How a 92-year-old cleric silently halted Iraq's slide back into war

When a pronouncement by a religious scholar in Iran drove Iraq to the brink of civil war last month, there was only one man who could stop it: a 92-year-old Iraqi Shiite cleric who proved once again he is the most powerful man in his country.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said nothing in public about the unrest that erupted on Iraq’s streets. But government officials and Shiite insiders say it was only al-Sistani’s stance behind the scenes that halted a meltdown.

The story of Iraq’s bloodiest week in nearly three years shows the limits of traditional politics in a country where the power to start and stop wars rests with clerics — many with ambiguous ties to Iran, the Shiite theocracy next door.

The Iraqis who took to the streets blamed Tehran for whipping up the violence, which began after a cleric based in Iran denounced Iraq’s most popular politician, Moqtada al-Sadr, and instructed his own followers — including al-Sadr himself — to seek guidance from Iran’s supreme leader.

Al-Sadr’s followers tried to storm government buildings. By nightfall they were driving through Baghdad in pickup trucks brandishing machine guns and bazookas.

Armed men believed to be members of pro-Iranian militia opened fire on pro-Sadr demonstrators who threw stones. At least 30 people were killed.

And then, within 24 hours, it was over as suddenly as it started. Al-Sadr returned to the airwaves and called for calm. His armed supporters and unarmed followers began leaving the streets, the army lifted an overnight curfew and a fragile calm descended upon the capital.

To understand both how the unrest broke out and how it was quelled, Reuters spoke with nearly 20 officials from the Iraqi government, al-Sadr’s movement and rival Shiite factions seen as pro-Iranian. Most spoke on condition of anonymity.

Those interviews all pointed to a decisive intervention behind the scenes by al-Sistani, who has never held formal political office in Iraq but presides as the most influential scholar in its Shiite religious center, Najaf.

According to the officials, al-Sistani’s office ensured al-Sadr understood that unless al-Sadr called off the violence by his followers, al-Sistani would denounce the unrest.

“Sistani sent a message to Sadr, that if he will not stop the violence then Sistani would be forced to release a statement calling for a stopping of fighting — this would have made Sadr look weak, and as if he’d caused bloodshed in Iraq,” said an Iraqi government official.

Three Shiite figures based in Najaf and close to al-Sistani would not confirm that al-Sistani’s office sent an explicit message to al-Sadr. But they said it would have been clear to al-Sadr that al-Sistani would soon speak out unless al-Sadr called off the unrest.

An Iran-aligned official in the region said that if it were not for al-Sistani’s office, “Moqtada al-Sadr would not have held his press conference” that halted the fighting.

‘Betrayal’ Al-Sistani’s intervention may have averted wider bloodshed for now. But it does not solve the problem of maintaining calm in a country where so much power resides outside the political system in the Shiite clergy, including among clerics with intimate ties to Iran.

Al-Sistani, who has intervened decisively at crucial moments in Iraq’s history since the U.S. invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, has no obvious successor. Despite his age, little is known publicly about the state of his health.

Meanwhile, many of the most influential Shiite figures — including al-Sadr himself at various points in his career — have studied, lived and worked in Iran, a theocracy which makes no attempt to separate clerical influence from state power.

The violence began after Ayatollah Kadhim al-Haeri, a top ranking Iraqi-born Shiite cleric who has lived in Iran for decades, announced he was retiring from public life and shutting down his office due to advanced age. Such a move is practically unknown in the 1,300-year history of Shiite Islam, where top clerics are typically revered until death.

Al-Haeri had been anointed as al-Sadr’s movement’s spiritual adviser by al-Sadr’s father, himself a revered cleric who was assassinated by Saddam’s regime in 1999. In announcing his own resignation, al-Haeri denounced al-Sadr for causing rifts among Shiites, and called on his own followers to seek future guidance on religious matters from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — the cleric who also happens to rule the Iranian state.

Al-Sadr made clear in public that he blamed outsiders — implicitly Tehran — for al-Haeri’s intervention: “I don’t believe he did this of his own volition,” al-Sadr tweeted.

A senior Baghdad-based member of al-Sadr’s movement said al-Sadr was furious.

“Al-Haeri was al-Sadr’s spiritual guide. Al-Sadr saw it as a betrayal that aimed to rob him of his religious legitimacy as a Shiite leader, at a time when he’s fighting Iran-backed groups for power.” Al-Sadr’s officials in Najaf said the move meant al-Sadr would have to choose between obeying his spiritual guide al-Haeri and following Khamenei, or rejecting him and potentially upsetting older figures in his movement who were close to al-Sadr’s father.

Instead, al-Sadr announced his own withdrawal from politics altogether, a move that spurred his followers onto the street.

The Iranian government and al-Sadr’s office did not immediately respond to request for comment for this story. Al-Haeri’s office could not immediately be reached.

Specialists in Shiite Islam say al-Haeri’s move to shut his own office and direct his followers to back the Iranian leader would certainly have appeared suspicious in an Iraqi context, where suggestions of Iranian meddling are explosive.

“There’s strong reason to believe this was influenced by Iranian pressure — but let’s not forget that al-Haeri has also had disagreements with al-Sadr in the past,” said Marsin Alshammary, a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.

“He directs followers to Khamenei when there’s no (religious) need to do so. And it seems unlikely a person in his position would shut down his offices which are probably quite lucrative,” she said.

Violence as a tool As gunbattles raged in central Baghdad, al-Sadr stayed silent for nearly 24 hours.

During that time, Shiite religious figures across Iraq tried to convince al-Sadr to stop the violence. They were joined by Shiite figures in Iran and Lebanon, according to officials in those countries, who said pressure on al-Sadr was channeled through al-Sistani’s office in Najaf.

“The Iranians are not intervening directly. They’re stung by the backlash against their influence in Iraq and are trying to influence events from a distance,” an Iraqi government official said.

Baghdad was calm on Friday, but the deadlock remains.

Al-Sadr insists on new elections, while some Iran-backed groups want to press ahead to form a government. Clashes broke out late in the week in oil-rich southern Iraq.

The government has been largely silent. Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi said on Tuesday he would step down if violence continued, in a statement made hours after fighting had already stopped.

“Where is the prime minister, the commander-in-chief, in all of this?” said Renad Mansour of the London-based Chatham House think tank. More violence was possible, Mansour said.

“Al-Sadr’s main focus is to become the main Shiite actor in Iraq, and so he wants to go after his Shiite opponents. In Iraq, violence is one of the tools used to compete.”