Maleki Forms Broad Coalition - A New Challenge To Syria/Iran & Focus On WuF.

Iraq's Shi'ite PM Nuri al-Maleki on Oct. 1 announced on a new broad coalition called State of the Law (SoL) which will run against former Shi'ite allies in the Jan. 16 elections, raising the prospect of intra-sectarian strife. In a speech in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, Maleki left the door open to working with other political groups. But on Oct. 2 Reuters quoted "his allies" as saying the SoL had no desire to join a rival coalition headed by other powerful Shi'ite parties formed in late August 2009 and called the Iraqi National Alliance (INA).

The INA was engineered in Iran, with Tehran having long financed and armed its main Shi'ite parties. It is strongly backed by Syria. The KRG, now emerging again as "the king-maker" in Iraqi politics, is being courted by both INA and Maleki's SoL. The KRG is most likely to lean in favour of the coalition which will accept the demands and projects of Kurdistan, such as the EU/US-backed Nabucco venture to pump natural gas to Europe from the Caspian and the Arab region (mainly from Iraq and possibly also from Qatar (see ood3IrqNabuccoSep28-09).

Maleki, now described as least popular among the key parties in Iraq and challenging both the Alawite/Ba'thist regime of Syria and the militarised theocracy of Iran, said in his Oct. 1 speech: "The birth of State of the Law represents a historic milestone and development in establishing a modern Iraq built on peaceful, nationalist principlesfar from the politics of marginalisation, discrimination and tyranny".

Ambitions for such a turning point for Iraq's fragile democracy will be tested in the country's first general election since 2005, which will take place just as US troops prepare to withdraw and local forces seek to defeat a stubborn Neo-Salafi-led insurgency. Under al-Qaeda's local command, this insurgency now has operations bases in Iran and Syria. Iraq's north-western province of Ninewa, bordering with Syria, and north-eastern province of Diyala, bordering with Iran, are the main regions for this insurgency out of which suicide bombers can attack almost anywhere in Iraq.

There has been a temporary alliance between Iran's ruling Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) and the Neo-Salafi groups. But the Iran-led axis of anti-US/anti-Israel forces in the GME is beginning to change colours, with its key player Syria rejoining the Arab fold which is led by a Saudi-headed Sunni front in the Muslim World. For its part, Iran is offering the prospect of the IRGC enriching uranium for its nuclear programme on Russia soil, under a joint Moscow-Washington initiative.

Lebanon is one of the places where the real intentions of the IRGC will be tested in the coming months, as this is where the most important branch of the Iranian theocracy, Hizbullah, is based. Hizbullah is carefully watching what is happening between the US and each of Syria and Iran (see news14LebHizbGME-Oct5-09).

A smooth vote on Jan. 16 may help consolidate security gains in Iraq, which are key to Maleki's chances of winning a second term as PM. But many fear that friction among the Shi'ite parties could spark greater violence in Iraq. The fate of Maleki depends on security. Less security means rapid decline in Maleki's popularity in the months ahead.

Maleki's SoL is betting on US support. But the American influence in this country is in steady decline, while Washington is concentrating on the AfPak front with many Congress members backing proposals for a more rapid shift of US combat forces from Iraq to Afghanistan, with the latter to be replaced by fresh troops from the US before reinforcements reach the AfPak front.

Maleki's faction of al-Da'wa al-Islamiya movement, which until a few months ago was part of a broad Shi'ite alliance that swept to power after the 2005 polls and used to dominate the majority in Iraq, now is being challenged at least by two rival factions of the Da'wa which have joined the INA. The INA is headed by the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), the largest Shi'ite party in Iraq which was founded in Iran in the early 1980s. One of its co-founders is Iraqi-born Ayatullah Mahmoud Shahroudi, who until recently was Iran's Chief Justice.

In order to understand what is happening in Iran and what will happen to Iraq in consequence, a brief review of the Iranian situation is necessary, especially in the case of Shahroudi and the SIIC's current and future fortunes in both Iran and Iraq.

Shahroudi's star in Iran has been eclipsed by the newly-appointed Chief Justice Muhammad-Sadeq Larijani, a young and middle-ranking theologian suddenly promoted to ayatollah by the theocracy's Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. The man behind Shahroudi's eclipse was Ayatullah Muhammad-Taqi Musbah-Yazdi, the spiritual guide of the IRGC leadership's most extremist faction. Usually, it takes at least two decades for a hujjat ul-Islam, such as Larijani, to become ayatullah. One of the "five famous Larijani brothers", Muhammad-Sadeq is a younger brother of Iran's parliament Speaker Ali Larijani.

The sons of the late Grand Ayatullah Amoli, who used to be very close to the late Imam Ruhullah Khomeini, the founder of Iran's theocracy, the Larijani Five were until recently close to ex-president Ayatullah Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani and were strongly opposed to Ayatullah Musbah-Yazdi who, among many other things, is the head of the Hujjatiyah, a highly-secretive and supremacist society which believes in the "16 phenomena" that will cause the 12th and last holiest Imam in Ja'farism, al-Mahdi, to return to Earth to liberate Jerusalem, redeem his faithful and rule the world in justice). Musbah-Yazdi believes one of these phenomena is a universal chaos caused by an atomic war - hence to him the importance of Iran having nuclear weapons, with the IRGC controlling Iran's nuclear programme.

Al-Mahdi, known as "al-Hujjat", was a child who disappeared in Samarra' - now a mostly Sunni city north of Baghdad - during the 9th century AD. The Ja'faris believe al-Mahdi is in a state of occultation. He represents God on Earth. Imam Khomeini's Wilayat ul-Faqih (WuF) concept of rule was applied in Iran as a temporary arrangement from the 1980s. At the time, the Hujjatiyah was banned in Iran. But Musbah-Yazdi revived it almost immediately after Imam Khomeini died in 1989 and was succeeded by Khamenei by the freely-elected Assembly of Experts (AoE). Consisting of 86 ranking ayatollahs, the AoE elects its chairman for a two-year term.

With its current members elected directly by the Iranian people in mid-December 1996, the AoE which elects the supreme leader, has the power to assess his performance in two bi-annual meetings, and theoretically can have him replaced if he is proven to have violated basic WuF rules. Rafsanjani was in 2007 elected as chairman of the AoE. Rafsanjani, who believes Khamenei has violated WuF rules on various occasions, has for sometime favoured a three-theologian council to act as an alternative to a single supreme leader, an intent strongly opposed by both Khamenei and Musbah-Yazdi.

The last AoE bi-annual meeting was opened by Rafsanjani on Sept. 22, 2009, when he called for a compromise formula to end the worst crisis the theocracy was facing in its 30-year history over the outcome of the June 12 presidential elections. But on Sept. 23, when he found that his draft resolution had been replaced overnight by the supremacist allies of Musbah-Yazdi - his arch-enemy and deputy chairman of the AoE - Rafsanjani boycotted that meeting's closing session. Instead, supremacist Ayatullah Ahmad Khatami (no relation to reformist ex-president Muhammad Khatami) read another resolution passed by the majority of the 86-member body which gave full support for Khamenei.

A highly-placed Iranian source has told APS that Rafsanjani's draft had been intended to give Khamenei a "last warning" that the AoE could review the supreme leader's status if he failed to resolve the crisis on the basis on a compromise formula. But Musbah-Yazdi and his supremacist allies on Sept. 23 said "the Supreme Leader is discovered, not elected", and therefore must be obeyed unconditionally.

Subsequently, Chief Justice "Ayatullah" Larijani accused Rafsanjani of treason and attacked Hujjat ul-Islam Hassan Khomeini, a Qom-based grand-son of the late imam being groomed to become supreme leader and one of the proposed supreme council's three members. By then, the crisis had turned into a war between the Hujjatiyah and Khomeinism and had caused a serious split within IRGC's leadership. That moved Iran closer to the danger of civil war, with the extremist faction of IRGC's leadership said to be blackmailing Khamenei, the Larijani Five, Rafsanjani and others opposed to or not very enthusiastic about the "re-election" of President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, a puppet of Musbah-Yazdi who's ambition is to become supreme leader.

Maleki, fully aware of what is happening in Iran, is also betting on support from the Shi'ite Hawza of Najaf which follows the quietist school in Ja'farism and is opposed to the WuF concept being applied in Iran. The Najaf Hawza (Ja'fari religious authority), lead by Iranian-born Grand Ayatullah Ali al-Sistani, is regarded universally as the highest theological seat in Ja'farism (see background in sbme6IrqFocusOnIrn'sWuF-Jun29-09, as well as rim1-IrqIrnCrisisJul27-09 and rim2IrqIRGC-Aug17-09, rim3IrqShi'aBlcSep7-09).

Maleki is determined to have the KRG-ruling parties, the KDP of Kurdistan President Mas'oud Barzani and PUK of Iraq's President Jalal Talabani join his SoL. He is equally as keen on getting the biggest number of Sunni Arab parties and politicians to be part of his coalition. Already, the SoL includes more well-known Sunni Arabs and leaders of other minorities than the INA. Maleki, whose Da'wa faction is part of a movement founded in the 1950s to increase the role of Shi'ites in Iraqi politics, is trying to rebrand himself as a nationalist and claim credit for a sharp drop in violence in Iraq.

Maleki and his coalition allies have vowed repeatedly to battle Neo-Salafi insurgents and Shi'ite militias and to keep party agendas out of local security forces, which are seen as highly politicised. Another reason Maleki has spurned the INA is a belief that it gave the SIIC too much clout relative to the party's popular support, which has ebbed since 2005 as Iraqis blamed dominant Iran-backed Islamist parties for corruption and a failure to deliver basic services.

Maleki declined to join the INA mainly because it refused to guarantee him a second term if it wins the Jan. 16 elections. Maliki, who has shaken an image of weakness to emerge as a forceful figure in Iraq, alarmed his Shi'ite political partners when he made wide gains in provincial polls on Jan. 31, 2009.

The split in Maleki's and SIIC's Shi'ite bloc - the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) which now is the biggest in parliament - is certain to boost tensions in a country still plagued by violence and curruption. Yet it could also mark a maturing of Iraq's democracy if there is a credible shift away from the sectarian and identity politics which has defined Iraq's legislative system to date.

The INA includes the movement of the fiery anti-American mullah Muqtada al-Sadr, now studying theology in Qom, and a few Kurds and Sunnis - but not the KDP and PUK which remain at a distance from both the INA and SoL. The SoL includes Maleki's Da'wa faction, Shi'ite Kurds, Sunni Arab tribal leaders, independents headed by Shi'ite Deputy Parliamentar Speaker Khaled al-Attiyah, and the Iraqi Competence Group, led by the government's Shi'ite spokesman Dr Ali al-Dabbagh.

KRG's PM-Designate Saleh on Oct. 2 told al-'Arabiya the next Iraqi government will be "crucial for the future of a strong and united state of Iraq. He said the KRG's main interest was to see Iraq become a strong, united state where democracy flourished and the people were proud to be Iraqi citizens, rather than sectarian, tribal or ideological figures.

US Vice-President Joseph Biden, the man in charge of this country for the Obama administration, visited Iraq on Sept. 15-17 and met with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad as well as the heads of Kurdistan in the north. Among other things, he heard a complaint from the top US commander in Iraq, Army Lt-Gen Raymond Odierno, that the Obama administration's focus on the AfPak front was affecting the country of which he was in charge. He told the VP the Iran-led axis of anti-US and anti-Israel forces in the GME was using Iraq for the smuggling of weapons and drugs across the whole region.

An APS source in Baghdad on Sept. 19 said Gen Odierno warned Biden that the 130,000 US troops in Iraq were in potential danger. He said the most serious problem facing Iraq now was corruption, mainly at the Defence and Interior Ministries, and next was the conflict between Baghdad and Erbil over oil-rich Kirkuk and other territories in the north.

The source said Biden and Odierno agreed that the UN must solve the Baghdad-KRG problem, its expert in Iraq having offered different options from which these two parties could choose - a message the VP gave both Baghdad and Erbil before leaving the country. They also agreed that Iraq must join the Arab Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) states in their collective drive against the smuggling of arms and drugs. The GCC campaign is being complemented by the work of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to improve co-operation among the member-states by an exchange of information on the trafficking of drugs and weapons across the region.

The source said there was a common GCC and UNODC suspicion that the main provider of such weapons was Iran's ruling IRGC and its external arm, the Quds Brigades, and its Lebanon branch Hizbullah. The latter has a cell in Egypt, where it is facing trial for the smuggling of weapons to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip (see Part 49 in sbme3IrqGME-ArmsSmuglSep21-09).

The main source of the drugs is Afghanistan. The source said the Taliban there, in co-operation with local agents of the Quds Brigades, had established routes for the smuggling of drugs to the GCC region, Iraq, Turkey and Central Asia. The source said Iraq had become the main bridge between Iran and each of the GCC area, Syria, Turkey - the latter being the route to the EU and the Russia-led Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) - and Yemen.