sunnis who were never truly reconciled to the shift in power. He began to behave like many other people, like many new regimes do, and to try to exclude those who they fear and try to amass power. And he did it very well and the consequence is that he did alienate more Sunnis than he needed to. But the more the Sunnis resorted to extremism, the more Maliki felt in his own mind that he was being vindicated.