Antichrist To Take Over Iraq Government

The tense struggle between the two Shiite leaders, Muqtada al-Sadr and Ammar al-Hakim, has been going on for several years. Today, however, they meet again in Najaf, their main stronghold and the center of their religious and political strength, to reject Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s proposal of retaining the political majority’s option.

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Summary : Two of Iraq’s top Shiite leaders, Muqtada al-Sadr and Ammar al-Hakim, recently met to discuss current political affairs. Original Title: Sadr and Hakim Find Common Ground Against Maliki Author: Ali Abel SadahTranslated by: Al-Monitor Categories : Originals  Iraq

The Najaf meeting on May 7, 2013, was held at Sadr’s residence in al-Hanana. Journalists were expecting the two “friends and enemies,” who never held longer meetings, to be finished in less than an hour, as normal. To their surprise, this time was different, and negotiations lasted for almost three hours.

Hakim entered the Shiite town of al-Hanana, west of Najaf quite casually and quietly despite its population’s deep hostility towards his political party.

In a joint news conference, the two leaders requested that the Iraqi government hold provincial elections in Anbar and Nineveh as soon as possible, and called for the Iraqiya bloc to re-engage in the government and the parliament.

Sadr demanded acceleration in carrying out the Nineveh and Anbar elections so that the provincial elections could include all provinces.

Sadr confirmed the continuation of the good relationship with the Islamic Supreme Council to rebuild Iraq, ensure its unity and safety, serve its oppressed people and uphold the word of truth.

It is worth mentioning that this is the first meeting between Sadr and Hakim since 2012, when they met in Najaf against the backdrop of a series of intensive meetings aimed at eroding confidence from Maliki’s government in agreement with some opposition forces, including the Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan and the Iraqiya Bloc.

In reference to the State of Law coalition, Sadr refused to marginalize any political entity in the event the Sadrist Movement and the Supreme Council decided to form an alliance. Sadr continued, “Everyone should partake in the service of the people and exclusion is not possible at this stage."

On the other hand, during the meeting Hakim called the Iraqi List to take the initiative to re-engage its ministers in the government and its deputies in the parliament. In the joint news conference with Sadr, Hakim added that “the solution to the crisis lies in the cooperation of political leaders, the acceleration of promulgation of important, necessary legislation and the provision of services by MPs.”

Concerning political alliances, Hakim stressed that “the ratification of the election results will pave the way for the formation of local governments.” Hakim continued, “It is necessary to have a broad representative base including lists and figures winning in those governments; harmonious work teams must be formed and the programs and visions agreed upon must be abided by.”

Furthermore, a political source close to the Sadr-Hakim meeting disclosed to Al-Monitor that “the two parties studied the scenarios of their alliance in a number of provinces, especially in regions where they obtained good results against the State of Law Coalition."

The source said that Hakim confirmed to Sadr the necessity of forming local governments with broad political representation, expressing his willingness to maintain the partnership approach, adding that the Sadrist movement believes that the situation in each province shapes the nature of the alliances.

The source, however, confirmed that “the two parties did not explicitly agree on an express alliance between them in all of the provinces, excluding Maliki's Coalition.”

According to the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), the State of Law Coalition only obtained 97 seats in the provinces against a total of 118 seats obtained by the National Iraqi Alliance (the Supreme Council) and the Sadrist Movement’s lists.

It is worth mentioning that Maliki's State of Law Coalition lost the regions which used to be under its control, after losing in said regions around 30% of the seats it had obtained in 2009, despite its alliance with the Badr Organization, the Islamic Virtue Party and the National Reform Trend led by Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Yet, the possibility of an alliance between the Sadrist Movement and the Supreme Council looms on the horizon, threatening the State of Law Coalition with facing a difficult political period.

In this respect, Yassin al-Bakri, a political science professor at Nahrain University, believes that “any talk about Sadr's alliance with Hakim is next to impossible” and in his opinion, this is due to “historical animosity between the Hakim and Sadr families.”

Bakri told Al-Monitor that there is an “ideological difference between the supporters of Hakim and those of Sadr. The former are deemed to be of the Shiite bourgeoisie while Sadr’s supporters are the poor majority in popular areas, who are seen as being affiliated with radical religious groups unlike Hakim supporters.”

Bakri added that “Sadr supporters and Hakim supporters cannot forget their bloody conflict in 2005, when arms were used to settle the Shiite-Shiite dispute between them” and that “in the same year, Sadr supporters attacked and burned Hakim’s headquarters in Sadr City in eastern Baghdad, transforming it into a major stronghold for Sadr.”

Bakri believes that Hakim’s approach is different from that of Sadr, as he tries to gain Maliki’s influence as political leverage in the upcoming period, in particular while being fully aware that Maliki needs him in this period, even more so after the State of Law Coalition’s loss of dozens of the seats it had won in 2009.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/05/sadr-hakim-meeting-1.html#ixzz2THSQQIZL

Antichrist Calls for Strike

Amid reports of a second Israeli airstrike on Syria over the weekend, an Iraqi Shiite leader on Sunday urged Damascus to retaliate against Israel and called on his followers to defend Syria’s prestige in the face of alleged Israeli aggression.

Analysts said the call by Muqtada al-Sadr was unlikely to translate into concrete action by Iraqis, but suggested that the reported Israeli strikes could provide the Shiite powers — Hezbollah and Iran in particular — with a means of turning attention away from their intervention in Syria. “The illegal Zionist entity hasn’t ceased infringing on rights of the Arabs and Muslims in its illegal seizure of land of Palestine, nor has the Arab and Islamic stance ceased to be timid as a result of its illegal acts of aggression and crimes,” Sadr said in a statement translated by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi of the Middle East Forum.

A militia commander-turned-politician who led a guerrilla war against American and allied forces with his Mahdi Army, Sadr spent three years of self-imposed exile in Iran before returning to Iraq in 2011. His political party, the Sadr Movement, holds 40 seats in Iraq’s 325-seat parliament and is widely regarded as an Iranian client.

“We have to defend the prestige of Syria,” Sadr said, telling his followers that no one could prevent Syria from striking back at Israel for “its repeated acts of aggression against Syrian lands.”

According to the Iraqi newspaper Shafaaq, Sadr “ordered his resistance fighters to respond to the Israeli shelling [of] Syria.”

Foreign media, based on Syrian opposition reports, indicated that Israeli Air Force jets struck a Syrian military installation north of Damascus early Sunday morning, days after American news outlets cited US officials saying Israel had struck Syria late Thursday night.

Despite Sadr’s call to action, he officially disarmed his thousands-strong Mahdi Army following the American withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 and has asserted that his movement is now nonviolent. Iraqi MP Mohammed Redha al-Khafaji, a leader in the Sadr political movement, told London-based newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat in April that, contrary to reports, no members of the Mahdi Army were taking part in the Syrian civil war.

While the likelihood of an Arab world united against Israel is virtually nil, it could prompt the unification of Shiite Muslims against the Jewish State — Iran included, Professor Moshe Maoz of Hebrew University told The Times of Israel.

Sadr’s call joined a chorus of saber-rattling by the Shiite Muslim world against Israel over the reported strikes against Syrian targets.

Hezbollah political council leader Ibrahim Amin Sayed said Saturday that the Lebanese Shiite militia was “prepared to prevent the fall of Syria to the control of Tel Aviv and Washington.” He acknowledged that Hezbollah was operating in Syria in order to protect Lebanon from the “Israeli-American partnership.”

Iranian general Ahmad Reza Pourdastan said in remarks reported by the official IRNA news agency that Tehran backed Syria and that “if there is need for training we will provide them with the training, but won’t have any active involvement in the operations.”

“The Syrian army has accumulated experience during years of conflict with the Zionist regime [Israel] and is able to defend itself and doesn’t need foreign assistance,” Pourdastan added.

Maoz said Sadr’s rhetoric was not likely to translate into collective Iraqi action against Israel — even though the two countries have technically been at war since 1948. “The Sunni world is rejoicing that Israel struck Syria,” but Moaz puts little faith in the ability of Sadr — let alone the Arab world — to take real action against Israel.

Professor Uzi Rabi of Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies also noted that “neither Iran nor Syria has an interest in waging a war against Israel,” but said that Sadr and others would like to break the cycle of Shiite-Sunni conflict and redirect it at Israel.

Muqtada al-Sadr and some Shiites in Lebanon, Rabi said, “are criticizing [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah and Iran for getting into the mess in Syria instead of dealing with Israel.” Shiite leaders may try to use the alleged Israeli strikes on Syria as “a tool by which to shift from the problematic Sunni-Shiite divide… and to turn back to the simple beginning — Israel versus the others,” Rabi told The Times of Israel.

He emphasized that Sadr’s statements point to an escape route by which Iran and its clients could use Israel’s purported attack on Syria to backpedal on the “grave mistake” of intervening in the bloody quagmire in Syria.

Too Late to Stop the Tribulation

Consider this: There are still an estimated 18,000 of these weapons in the arsenals of the nine nuclear states with the United States and Russia holding 95% percent. Many are at the ready 24 hours a day, seven days a week to be launched upon command from missile silos, from U.S. and Russian nuclear submarines still plying the sea, or on board planes poised to launch an attack. Dr. Strangelove is still with us in 2013, yet aside from the latest nuclear headlines from North Korea and Iran, many disregard the threat nuclear weapons continue to pose for global civilization -- the same threat that kept us awake at night from the late 1940s through the early 1990s.
It's challenging to call attention to these weapons at the ready. With all the competing and compelling demands on our time and attention, from terrorism to the economy to climate change, why pay attention to nuclear weapons now? After all, "nothing has happened" since 1945. Too often, we believe "it can't happen here."
More than 240,000 human beings were killed by just two atomic bomb explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and many more later because of the impact of the radiation released by the bombs. The reality is that the world has not been the same.
Since then, the Soviet Union (now Russia), the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea all announced that they have nuclear weapons. It is well known, although not officially acknowledged, that Israel has their own arsenal of nuclear weapons. From 1946 to 1998 more than 2,000 nuclear test explosions took place around the world. In 1996, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was adopted by most nations including the United States, however,the U.S. and seven other countries have not yet ratified it. North Korea exploded nuclear devices in 2006, 2009 and once again in February of this year. And Iran threatens to join the nuclear club.
On top of this, there is a proliferation of nuclear waste from nuclear power plants around the world, which can be processed into fissile radioactive materials that can be used by what is benignly called "non-state actors" to make either their own nuclear bomb or what is called a dirty bomb.
There was a moment in recent history that the world came close to abolishing nuclear weapons. In October 1986, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union at that time, met in a small room at the Hofdi House in Reykjavik, Iceland. For two fateful days they met and negotiated. At the end Reagan and Gorbachev came within one word of cutting a deal to eliminate their nuclear arsenals, but it was not to be.
The story told in my documentary, In My Lifetime, is a window into the larger issues of war and peace, but I hope that it will also initiate a global dialogue. Filmed in Europe, Japan and the United States, and drawing on hundreds of hours of archival footage, the film has been produced for an audience of all generations, focusing on the possibilities that we can someday move toward the elimination of this invention born out of fear during World War II.
Will anyone listen? Does it need to "happen again" before we understand the consequences of maintaining these arsenals, each one capable of destroying a city?
Every person on the planet should be aware of the perils posed by nuclear weapons and materials. A nuclear event does not "have to happen here."
Robert E. Frye is the producer/director of a one-hour documentary In My Lifetime, released by American Public Television for broadcast on public television stations.

Nuclear Talks End at Dead End

Iran and six world powers failed to reach agreement today on a common approach to reducing fears that Tehran might misuse its nuclear technology to make weapons, with the EU’s foreign policy chief declaring that the two sides “remain far apart on substance”.

Expectations that the negotiations were making progress rose as an afternoon session was extended into the evening. But comments by Baroness Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s head of foreign policy, made clear that the two sides failed to make enough headway to qualify the meeting as a success.

“What matters in the end is substance, and ... we are still a considerable distance apart,” Baroness Ashton told reporters in Almaty, Kazakhstan, at the end of the two-day talks.

She said negotiators would now consult with their capitals and made no mention of plans for a new meeting – another sign that the gap dividing the two sides remains substantial.

The six insist Iran cut back on its highest grade uranium enrichment production and stockpile, fearing Tehran will divert it from making nuclear fuel to form the material used in the core of nuclear warhead. They say Iran must make that move, and make it first, to build confidence that its nuclear programme is peaceful.

They were asking Tehran to greatly limit its production and stockpiling of uranium enriched to 20%, which is just a technical step away from weapons-grade uranium. That would keep Iran’s supply below the amount needed for further processing into a weapon.

But Iran wants greater rewards for any concessions that the six are ready to give. They have offered to lift sanctions on Iran’s gold transactions and petrochemical trade. But Tehran wants much more substantial sanctions relief. It is also seeking an end to international penalties crippling its oil trade and financial transactions.

The talks already seemed to run into trouble shortly after they began yesterday with a Western diplomat saying Iran’s response to the offer from the group fell short of what the six wanted and instead amounted to a “reworking” of proposals it made last year at negotiations that broke up in disagreement.

Ahmadinejad Quickens to the End

VIENNA: Technicians upgrading Iran's main uranium enrichment facility have tripled their installations of high-tech machines that could be used in a nuclear weapons program to more than 600 in the last three months, diplomats said Wednesday.
They say the machines are not yet producing enriched uranium and some may be only partially installed. Still the move is the latest sign that 10 years of diplomatic efforts have failed to persuade Tehran to curb its uranium enrichment. Instead, Iran continues to increase its capacities.

The Moderate Antichrist

His was one of the most feared names during Iraq’s most violent years. But more and more, Muqtada al-Sadr seems to be treading a path of political expediency. The question is why?  

Just a few short years ago, the followers of young Shiite Muslim cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, were out on the streets kidnapping and killing their Sunni Muslim countrymen, embroiled in sectarian violence that virtually dragged Iraq into civil war. But late in 2012, al-Sadr, who is often described as a “firebrand cleric” in the Western media, was seen in a rather unusual place: attending prayers behind a Sunni Muslim religious leader at the Abdul Qader Al Kilani mosque in central Baghdad.

The unified prayer meeting – unusual in bringing the sectarian foes together – was the culmination of a series of interesting moves by al-Sadr, where he had been openly supporting Sunni Muslims protesting against the current Iraqi government. That government is headed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and the bloc that al-Sadr heads, the Sadrist bloc, is one of its main supporters.

No wonder then, that some were confused. Was this a whole new al-Sadr? A different and more politically expedient man, than the one who was once exhorted his followers to kill?

Certainly, al-Sadr has sent out many confusing messages of late. When the major opposition Iraqiya bloc, led by former Prime Minister Ayed Allawi, announced its intention to withdraw from the Iraqi government, al-Sadr first signalled that his group would join them in trying to end the current Prime Minister’s term prematurely. But when the time actually came for action, al-Sadr resisted joining the mostly Sunni Muslim Iraqiya bloc in withdrawing support.

In a statement issued by his office in Najaf, al-Sadr said that he was against the withdrawal from government because it would be detrimental to the interests of the Iraqi people. And it was yet another example of how al-Sadr keeps taking one step toward isolating al-Maliki and curtailing his power, but then, at the last moment, taking two steps back.

Our bloc could oust the government led by al-Maliki within a week, boasts Hakim al-Zamili, a leading member of the Sadrists. “We made him a prime minister,” he argues. “But we wanted to prevent the country from further political and security turmoil. So we couldn’t take any step that would have caused more suffering for the Iraqi people,” he explains.

“The stream’s position is clear in regard to the protests,” al-Zamili said. “The most important part of that position is that we oppose any calls for an end to the current political process. We also oppose those who are supported from outside of Iraq. We’re against the sectarian discourse. And we will criticize the government when it delays in dealing with injustice and when it does not meet the legitimate constitutional demands of the Iraqi people.” 

In fact, the Sadrists are this confident because their party is founded on an ideological and religious basis, rather than a strictly political platform. This guarantees them a certain guaranteed level of popularity among Shiite Muslims. It also allows al-Sadr more flexibility and pragmatism, letting him adopt tactics that annoy and confound both his enemies and his allies. It allows him to bring pressure to bear from various sides.

The difference in the way that al-Maliki and his allies dealt with the growing Sunni Muslim protests in the western province of Anbar and the way that al-Sadr was able to deal with them, demonstrates this.

For example, in February he sent a delegation to meet ranking Sunni Muslim cleric, Abdul-Malik al-Saadi, who had returned from Jordan to support the protestors and who was a figurehead for them. Besides sending a delegation to meet al-Saadi, al-Sadr also expressed his solidarity with the Sunni Muslim cleric in regard to his anti-sectarian stance.

Meanwhile al-Maliki and his allies were slow in reacting to the protests, playing for time. Whereas al-Sadr seemed to spare no effort in trying to find acceptable solutions that would see protestors return home.

So is this a new al-Sadr? Has the former “firebrand cleric” matured politically and worked out how to play the game? 

Foreign Policy magazine answered that question recently: “On the one hand, Sadr’s new tune could reflect his genuine maturation and a newfound desire to play a positive role in Iraq’s dysfunctional political system; on the other hand, it could be just a new tactic to expand his influence and power. Either way, the more Sadr can convince Iraqis - disenfranchised Shia, Kurds, and Sunnis alike - that he is a reliable and moderate partner, the more power he will accrue at the expense of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, also a Shiite.”

“The key for Iraqis,” the magazine carefully concluded, “is to vet the new Sadr carefully and insist that he backs his sweetened rhetoric with concrete actions.”

Adding Fuel to The Fire

The Islamic republic earlier this year said it would install the new-generation centrifuges at its Natanz uranium enrichment plant. The reports in Iranian agencies appear to be the first time a specific figure has been given.

The announcement, which comes after talks between Iran and world powers in Kazakhstan about its disputed nuclear programme, underline Tehran's continued refusal to bow to Western pressure.

Iranian media on Sunday paraphrased Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, as saying Iran was producing 3,000 new-generation centrifuges.

"The final production line of these centrifuges has reached an end and soon the early generations of these centrifuges with low efficiency will be set aside," Abbasi-Davani said, according to the Fars news agency.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said earlier this year that 180 so-called IR-2m centrifuges and empty centrifuge casings had been put in place at the facility near the town of Natanz in central Iran. They were not yet operating.