Sadr hints at coalition with Abadi
InfluentIal clerIc seeks to put ‘IraqIs fIrst’ In any new set up
baghdad — Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi met Moqtada Al Sadr on Saturday, less than 24 hours after the Shia cleric’s bloc was declared winner of Iraq’s parliamentary election, the clearest sign yet they could work together to form a coalition.
“During our meeting, we agreed to work together and with other parties to expedite the process of forming a new Iraqi government,” Abadi said at a joint press conference.
“It will be a strong government, capable of providing to its citizens services, security and economic prosperity.”
Sadr, a long-time adversary of the United States who also opposes Iranian influence in Iraq, cannot become prime minister because he did not run in the election.
However, his bloc’s victory puts him in a position to have a strong say in negotiations. His Sairoon electoral list captured 54 parliamentary seats, 12 more than Abadi’s.
“Our door is open to anyone as long as they want to build the nation, and that it be an Iraqi decision,” Sadr said.
A bloc led by Hadi Al Amiri, one of the most powerful figures in Iraq, came in second. Amiri, who leads an umbrella of paramilitary groups, has maintained close ties with Iran for decades. —
Iraq’s Muqtada Al Sadr, the maverick Shia cleric whose political coalition beat out Iran’s favoured candidates to come in first in national elections, says he wants to form a government that puts Iraqis first.
The electoral commission announced early Saturday that the leader, who has long spoken out against both Iranian influence in Iraq, had defeated his establishment rivals.
Al Sadr — who is remembered for leading an insurgency against US forces after the 2003 invasion — did not run for a seat himself and is unlikely to become prime minister, but will command a significant number of seats and has already begun informal talks about government formation.
Salah Al Obeidi, a spokesman for Al Sadr’s Saeroon political bloc, said that Iraq’s sovereignty was going to be the new government’s “guiding principle.”
“We warn any other country that wants to involve itself in Iraqi politics not to cross the Iraqi people,” he said.
However, even as Al Sadr is in position to nominate a prime minister and set the political agenda for the next four years, he will find his choices limited by Iran.
Iran has a direct line with some of Iraq’s most powerful politicians, and it is trying to rally them as a bloc to undercut Al Sadr.
Al Sadr’s rise threatens Iran’s claim to speak on behalf of Iraq’s Shias, a precedent that could fuel independent Shia movements elsewhere. Also at stake are top ministerial posts — political appointments that are a source of patronage and police and military power.
Al Sadr himself has kept a relatively low public profile. But in a public relations move that appeared to be directed at Iran, he appeared on Thursday with rival cleric Ammar Al Hakim, who has drifted away from Iran’s orbit in recent years, to say the two men share similar visions for the next government.
Tehran has dispatched its top regional military commander, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, to pull together a coalition to counterbalance Al Sadr, according to an Iraqi Shia militia commander who is familiar with the meetings. Al Sadr’s relationship with Iran is a complicated one. Though he has maintained close ties with Iran’s political and religious leadership, in recent years he has denounced the flow of Iranian munitions to Shia militias in Iraq, all the while maintaining his own so-called Peace Brigades in the holy city of Samarra, north of Baghdad.
Al Sadr’s former Mehdi Army militia, which spearheaded an insurgency against the US, clashed violently with the Iran-backed Badr Organisation last decade.
Al Sadr has said he wants the militias absorbed into the national security forces, a move Iran would find difficult to accept.
Al Sadr seems inclined to woo Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi, who is seen as a centrist when it comes to Iranian and US interests, and who appears to be wavering between Al Sadr and Al Amiri.
But Tehran still holds considerable sway with Al Abadi’s Al Nasr bloc, which includes several Iranaligned figures, including one newly minted deputy who has come under US sanctions for allegedly financing Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
Iran’s political allies in Iraq will try to pressure those figures into deserting Al Abadi and collapsing an Al Sadr alliance if the formulation is not to Tehran’s liking, said a Western diplomat who has been speaking to the sides involved. The diplomat spoke on the condition of anonymity because of media regulations. Hanging above the talks is the implied threat by all sides to mobilise their followers — and militias — if they feel they are being shortchanged. The collective could be to push Al Sadr’s bloc towards a broader governing coalition.
His top showing at the ballot box means the next prime minister will have to introduce a civil service law that Sadr has championed as an antidote to Iraq’s endemic corruption, said Kirk Sowell, the publisher of Inside Iraqi Politics. —
Iraq and reforms have won with your votes...we will not disappoint you...the blame, all the blame is on those who failed Iraq. our door is open to anyone as long as they want to build the nation, and that it be an Iraqi decision Muqtada Al Sadr, Leader of Saeroon Alliance