‘Muqtada! Muqtada!’

Conor Boyes ✭
Sep 6, 2018 · 3 min read
For all the bluster and sanctions, it’s not Trump that the Iranian state fears, it’s Iraq’s incoming nationalist government.

Sadr wasn’t supposed to win the 2018 election. It was supposed to be one of the established power-brokers, either from the private armies that sprang up in the aftermath of the Iraqi military’s collapse (collectively known at the Popular Mobilisation Forces, although in reality most of them are the same organisations, and sometimes people, that were blowing up American troops back in 2004–6), or from the ruling clique of politicians like al-Maliki or al-Abadi.

However he did, and it’s scaring the bejesus out of Tehran.

Although the inclusion of the idiosyncratic Marxist-Leninists of the Iraqi Communist Party in Sadr’s electoral coalition got the most criticism from Tehran, actually Sadr’s strongly economic populist and nationalist stances are far more worrying to the Iranian government. Iraq isn’t a client state of Iran, but Iran had grown accustomed to replacing the United States as the most important international player in domestic Iraqi politics, helping to set up a swathe of new parties and militant groups (that one of the largest pro-Iranian private armies in Iraq adopted Hezbollah’s flag and name should tell you something), as well as providing goods and foreign investment to the cash-strapped Baghdad government. Before the election, Iraq was planning on refining its oil in Kermanshah, and had signed a contract worth $7bn for Iranian technical and engineering services. With the war in Syria winding down, Iran has to start looking for ways to generate enough finances to help reconstruct the shattered Syrian state, and Iraq seemingly provided the solution.

Now Sadr’s electoral success has up-ended that entire strategy.

Seemingly subscribing to a fairly Bismarckian view of foreign policy, Sadr has attempted to forge alliances with the Shia-phobic monarchy in Saudi Arabia, despite roundly condemning the Saudis back in 2015 for invading Yemen. While this was fairly shocking to a lot of Western correspondents, it really shouldn’t have been. Sadr is the guy who sent convoys of aid to Sunni Islamists and Ba’athists holding out in Fallujah against the Americans, when both his Mahdi Army and the Ba’athist remnants were fighting the same enemy. That the Ba’athists were the ones who had murdered his father, and the Islamists considered him something close to vermin didn’t seem to unduly deter him much then, and while I can’t imagine having to cosy up to MBS is Sadr’s favourite pastime (it certainly doesn’t look like it), he’s obviously come to the conclusion that having a regional counterweight to Iran is worth it.

It’s all paid off for Sadr politically. He’s cobbled together a large enough parliamentary bloc to almost have effective control over the Iraqi government (negotiations have stalled, but there aren’t any rivals who can get anywhere close to a majority in parliament), and although Sadr himself won’t have any official position, he can leave that up to the bits of the Iraqi establishment he’s convinced or cajoled to come over to his camp. The current Iraqi PM, al-Abadi will probably continue on in his position, although far weaker than he was before, as well as the likely fall guy if anything goes badly. ‘Fatah’ (no relation to the PLO faction), will also get a seat at the table, which is probably an attempt at mollifying Iran.

What’s most interesting about the current riots in Basra and Bagdad are the targets of the rioters. The PMF facilities and pro-Iranian party offices were torched, while those of Sadr’s parliamentary alliance, Sairoon, were miraculously spared. While that might be a reflection of the riots’ primarily economic character (working electricity and running water are the main demands so far), Sadr’s taken a fairly indulgent line towards the protests, commenting that “Basra is our pride and dignity. It’s Iraq’s beating heart.” Whether or not that points to Sadr using the protests as a way to leverage himself as the only viable conciliator between the government and rioters, or a deeper connection between the two is unclear. Although Sadr’s tended to use non-violent protests in the past (the march on the Green Zone in 2016 springs to mind), he’s also the former leader of one of Iraq’s largest militias, so Gandhian pacifist he is not.

    Conor Boyes ✭

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