WASHINGTON — Iraq’s premier, due in Tehran today for bilateral talks with Iranian leaders, may be hedging his bets after another round of fruitless talks between American and Iranian diplomats in Baghdad.

Prime Minister al-Maliki is scheduled to be in Tehran just days after Secretary of State Rice and Defense Secretary Gates completed a tour of Sunni Arab capitals meant to shore up a Sunni alliance against the fundamentalist Shiite regime that governs Iran. In their tour, both Bush administration officials touted a proposed arms sale to the Gulf states, Egypt, and Israel, aimed at countering what Mr. Gates and Ms. Rice have called a rising Iranian influence in the Middle East.

The Iraqi prime minister’s visit to Iran this month could be considered a slap in the face to President Bush. Mr. Maliki owes his position to the elections America’s 2003 invasion made possible, as well as to the American Embassy’s behind-the-scenes maneuvering in 2006 to oust the first choice of the Shiite alliance, Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

The stakes of the Iran visit are particularly high after five secular Sunni Cabinet ministers announced that they would boycott Cabinet meetings. The religious Sunni bloc, Tawafuq, which includes parliamentarians still tied to the insurgency, announced a walkout last week.
When asked at a briefing yesterday whether the State Department still has confidence in Mr. Maliki, a State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, demurred. America is “standing by his side,” he said, prompting a reporter to remark that it is “kind of conspicuous that you’re not willing to say that you’re confident in him, even if you’re standing by his side.”

“It’s not a matter of, you know, getting the Good Housekeeping seal of approval from the United States government or any other government,” Mr. McCormack replied. “Ultimately, this government has to act on behalf of the Iraqi people. Certainly, we have an interest in seeing that government act.”

Mr. Maliki, whose political party, Dawa, was funded and harbored by Iran in the 1980s and 1990s, has distanced himself from Tehran in recent months. He also managed to keep the Shiite coalition together after the defection of ministers affiliated with the party of a firebrand Shiite cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr. And Mr. Maliki has never called publicly for a timeline for American troops to leave Iraq, distinguishing himself both from Mr. Sadr and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

But in other matters, Mr. Maliki has disappointed Mr. Bush, who placed so much confidence in him last December, after National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley questioned in a leaked memo whether the premier had the capacity or the will to reach a political compact with Iraq’s Sunni and Kurdish parties.

Mr. Maliki, for example, is said to have promoted generals in the new Iraqi army who draw up target lists for battalions and units comprised almost exclusively of alleged Sunni terrorists. Mr. Maliki also has done little to move forward with draft consensus language on a law to divide Iraq’s oil revenues with the population. According to American military officers, he has maintained some ties with members of Mr. Sadr’s Mahdi army, a militia that has tangled with American forces at times since the surge strategy began in January.

With General David Petraeus scheduled to appear next month with Ambassador Ryan Crocker before Congress to give an assessment of the strategy, there is little confidence in Washington that Mr. Maliki will pull anything off. One administration official said yesterday Mr. Maliki may even preside over the dissolution of his own government. “The odds are now 50–50 whether the current government survives,” the official, who requested anonymity, said. “Some people are starting to look at Plan B on the political side.”

As for America’s own diplomacy with the Iranians in Iraq, Mr. McCormack yesterday reported no breakthrough. “It is an established channel of communication, and we will see in the future as to whether or not it is a useful channel of communication,” he said. Another State Department official, speaking anonymously, added: “Absolutely no one is holding their breath.”