Who raised the Kurdish flag in Kirkuk?

We are face-to-face with a brand new crisis, as if there was a shortage of tension in the region. Kurds in the Kirkuk Provincial Council have voted to raise the flag of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) along with Iraq's flag over state buildings in the province. Now - as expected - all hell is let loose.

The very first question that pops into the mind is: Who is behind this decision? According to my sources in Iraq, it is not the KRG President Masoud Barzani at all. The background of the crisis is as follows: Kirkuk Governor Najmaldin Karim is a Kurd himself and a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the party of former Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, which used to be the dominant Kurdish party in the province. And this "flag step" seems to be taken upon the initiative of the governor and a group within the PUK.

Actually PUK has been split into two groups for a while. As it is well-known, Talabani's PUK and Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) have been in longstanding rivalry. Yet most recently these two parties have been in rapprochement. And one group within the PUK supports this development, whereas another faction favors closer links with Iran, with which Talabani has always been on good terms. After all, the main objective of the recent Kurdish step seems to be the unification and consolidation of the PUK, which is under a risk of disintegration.

Another usual suspect, Iran, also seems to be behind the scenes. Apparently Tehran has maximized its sphere of influence in Iraq on the grounds of fighting against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). It is also influential in the part of Kirkuk, which is near the Iranian border. Most recently, Iran has even agreed with Baghdad and the PUK over a pipeline...