EFL
The uprising of radical Shiite firebrand Moqtada al-Sadr against US-led coalition forces in Iraq has stalled. His so-called "Mahdi army" has retreated from all of the cities it briefly controlled in early April, save for the Holy city of Najaf, where it is surrounded by 2,500 coalition soldiers. What initially appeared to be an outpouring of popular support for the chubby 30-year-old rabble-rouser has proven to be immensely shallow. At the height of the uprising, some American analysts argued that Sadrâs revolt was a plot by Iran to derail Iraqâs transition to democracy. However, while there is no question that the Iranians have provided some military and economic aid to Sadr, their intentions in so doing are not clear.
Iranian Aid
In a recent interview with the London-based Arabic daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat, a senior Iranian intelligence official who defected to Britain late last year claimed that Iran has built an extensive intelligence network in Iraq, comprising hundreds of agents with a budget of roughly $70 million per month at their disposal to buy influence.[1] The former official, identified by the paper as "Hajj Saidi," did not offer a breakdown of this spending, but main recipients of official Iranian government aid are believed to be the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the Daawa party, headed by Ibrahim al-Jaafari, and the Hawza al-Ilmiya, a network of seminaries in the holy city of Najaf run by the countryâs senior Shiite clerics (marjaiyya). Significantly, all three have backed the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and Hakim and Jaafari are members of the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC). Iran denies having provided assistance to Sadr. However, while it may well be true that he does not officially receive government aid, it is evident that Sadr has received substantial funding from the quasi-governmental network of extremist Iranian "charities" that provide financing for the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement, and that some members of the Sadrist militia have been trained by Qods division of Iranâs Islamic Republic Guard Corps (IRGC). Sadrâs rise to prominence would not have been possible without this assistance. The loyalty of his core constituency was not won by fiery speeches, but by his movementâs provision of social services to the needy - the same method employed by Hezbollah to establish itself in Lebanon.
Thus, the Iranians have pursued a two-track intervention in Iraq. On the one hand, they have supported the Shiite political and religious establishment, which has endorsed Iraqâs transition to democracy and cooperated with the coalition, while on the other hand, they have supported Sadr, who has challenged the Shiite establishment and tried to mobilize the Shiite community against the occupation. The magnitude of this contradiction is not fully appreciated by most Western observers because the media has greatly understated the level of antipathy between Sadr and the Shiite establishment. Sadrâs father, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, cooperated with the Baathist regime during the 1980s and frequently denounced SCIRI as an "Iranian lackey." Then, after breaking with the regime in the 1990s, he denounced the "silent hawza" of Sistani for failing to speak out against Saddam. Although popular among the urban poor, Sadrâs father was hated by both quietist and opposition Shiite leaders. Moqtada, who lacks his fatherâs religious credentials, is hated even more. In light of the immense strain that Iranâs covert support for Sadr places on relations with its allies in the Shiite establishment, there are only three plausible explanations for it.
Iranian Intentions
The first is that Iranâs two-track policy in Iraq is a result of divisions within the Iranian ruling elite. According to Al-Sharq al-Awsat, the key officials involved in Iranâs military assistance to Sadr are Ali Agha Mohammadi, an advisor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei; Bagher Zolghadr, the assistant head of the IRGC; Ghasem Sulaymani, the commander of the Qods Corps; Murtada Radaâi, head of the IRGC intelligence service; and Hassan Kazimi Qummi, a former assistant head of the IRGC who was appointed Iranian charge dâaffaires in Iraq. The key figure overseeing financial aid to Sadr is believed to be Sayyid Kazim al-Haâiri, an influential hard-line cleric. Sadrâs backers in the Iranian security and clerical establishment operate independently of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, presumably with at least tacit support from Khamenei.
Why Sadrâs backers would choose to authorize an uprising now is not entirely clear. Some analysts have suggested that the upsurge in Iraqâs Sunni insurgency may have convinced them that conditions were ripe for a popular uprising against the coalition. This is doubtful. It is unlikely that the Iranians somehow imagined that masses of Shiites would risk life and limb for Sadr. Another possibility is that Sadrâs backers recognized that their protege was incapable of fomenting a popular uprising, but authorized it in pursuit of a lesser objective. "We may be unable to drive the Americans out of Iraq, but we can drive George W. Bush out of the White House," Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah is said to have recently boasted. A more likely reason is that Sadrâs backers feared that a coalition crackdown on their proxy was imminent. In the weeks prior to the uprising, the CPA closed Sadrâs newspaper for 60 days, raided money-changing shops that funnel Iranian money to him, and arrested one of his senior aides, while press leaks indicated that an arrest warrant had been issued for Sadr for his role in the April 2003 murder of moderate Shiite cleric Abdul Majid Khoei. The London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat quoted an Iraqi security source as saying that the coalitionâs expulsion of Qummi - Sadrâs Iranian overseer in Baghdad - likely contributed to the onset of the uprising. A second plausible explanation for this two-track intervention is that Iran is hedging its bets. If Iraqâs transition to democracy is successful, Iran would be able to exercise influence through SCIRI and Dawa; if it is derailed, Iran will have good relations with a political movement that is untarnished by association with the failed political process, capable of seizing control over the Shiite heartland and, if necessary, fighting coalition troops or resurgent Sunni Arab forces.
A possible explanation is that Iranian support for Sadr is intended neither to derail the democratic process nor to cultivate an alternate Shiite political contender in the event of its failure, but to exert pressure on the Shiite political establishment. The refusal of most mainstream political and religious Shiite leaders to express unmitigated criticism of Sadr (in spite of their immense personal distaste for him) underscores how easily they can be intimidated by anyone who raises the banner of anti-Americanism. Iranian support for Sadr may be, above all, motivated by the desire to control if and when this banner is raised during the political transition process. |
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