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s - d r - 4 a g Middle Eastern Outlook - 2- but only that they will not allow themselves to be During the Iran-Iraq War, Shi’ite conscripts fought puppets of a foreign state. on the front lines while those more privileged by their tribal connections to Saddam served more safely in the rear. Indeed, Shi’ites comprised 70 percent of ordinary Iraqi Shi’ites have for decades worked both soldiers but only 20 percent of the officer corps. 4 Despite to integrate themselves into Iraqi society the discrimination Shi’ites (and Kurds) faced at the hands of the Ba’athist regime, few outright defected from and to resist Iranian attempts to subvert Iraq to Iran during the war; rather, the Ba’athist govern - their communal independence. ment forced many to leave either by revoking citizenship or by decreeing membership in Shi’ite parties such as the Islamic Da’wa Party to be a capital offense. Those who Ethnicity vs. Religion did defect to Iran represented a far smaller group than those who, like the Mujahedin al-Khalq, a revolutionary The Iraqi-Iranian border is not only a political boundary, terrorist group, defected from Iran to the service of Sad - but an ethnic one as well. Iraq is overwhelmingly Arab, dam. Both during and after the Iran-Iraq War and, although Kurds predominate across the north of the indeed, to the present day, Iraqi Shi’ites observe Iraqi country and Turkmen maintain centuries-old communi - Armed Forces Day on January 6 because for Shi’ite con - ties in and around Kirkuk and Tel Afar. In Iran, in scripts and the broader community, the problem was contrast, ethnic Persians now represent only slightly always Saddam rather than the institution of the army. more than half of the country, and Azeris and other Turkic minorities another fifth. Today, only about two The Evolution of Shi’ite Politics in Iraq percent of Iran is Arab. 2 While religion is an important part of most Iraqis’ Shi’ite political thought was well developed in Iraq identity, boiling identity down to only religion would when the Ba’athist regime seized power in 1968. The be misleading. Iraqis are not simply Muslims or Chris - constitutional movement in Iran infused new political tians, or Sunnis or Shi’ites, but are also Arabs, Kurds, thought into clerical circles, both in Iran and Iraq. In and Turkmen; urban or rural; educated or not; and 1909, Mirza Muhammad Hussein Gharawi al-Na’ini tribal or more modern in outlook. To assume sectarian wrote The Admonition and Refinement of the People , solidarity between Iraqi and Iranian Shi’ites discounts which imbued traditional Shi’ite thought with anticolo - centuries of ethnic distrust, if not outright hostility. nial politics and argued that until the hidden imam— While Shi’ites embraced Iraqi statehood, rivalry with Shi’ite Islam’s messianic figure—returned, the people their Persian counterparts drove a wedge between the had to choose between tyranny and constitutionalism. 5 two national communities. Iraq hosts Shi’ite Islam’s Sheikh Mahdi al-Khalissi, also a top Shi’ite cleric, most prominent shrines and centers of scholarship. led the 1920 revolt against British rule. While Khalissi Iran, however, has for centuries maintained its own died in 1925 and Na’ini passed away in 1936, just seminaries in Qom, a city less than 80 miles south four years after the Kingdom of Iraq gained its full inde - of Tehran. pendence, subsequent generations of theologians and Nor does the Sunni-Shi’ite divide correlate to an political theoreticians whom Na’ini taught in Najaf embrace or rejection of Iraqi nationality. The Shi’ites built upon his work to outline the interplay between led the 1920 revolt against the British that culminated religious precepts and a constitutional framework in the establishment of the Iraqi kingdom, although the encouraging popular representation through the anti-British colonial uprising had enjoyed cross-sectarian appointment of deputies. This of course justified full appeal and participation. Sunnis dominated Iraqi gover - Shi’ite participation in the Iraqi state. nance in the wake of the country’s independence, but In 1963, the Iranian shah launched the White rather than reject the state, Shi’ites pushed for greater Revolution, a modernization drive toward which he participation. While the Iraqi king long enabled Shi’ites tolerated little dissent. However, as the shah moved to to run the Ministry of Education, with time they also impose women’s suffrage, encourage literacy and public assumed other portfolios including the presidency of health, and undertake land reform, he clashed with more Iraq’s Senate and premiership. 3 conservative Iranian clerics like Ayatollah Ruhollah - 3- Khomeini, whom he ultimately expelled from Iran. After has been fractious. Da’wa initially attracted Shi’ites a year in Turkey, Khomeini settled in Najaf, where he predominantly from the educated middle class, the began to teach and preach. It was there that he resur - very constituency whose political consciousness Saddam rected the older clerical notion of a guardianship of the and the Ba’ath Party found most dangerous. Sadr did jurisprudent [ wilayat al-faqih ], which he developed most not exclude Sunnis from his vision; he encouraged notably in a 1970 series of lectures later compiled into Da’wa to establish and maintain relations with Sunni the book Islamic Governance [Hukumah al Islamiyah ]. 6 Islamist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood While Khomeini’s peers largely rejected his arguments, and Hizb al-Tahrir, thus augmenting the danger that he imposed his philosophy by force on Iran after the Sadr’s activism posed to the Ba’athist regime. 10 Accord - Islamic Revolution. ingly, Baghdad outlawed Da’wa and deemed membership a capital offense. As Saddam’s secret police began targeting Iraqi Khomeini’s overbearing attitude—and Shi’ite political activists, Da’wa activists fled the coun - the poor treatment of many Iraqi refugees try, many finding uneasy refuge in Iran, with smaller communities establishing themselves in the United in Iran—did not endear the Islamic Kingdom or Syria. Those who fled to Iran were quickly Republic to Iraqi Shi’ites. disenchanted by the Shi’ite paradise they sought in the newly formed Islamic Republic. Khomeini measured loy - alty not in religious devotion but in the embrace of his Many other clerics in Najaf—and, indeed, many own religious philosophy. Those who dissented quickly in Iran—gravitated more toward the writings and found themselves targeted by Khomeini’s security agen - philosophy of Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, a senior cleric cies. Many held true to Sadr’s ideas but had little choice who outlined the idea of a guardianship of the people but to remain silent; they could not continue the politi - [wilayat al-umma ], which preached that man could be the cal debate in which their counterparts in the United trustee of God [ Khilafat al-insan ]. While Khomeini Kingdom engaged. This exacerbated divisions in Da’wa, claimed that a supreme leader should act as the deputy which became clear when the two sides reunited after of the messiah on earth and rule over man, Sadr argued Iraq’s liberation. that governance was “a right given to the whole of Before that day, however, British-based Da’wa humanity.” 7 Sadr wrote frequently on political and social activists found themselves effectively muzzled out of issues of the day, not only parrying Khomeini’s religious fear that Khomeini might respond to any direct arguments but also deconstructing the Marxism that challenge to his interpretation by targeting the Iraqi many Iraqi intellectuals embraced, and encouraging the Da’wa members who had effectively become his publishing of booklets and pamphlets outlining an hostages. Khomeini’s overbearing attitude—and the Islamic take on the primary social and political issues of poor treatment of many Iraqi refugees in Iran—did the day. 8 not endear the Islamic Republic to Iraqi Shi’ites. Khomeini was ideologically intolerant and developed While many of those Iraqi refugees returned home in personal enmity toward Sadr for rejecting Khomeini’s the wake of Saddam’s ouster, their lingering resentment notion of clerical rule in favor of empowering ordinary of Iran continues. people. Khomeini’s enmity—coupled with that of Shi’ites are not monolithic, and not all Iraqi exiles Saddam—ultimately sealed Sadr’s fate. While Sadr sup - remained true to Sadr and his emphasis on popular sov - ported the Islamic Revolution in Iran and recognized ereignty. Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, who had worked Khomeini as a grand ayatollah, Khomeini refused to closely with Sadr until his execution, did receive refuge affirm Sadr’s religious rank and refused him shelter in in Iran. Rather than resist Khomeini’s vision of clerical Iran once Saddam began his crackdown on the Islamic rule, Hakim embraced it. He split from Da’wa and Da’wa Party, for whom Sadr served as the spiritual men - formed a new group, the Supreme Council for the tor. 9 Saddam’s regime subsequently imprisoned, tortured, Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), now renamed the and, on April 9, 1980, executed him. Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) and dedicated Sadr’s views shaped the development of the Da’wa to ousting the Ba’athist regime in Iraq and replacing it Party, which he founded in 1958. But historically, Da’wa with a Khomeini-style theocracy. - 4- Repression of the Iraqi Shi’ites increased throughout Post-Liberation Shi’ite Dynamics the 1980s against the backdrop of the Iran-Iraq War. The Iraqi government, questioning the loyalty of both Such resentment became apparent upon Iraq’s 2003 lib - its Shi’ite and Kurdish communities, forcibly displaced eration. While Iraqi Shi’ites reveled in their newfound many who sought university placement or state jobs, religious freedom, their embrace of the American troops sending Shi’ites north into Kurdish regions and forcing who had liberated them was far less enthusiastic than in Kurds south into predominantly Shi’ite cities like Basra, 1991 when US forces had first pushed back Saddam’s Najaf, or Diwaniya. The aftermath of Operation Desert Republican Guards. Storm and the US-led liberation of Kuwait compounded In Iraq (and also in Iran) there is a clerical aristocracy the problem. During a February 15, 1991, campaign with a few families producing generations of renowned stop, President George H.W. Bush called for “the scholars marrying cousins or into other elite theological Iraqi people [to] take matters into their own hands families. Of course, family name is not everything, and and force Saddam Hussein the dictator to step aside.” not every family member distinguishes himself or herself Iraqis listened and rose up against Ba’athist rule in with mastery of existing Shi’ite scholarship and writing 14 of Iraq’s 18 governorates. Ironically, this US- of new treatises. Some family members become black encouraged 1991 uprising marked the first significant sheep and embarrassments to family name and reputa - Shi’ite uprising in Iraq against the Iraqi government. 11 tion. This has been the case with Muqtada al-Sadr. Muqtada was a son-in-law of Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr Iraq’s liberation reinvigorated Shi’ite and was the fourth son of Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, Iraq’s preeminent ayatollah in the 1990s until practice and scholarship inside the country. his assassination in 1999. Muqtada never excelled at scholarship and was paid little heed either by his father Perceptions in the Middle East can mean more or Iraq’s other top ayatollahs. After all, he had three than reality. Whatever the logic behind and actuality older brothers. No one imagined that, thanks to Sad - of subsequent policy decisions in Washington, Iraqi dam’s murderous campaign against the clerics of Najaf, Shi’ites almost universally see betrayal: the United Muqtada would be the only one of his generation of States did not intervene as Saddam moved to crush Sadrs to survive. the uprising. While the United States, in conjunction Not surprisingly, the American government had very with France and Great Britain, sponsored a safe haven little sense of Muqtada before Iraq’s liberation. This for Iraqi Kurds, there was no corollary protection for ended on April 10, 2003, when a mob loyal to him set Iraqi Shi’ites: the southern no-fly zone did little to stop upon rival cleric Sayyid Abdul Majid al-Khoei in the Iraqi tanks from crushing the uprising. Imam Ali Shrine, Najaf’s holiest site, and hacked him to Shi’ites also sense conspiracy in the fact that the US death. Khoei, the son of and successor to a prominent military released Republican Guard prisoners of war against and popular ayatollah who had fled in 1991, had the backdrop of the uprising, enabling Saddam’s forces to returned to Najaf with American assistance. Khoei regroup and move against the Iraqi rebels. As Saddam embraced Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr’s notion of popular augmented sectarian repression in the wake of the 1991 rule and thus stood in sharp contrast to the theological uprising, Iranian officials whisper that the American interpretations embraced by Khomeini and his successor, betrayal of Iraq’s Shi’ites was deliberate and that, whether Ali Khamenei, in Iran. Iraqi refugees liked Iran or not, the Islamic Republic is the Muqtada al-Sadr and the Iranian leadership might only trustworthy protector of the Shi’ites. Hence, Iran’s not have agreed completely on theology, but they did state-controlled press often pushed conspiracy theories— have a common grievance. The United States was effec - such as secret visits by George W. Bush to Saddam’s prison tively seeking to restore the power of the Iraqi Shi’ites’ to plot Saddam’s return—to once again betray and repress religious hierarchy. This presented a challenge not only Iraq’s Shi’ites. Whereas Iraqi Shi’ites may have embraced to Iran’s concept of clerical rule but also to Muqtada al- the American military in 1991, the bitterness of perceived Sadr’s personal ambition, since he could not compete in betrayal and more than a decade of continuous Iranian prestige or rank with the top ayatollahs in Najaf. Iran’s propaganda led to sustained resentment among the major - Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps did not hesitate ity, and active hostility among a smaller cadre. to coopt and channel Sadr’s resulting anti-American - 5- fervor. Sadr’s embrace of Khomeini’s wilayat al-faqih anti-occupation positions, after returning to Iraq many was seldom enthusiastic or consistent, but the Iranian Badr Corps commanders ceased following direct Iranian regime was looking more for a tool with which to wage orders and instead began to allow Iraqi nationalist atti - undeclared war against the Americans than simply a tudes to color decisions that lumped the United States theological clone. and Iran together as “the other.” So long as the Badr Corps was willing to hunt down and murder Iraqi Air Force pilots who had participated in the bombing of Iran Iran’s willingness to play hardball has even during the Iran-Iraq War, Tehran would fund ISCI gener - led many Iraqis to reconsider their attitudes ously and provide enough weaponry to give ISCI a quali - toward the American military. tative and quantitative edge over other Shi’ite groups. However, as soon as the Badr Corps began acting too independently of Iranian interests or dictates, Whether with regard to Muqtada al-Sadr, who never Tehran’s largesse would shift to Muqtada al-Sadr. Sadr left Iraq before the US-led invasion, or SCIRI founder always embraced Iraqi nationalism, even if he harbored Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, who spent a lengthy exile a different vision of it than that put forward by liberal in Iran, Iranian authorities soon realized that their influ - Iraqis and established clergy. He did not hesitate to ence was more limited than they expected. For all of accept Iranian largesse, even if it came at a cost to his Muhammad Baqir’s rhetoric while residing in Iran, as independence, but as soon as he asserted himself too soon as he returned to Iraq he abandoned his previous much or believed he could continue without heeding his embrace of wilayat al-faqih . “Neither an Islamic govern - Iranian minders, he would find himself cut off from ment nor a secular administration will work in Iraq but a resources. Hence, during the years of American military democratic state that respects Islam as the religion of a occupation, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and Sadr seemed to majority of the population,” Muhammad Baqir declared repeatedly alternate their position of Iranian favor. upon his return after 23 years in exile. 12 While a car bomb killed him on August 29, 2003, neither his brother Is Shi’ism Iran’s Achilles’ Heel? Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who succeeded him, nor Ammar al-Hakim, who took ISCI’s mantle upon Abdul Aziz’s While some American policymakers and many death in 2009, has returned the party to its one-time military analysts conflate all Shi’ites under the Iranian embrace of wilayat al-faqih . umbrella, waging insurgency against coalition troops Indeed, this has been a consistent pattern in post- was not the only objective of Iran-trained militias. liberation Iraq, much to the chagrin of authorities in Shi’ism is not only the Islamic Republic’s raison d’être, Tehran. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps but it is also revolutionary Iran’s Achilles’ heel. Saddam’s trained or helped organize multiple Iraqi militias, most suppression of Najaf and Karbala had ironically strength - prominently Muqtada al-Sadr’s Jaysh al-Mahdi [Army of ened the Iranian regime because it prevented any real the Messiah, or JAM] and ISCI’s Badr Corps. Sponsor - religious challenge to Khomeini and, subsequently, ship of multiple political groups and militias might seem Khamenei’s authority. counterproductive to Western policymakers, who tradi - The Iranian security apparatus, meanwhile, works tionally seek to streamline decision making and policy to suppress religious dissent at home. Iranian author- execution, but it is part and parcel of traditional Persian ities, for example, kept Grand Ayatollah Husayn Ali statecraft: duality enhances control because it enables Montazeri under house arrest until his death, and the Iranian leadership to make patronage a competition banned publication of his memoirs. 13 Iraq’s liberation and to play clients off each other for Iran’s broader inter - reinvigorated Shi’ite practice and scholarship inside ests. This in effect creates a seesaw—or cyclical—effect, the country. Long-constrained political and theological as one group rises while the other falls but neither group debates resumed as Da’wa exiles from London, ever either fails completely or gains enough strength to Damascus, and Tehran reunited in Baghdad. Millions become truly independent. of Iraqi Shi’ites marched in religious processions long The competition between the Badr Corps and prohibited by the Iraqi regime. Najaf-based grand JAM illustrated well Tehran’s struggle for control: ayatollahs like Ali Sistani (himself an Iranian) while both retained their staunch anti-American and could once again preach openly and communicate - 6- with not only Iraqi followers but also Iranian religious Trade or Exploitation? pilgrims. Sistani recognizes that the Islamic Republic is just as If militias represent a kinetic strategy to control and vicious toward dissenting clergy as Saddam was. Sistani subordinate Iraqi Shi’ites, economic domination repre - survived Saddam’s rule by understanding who controlled sents a softer lever of power that, of course, aims to the guns outside his house. He is no chameleon: he will control not only Baghdad and southern Iraq’s Shi’ite not parrot those in power, but he will calibrate his vocif - population, but also, more broadly, Iraqi society as a erousness in the challenge to that power. He was notice - whole. Close economic ties are natural. The two coun - ably more restrained in his willingness to challenge tries share a 900-mile frontier, and Iran’s population is Iranian dictates when Badr Corps or JAM militiamen perhaps three times that of Iraq. Economic relations controlled the streets of Najaf than he was during peri - have expanded exponentially since Saddam’s fall. While ods of US military or Iraqi Army control. Hossein Kaze - Iran-Iraq trade was negligible from the war years of the meyni Boroujerdi, a prominent Iranian ayatollah who 1980s through the days of sanctions, by 2004, the first opposes clerical rule, remains in poor health in prison full year after Saddam’s fall, bilateral Iran-Iraq trade was after his 2006 arrest in Qom for opposing wilayat al-faqih . just $800 million. By 2012, the last year for which statis - Iran maintains a Special Clerical Court to prosecute tics are available, bilateral trade had reached an esti - clergy who stray from the Iranian supreme leader’s mated $12 billion. 16 approved line. 14 While Iraqis welcome the millions of dollars that In February 2013, Iranian security forces arrested Iranian religious pilgrims spend in the hotels, shops, and prominent Iraqi religious scholar Ahmad al-Qubanshi restaurants of Najaf and Karbala, trade is largely one during a visit to Iran. Qubanshi had for more than way. Iraqi Kurdistan, Kirkuk, Baghdad, and al-Amarah 30 years published articles and books criticizing the have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Iranian theological arguments at the basis of Iran’s Islamic electricity, even before a July 2013 four-year bilateral Republic. 15 Iran fears that, should Iraqi Shi’ites achieve $14.8 billion deal for Iran to supply Iraq with natural gas an independent space to conduct theological discourse to power its electrical plants. 17 removed from Iranian control, the result might be a In addition, Iran floods Iraq with manufactured theological challenge to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali goods, agriculture, and foodstuffs, harming Iraqi indus - Khamenei’s notion of himself as the primary source of tries. 18 Iranian merchants do not hesitate to undercut emulation and the deputy of the messiah on earth. Iraqi competition, further stymying Iraq’s economic By sponsoring militias inside Iraq, Iranian authorities recovery and leading to a great deal of resentment try to impose through force of arms what is not in toward Iran not only in the Kurdish north of Iraq, but the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis. Hence, Badr also in Baghdad and even in predominantly Shi’ite areas Corps militiamen posted themselves outside girls’ in southern Iraq, such as Basra and Nasiriya. schools in the Kadhimiya district of Baghdad to enforce Iraqi businessmen, whether Sunni, Shi’ite, or Kur - a dress code not enshrined in Iraqi law or custom, dish, regularly complain that they cannot access the and Muqtada al-Sadr’s militiamen harassed, detained, Iranian market or, indeed, travel easily to Iran to con - and beat university students in Basra participating in duct business because of the sometimes onerous and arbi - a spring social. The Iranian strategy has not worked, trary Iranian permit process invoked more for Iraqi however. Both the Badr Corps and JAM have antago - Shi’ites than other Iraqis. It is one of the ironies of post- nized more Iraqis than they have rallied. Across war Iraq that Iraqi Kurds find it easier to travel to Iran southern Iraq, Shi’ite leaders acknowledge that the than do their Shi’ite counterparts, for whom Iranian twenty-somethings who embraced sectarian Shi’ite authorities make border crossing permits difficult to parties with enthusiasm after Iraq’s liberation have acquire, largely out of fear that Iraqi Shi’ites might har - come to recognize that they offer no panacea to Iraq’s bor subversive religious views. myriad woes. This does not mean that Iraqi youth are Iranian contractors have developed a reputation for turning away from sectarian parties on political Islam, seeking inflated prices for substandard goods. Many but they do not approach such institutions with the Iraqis have accordingly begun to seek alternatives to revolutionary fervor that Iranian authorities can more Iranian business and increasingly seek to encourage easily exploit. American and European firms to bid on contracts. - 7- Despite the resentment that its business practices build, the lights of Basra from their homes, could witness the Iran does not hesitate to use its Iraqi clients to hamper Iraqi celebrations on what, for the Islamic Republic, was competition. SCIRI and Sadrist officials at the Basra a day of mourning. Airport, for example, have sought to saddle American Such independence and insults do not pass without a and European businessmen with nonexistent regulations cost. Even though Abdul Samad was popular in Basra for to hamper their operation. This has only further antago - the development projects he initiated and was the top nized relations as Iraqi businessmen feel themselves vote-getter in provincial elections, the Iranian govern - forced into deleterious partnerships with Iranians, whom ment pushed ISCI and the Sadrists into an uneasy coali - they dislike. Indeed, Iran’s willingness to play hardball tion to oust him shortly after. Raw power can still trump has even led many Iraqis to reconsider their attitudes hearts and minds. toward the American military. After an Iranian squad For that reason, Iran—and those inside Iraq whom it seized a Fakka oil well in the Maysan Governorate in coopts and coerces—will still pose a risk to US regional January 2010, Iraqi papers called on the United States to security interests. Banners in Basra announce the obitu - help Iraq protect its territorial integrity. 19 aries of those killed fighting for Syrian regime forces or Hezbollah in Syria, a conflict in which the Iraqi govern - Conclusion ment is officially neutral. Iraqi officials acknowledge the problem of Iranian recruitment inside Iraq but say they Decades of war and sanctions eviscerated the Iraqi econ - are simply too weak to roll back Iranian influence with - omy and Iraqi power. The United States managed in a out a countervailing one. They also first face more exis - matter of weeks to do what Iran could not do, even after tential threats given the resurrection of al Qaeda and eight years of unrestricted warfare: oust Saddam. Iraq potential Kurdish separatism. essentially became a vacuum that multiple forces sought As individuals, some Iraqi Shi’ites might, for ideology to fill: the United States and the coalition it led hope to or privilege, embrace militias backed by the Islamic rebuild Iraq and allow the country to rejoin the interna - Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iraqi politics are, however, tional community as an Arab democracy; al Qaeda sank far more complicated than the all-Shi’ites-are-Iranian- roots in al-Anbar, Mosul, and Baghdad and propagated a puppets narrative would allow. As Iranian-backed mili - radically different vision; Iran sought to assert its domi - tias augment their presence in Iraq, they either force a nance over Iraq’s Shi’ites and the central government; backlash within the communities they seek to represent and Turkey sought unsuccessfully to fill Iraq’s economic or they lose their ideological purity to the more power - vacuum. ful, seductive forces of Iraqi nationalism. Iranian leaders The new Iraqi government, for its part, was too weak may want a compliant little brother or even a puppet in to fight off all competing interests and instead sought to Iraq. No matter what their caricature in the West, how - create space for independent action by playing regional ever, Iraqis Shi’ites show no desire to oblige. interests off each other: Iraqi officials would tell both Iranian and American diplomats and military officers Notes that their respective actions were constrained by the other and then pursue policies that made neither 1. Yitzhak Nakash, Reaching for Power: The Shi’a in the Modern Tehran nor Washington happy. Arab World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), The December 2011 American withdrawal upset 83–86. Baghdad’s traditional balance and undercut Iraqi politi - 2. See Bernard Hourcade et al., Atlas d’Iran [Atlas of Iran] cians’ ability to resist Iranian demands. That said, Iraqi (Montpellier: Reclus, 1998). This study, based on Iran’s 1996 Shi’ites continue to make clear their resentment of what census, found that slightly less than half of Iran’s population was they see as Iran’s overbearing attitude. When Khalaf Persian. However, more recent estimates suggest an increase in Abdul Samad, the governor of Basra, sought to inaugu - the relative proportion of the Persian population. rate a new bridge over the Shatt al-Arab on June 4, 3. Yitzhak Nakash, The Shi’is of Iraq (Princeton, NJ: Princeton 2013, Iranian officials warned him to choose a differ- University Press, 1994), 127–29. ent date as June 4 marked the commemoration of 4. Nakash, Reaching for Power , 93. Khomeini’s death. Abdul Samad responded by simply 5. Mirza Muhammed Hussein Ghawari al-Na’ini, Tanbih al- increasing the fireworks display so Iranians, who can see ummah wa-tanzih al-millah [The Admonition and Refinement of - 8- the People] (Qom: Bustan-i Kitab, 2003); and Sama Hadad, “The Iran (Social Science Research Network, Princeton University, Development of Shi’ite Islamic Political Thought,” in Dissent and May 13, 2009). Reform in the Arab World , eds. Jeffrey Azarva, Danielle Pletka, and 15. Al-Sharqiyah News (London), February 19, 2013, 13:00 Michael Rubin (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 2008), 32–40. GMT. 6. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Hukumah al-Islamiyah 16. “Iraq Eyes $15b Annual Trade with Iran,” PressTV (Qom: Intisharat-i Azadi, 1980). (Tehran), December 23, 2013, www.presstv.com/detail/2013/12 7. Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, al-Islam Yaqudu al-Hayah [Islam /23/341512/iraq-eyes-15b-annual-trade-with-iran/; Michael Directive to Life] (Beirut: Dar al-Ta’aruf lil-Matbu’at, 1990). Eisenstadt, Michael Knights, and Ahmed Ali, Iran’s Influence in 8. Laurence Louër, Transnational Shia Politics: Religious and Iraq (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Political Networks in the Gulf (New York: Columbia University Policy, April 2011), www.washingtoninstitute.org/uploads Press, 2012), 83–84. /Documents/pubs/PolicyFocus111.pdf; and Edward Wong, “Iran 9. Chibli Mellat, The Renewal of Islamic Law: Muhammad is Playing a Growing Role in Iraq Economy,” New York Times , Baqer as-Sadr, Najaf and the Shi’i International (New York: Cam - March 17, 2007. bridge University Press, 2004), 52. 17. “Iraq Signs Deal to Import Iranian Gas for Power,” 10. Louër, Transnational Shia Politics , 85. Reuters, July 22, 2013; and Hassan Hafidh, “Iran Seeks Respite 11. Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival (New York: W.W. Norton, from Sanctions in Iraq,” Wall Street Journal , July 22, 2013. 2007), 188. 18. Gulnoza Saidazimova, “Iran/Iraq: Trade Flow Increases, 12. Ali Akbar Dareini, “Top Shiite Leader, Fresh from Exile, but Mostly from Tehran to Baghdad,” Radio Free Europe Now Calling for Democratic Government in Iraq,” Associated /Radio Liberty, March 4, 2008, www.rferl.org/content Press, May 13, 2003. /article/1079581.html. 13. Husayn ‘Ali Montazeri, Matn-i kamil-i khatirat-i Ayatallah 19. “Basra’s Unionists Urge US to Protect Iraqi Lands,” Aswat Husayn ‘Ali Muntaziri [Full Text of Ayatollah Husayn Ali al-Awsat (Erbil), January 1, 2010. Montazeri’s Memoir] (Spånga, Sweden: Baran, 2001). 14. Mirjam Künkler, The Special Court of the Clergy ( Dādgāh- ) and the Repression of Dissident Clergy in Ye Vizheh-Ye Ruhāniyat