Iraq’s Top Cleric Is Becoming Its Political Savior
Grand Ayatollah Sistani bucked Shiite tradition by manipulating the selection of the new prime minister and president.
Poster boy for the new Iraq.
Photographer: Haidar Hamdan/AFP/Getty Images
It took five months since Iraq’s national elections, but the country finally has a new prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi. In truth, however, neither he nor new President Barham Salih nor the firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose alliance won the most parliamentary seats in May, will likely have the greatest influence over whether Iraq can make the reforms necessary to become a stable and prosperous country.
Rather, the key figure is Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the 88-year-old senior cleric in Iraq’s Shiite religious hierarchy. While Sistani has followed the Shiite tradition of generally staying away from a direct role in politics, he engaged in backroom negotiations for months to bring together the contentious factions that eventually reached a compromise on Abdul Mahdi, an economist and former vice president.