Iran pressures Sadr to prevent formation of majority government in Iraq

Both Iran and Hezbollah are pressuring the leader of the Sadrist movement in Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr, to prevent him from forming a majority government and to remove the alliance of former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki from the scene in the next government, as he is the one who demands a consensus government so that and the provincial factions close to Tehran are represented in it despite them losing the elections.

The pro-Iranian Shiite Coordination Framework seeks to persuade Sadr to include them in the government after the Federal Court blocked the way to attempts to challenge the legitimacy of the parliament’s first session in which its leadership was elected, while Sadr, the leader of the winning movement in the legislative elections, refused the mediations of Quds Force commander Esmail Ghaani and Muhammad Kawtharani, the representative of the Lebanese Hezbollah in Iraq, who urged the participation of those defeated in the elections in the new government to prevent the decline of Tehran’s influence.

It should be noted that these Shiite factions aim to control the sovereign portfolios such as the ministries of interior and defense in order to remain in possession of the positions of power within the Iraqi state and then strengthen their militias operating in the Sunni areas in the center of the country.

The Shiite Coordination Framework left no way to overturn the election results except to use it. At first, it strove to cancel the results of the legislative elections, starting with challenging their integrity and demanding their return despite its dominance over the state’s joints and the boycott of many Sunni parties and Shiite opponents.

The Iranian mediation then proceeded to dissuade Sadr from his project to form the government, and now there have been dangerous attacks on the political parties that are likely to converge with Sadr, such as the Sunni Azm and Taqadum blocs, as well as the Kurdish parties.

The Tehran loyalists, such as the Dawa Party, the Supreme Council, and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, fear the formation of a majority government, as the government could withdraw weapons from the militias or the mainly Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) and make it a military institution linked to the state military institutions and not to the Shiite leaders.

Likewise, the Shiite Coordination Framework’s fears are represented in significantly reducing its influence in various joints in the Iraqi state, especially in the areas controlled by ISIS, which generates huge sums of money for it due to the border crossings, oil wells and large commercial movement, as well as activating the agreement that the government of Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi signed with the Kurdistan Region under the supervision of the international coalition to address the situation in the disputed areas by forming military brigades from the people of these areas exclusively, far from nationalist and ethnic lines, and linked to the Ministry of Defense.