Tehran Calling

Juan Cole is usually the first to ominously indicate that more things change, the more they change, yet today he defers to history as evidence that the status quo is holding steady:

It is possible but not likely that Muqtada would go to Iran. He and his family have endlessly made fun of the al-Hakim clerical leaders for fleeing to Iran to escape persecution by Saddam Hussein, when the al-Sadrs insisted on staying in Iraq. Muqtada's father was killed in 1999 by Saddam's agents because he stayed and gave defiant sermons. So it would be a lot of crow to eat for Muqtada to go to Iran to escape the Americans. Plus, there is nothing in the Iranian press about him showing up in Qom, and an Iranian diplomat denied the story. Without more and better evidence, this account strikes me as suspect, and I would guess that if Muqtada disappeared, it is inside Iraq.

And so a radical Shiite cleric is apparently too committed to principle to engage in a little butt-saving hypocrisy. Cole cites an interview Sadr gave to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica suggesting that while he had moved his family to an undisclosed location Sadr himself was still very much reachable, presumably in Iraq. Yet the English translation of that interview doesn't say how Sadr was contacted, or, if it was in person, where. As to eating crow, one need only parse the almost humble tone the Mahdi avatar employed in answering questions about his chances in any hypothetical face-off with the multinational forces:

Some claim that the army and police have been extensively infiltrated by your men and that the Marines by themselves will never manage to disarm you.

It's really exactly the other way around: it is our militia which is swarming with spies. It doesn't take much doing to infiltrate an army of the people. It is precisely those people who by soiling themselves with unworthy actions have discredited the Mahdi. There are at least four armies ready to unleash themselves against us. A "shadow" about which nobody ever talks, trained in great secrecy in the deserts of Jordan by the American armed forces. On top of that, there is the private army of Allawi, the unbeliever who will soon succeed Maliki, which stands ready at the al-Muthanná military airport. On top of that, there is the Kurdish peshmerga and finally the regular American troops.

No one with a sustainable hubris or handle on power says that his organization is swarming with spies. He just sets about eliminating them. (This is like that old saw, if you have to declare you're a tough guy, that's the last thing you are.)

It makes perfect sense, what with the heightened state of security in and around Baghdad and the impending addition of more troops, that Sadr would take for the mountains of Persia right now. My question is: Was this part of some brokered deal between Maliki and the U.S.? "We stay out of the Shia districts, you send your thug-in-chief packing." Remember: the surge never was about clearing Sadr City or engaging the Mahdi Army — those were seen as worst-case scenarios that would undermine the true purpose of the new mission, which was protect Sunni and mixed ethnic neighborhoods. However, the potential for a wide-scale military confrontation must have been psychologically daunting for the Mahdi, the ragtag guerrilla equivalent of gunboat diplomacy.

Add to this the barbaric bombings on the anniversary of the Golden Mosque destruction, and you have another reason for even hard-line Shia to signal a symbolic capitulation to disaffected Sunnis. If the public face of the death squads is no longer in country, reconciliation stands a better chance.

The concatenation of Sadr's flight with the crackdown on Iranian infiltration also seems logical. The mullahs realize they're operating on borrowed time in Iraq (if not in Iran itself), and are probably trying to consolidate all their die-hard supporters right now. Who better than the black-clad mini-ayatollah to call back to Shia Central?

Granted, this is speculation. But let's fall prey to the type of cynicism that relies on naivete demonstrated by Professor Cole and those who think the latest news cycle is all black-ops propaganda by an administration that never reports the truth. (Notice how the corollary to this thinking is that every statement from Iran and Sadr is more credible.)

Iraqi Militia Leader Sadr in Iran, Say U.S. Officials – washingtonpost.com