CAIRO, Egypt – A vote within Iraq’s main Shiite caucus on Friday and Saturday could pave the way for a former primary school teacher who lived in Iran for nearly 30 years before 2003 to become Iraq’s new prime minister.

Prime Minister Jaafari indirectly conceded yesterday that his term as Iraq’s premier may have come to an end. With his announcement that the United Iraqi Alliance will meet on Friday to vote again for its choice as prime minister, the favorite to replace him is emerging as Ali al-Adeeb, who, according to one well-placed source in the coalition, was kicked out of the Baath Party in 1973 because he was suspected of being “too Persian.”

The likely emergence of Mr. al-Adeeb is not expected to change the willingness of the Iraqi government to work with Iran. Before Iraq’s elections, interim political leaders signed a series of agreements with Tehran on trade, security, and customs. Prior to the coalition invasion of Iraq, America worked closely with Iranian-based opposition parties, including Mr. Jaafari’s Dawa Party, in planning the post-invasion polity of Iraq.

Mr. Jaafari yesterday addressed the country in a televised speech the Associated Press described as emotional. He said,”I cannot allow myself to be an obstacle, or appear to be an obstacle,” according to the wire service. He added that Shiite lawmakers should “think with complete freedom and see what they wish to do.”

On Wednesday, Mr. Jaafari said that under no circumstances would he step down from the position that he has held for nearly a year, despite howls of protest from rival Shiite parties in Iraq, the Bush administration, and the Kurdish and Sunni political blocs in the country’s national assembly. In the last month, Mr. Jaafari has been blamed by these quarters for being the main obstacle to the formation of a unity government.

But Mr. Jaafari’s changed his mind yesterday after the U.N. envoy to Iraq traveled to Najaf and met with Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the most senior Shiite religious authority in the world. The Associated Press yesterday quoted a senior Kurdish politician as saying that the U.N. envoy, Ashraf Qazi, urged the anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to drop his support for Mr. Jaafari.

“There was a signal from Najaf,” the AP quoted Kurdish politician Mahmoud Othman as saying. Mr. Qazi’s talks in Najaf with Ayatollah al-Sistani as well as with Mr. Sadr “were the chief reason that untied the knot.”

With the knot untied, many analysts said Iraq’s fractured national assembly will proceed with forming a new government following the result of last December’s election. America’s primary strategic aim in Iraq for now is to ensure the survival of the elected government it helped create and cast the armed struggle that is plaguing the country as one between terrorists and the government in Baghdad as opposed to the Iraqi people and the American military.

“The main thing is the Sunnis and Kurds cleverly objected to the individual of Jaafari rather than the idea that the United Iraqi Alliance would pick the new prime minister,” the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Patrick Clawson, said. Mr. Clawson said the Kurdish and Sunni carefully worded objections to Mr. Jaafari allowed for rival Shiite candi dates to emerge within the main United Iraqi Alliance bloc.

However, according to Mr. Clawson the development yesterday was a setback for Mr. Sadr, who supported Mr. Jaafari. By the end of 2003, Mr. Sadr had recruited a militia and was openly confronting American soldiers, particularly in the poor Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad named for his grandfather, Sadr City. But eventually Mr. Sadr was persuaded to join the Shiite coalition and has since emerged as the most effective politician in the country, at least in terms of street credibility and the ability to summon large crowds.

A former adviser to the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, Michael Rubin, said yesterday that he did not expect the new government that would likely form to last long.

“This is going to be a race between Iraq and Italy for which government will fall sooner,” Mr. Rubin said. “It does not take much to vote no confidence in the government. At best the new candidate is the caretaker candidate.”

As for the likelihood of Mr. al-Adeeb to emerge as prime minister, Mr. Rubin said that any candidate who replaced Mr. Jaafari would have likely ended up on good terms with the mullahs who run Iran. “Anyone from Jaafari’s Dawa Party is going to be to some extent pro-Iranian,” Mr. Rubin said.