America’s end in Iraq is nigh. Yesterday President Obama promised to pull all American combat troops out by next August.

Iran’s strategy for the soft conquest of its neighbor is about to pay off. It has been laying groundwork since well before the U.S. attacked in 2003, biding time until the U.S. vacates.

This, in fact, has been a major reason Washington has been so reluctant to leave. But America’s evacuation was always inevitable. Now we have a date.

Tehran’s latest aggressive moves to seize control of Iraq’s government provide a fitting backdrop to President Obama’s announcement yesterday.

Iraq’s first national election since 2005 is scheduled for this coming January 16. Iran signaled its plan to dominate that election back in August. Its leaders, including Ayatollah Khamenei, convinced its political allies in Iraq to form a single coalition, known as “the party of Iran.” The electoral success of this bloc, the Iraqi National Alliance (ina), would broaden Tehran’s influence in Iraq just as the U.S. begins to pull out.

The ina includes the remnants of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. It also includes a party founded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps: Iraq’s largest Shiite party, once known as sciri but now called the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council.

The ina is headed by former Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, who appears to be Iran’s candidate for prime minister. Jaafari’s political stance is clear from a statement he made last week while visiting Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran: “The American era is ending. We must prepare for a new era in which Islamic forces set the agenda.”

He’s right, of course. And yesterday’s announcement of the U.S. pullout came right on cue.

But Iran’s intense campaign to commandeer Iraq runs even deeper. As Iranian journalist Amir Taheri detailed last week, Tehran is pouring money into the country to support its political bloc, using hundreds of front companies. It is flooding Iraq with Iraqis, including “professional agitators,” who fled to Iran during Saddam’s reign. It is even going so far as to restrict the flow of river waters from its territory into Iraqi provinces where the party opposing the ina hopes to do best, creating drought conditions.

Middle East analyst Alireza Jafarzadeh claims to have a list of nearly 32,000 Iraqis who are on the payroll of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corp, including some inside the Maliki government. “In Iraq, where Tehran aims to establish a client state, the [Guard Corp’s] elite Qods Force is leading the ayatollahs’ destabilization campaign,” he writes.

The plain truth is, America doesn’t have near this level of engagement in Iraq. And its footprint is already shrinking.

By contrast to the deep inroads Tehran has made in Iraq’s political arena, Washington is banking on the success in January’s election of the present prime minister, Nouri al-Malaki. Malaki has decided to run separate from the ina, and is leading a non-sectarian, nationalist coalition.

But Americans who want to see him as a reliable ally have to overlook some grim realities. Though by some appearances Malaki has fallen out of favor with Iran compared to the ina candidates, he still has deep ties there. He visits regularly and calls it Iraq’s “best and most important partner in all fields.” He flies on an Iranian jet with an Iranian crew when on official business.

This is the man Washington views as its best strategic weapon for keeping a check on Iranian influence in Iraq.

Iraqis can see the writing on the wall. As Ahmadinejad says, America is a “sunset” (ofuli) power—Iran is a sunrise (tolu’ee) one. Iraqi politicians who have campaigned on building the alliance with Washington look like fools. Even Maliki is distancing himself from the U.S., largely for political reasons. “If Obama wants to run away, no Iraqi can afford to appear more pro-American than the U.S. president,” said a political adviser to Maliki. Sadly, that’s not very pro-American.

Back in August, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius quoted an Iraqi intelligence source saying what his country would look like, without American help, in five years. His words: “Iraq will be a colony of Iran.”

Given Iran’s diminutive stature relative to America’s, this is an astonishing state of affairs. As we wrote back in 2007 in our article “When America Leaves Iraq,”

Iran is in a remarkable position. After the U.S., it has far and away the strongest military in the region. Its influence reaches powerfully into Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Israel. It holds the sympathies of Shiite minorities—and even some Sunni majorities—in Arab states region-wide. It has nurtured alliances with global giants in the East and proven itself immune to pressure from the West. In Iraq, it has played its position in a way that reveals its ambition: It will be content with nothing less than, in the words of Dr. George Friedman, “an Iraqi satellite state.” And by all appearances, Iran is going to get what Iran wants. Especially once America leaves. … After five years of the world’s mightiest military waging a self-declared “war on terrorism,” the world’s premier state sponsor of terrorism is stronger than ever.

What makes this situation all the more significant is how it so precisely fulfills biblical prophecy.

Based on a pivotal passage in the book of Daniel, the Trumpet’s editor in chief forecast back in 1994—15 years ago—that Iraq would likely fall to Iran. Ever since, we have watched for it. Iran’s success was actually hastened by America’s intervention in 2003 to remove Iran’s number-one enemy, Saddam Hussein.

Today, we are on the cusp of an Iraqi election certain to produce a result hugely favorable to Iran—and Washington has announced the date by which it will withdraw its combat troops.

The American era is ending. We must prepare for a new era in which Islamic forces set the agenda.