The grand ayatollah is a hard man to please… or so he would like you to think
I was surprised at first by this post-SOFA approval development in Iraq, summarized over the weekend by the Washington Post:
Iraq’s preeminent Shiite spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has expressed concern about the country’s security agreement with the United States, saying it gives the Americans the upper hand and does not do enough to protect Iraqi sovereignty, an official at his office said Saturday.
Sistani, whose words carry great weight in Iraq, did not reject the pact outright and indicated that he would leave it to voters to decide its fate in a national referendum to be held by July 30. His comments will almost certainly bring pressure on the Shiite-led government and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to fulfill their promise to hold the vote.
It was always my impression that Sistani’s oft-cited reservations about the agreement were the key spine-stiffening element behind prime minister Maliki’s tough negotiating stance with the U.S., but I had thought there was also an element of calculation and coordination involved — specifically, pleading the need to placate Sistani and the rest of the marjaiya was part of Maliki’s bargaining strategy.
Beneath it all, I felt sure the old guy was pragmatic enough to accept the final deal as the best they could hope for under Bush (and especially tolerable since Bush and his neocon backers wouldn’t be around to renege on its terms). With this new statement, was the grand ayatollah really experiencing what some circles on the left are calling “buyer’s remorse” about the agreement?
Then I came to my senses. Sistani had been briefed about the negotiations every step of the way — if he genuinely objected to the agreement’s terms, he could have killed it singlehandedly by denouncing it before the legislature voted. Instead, he chose to let it pass. Nor did he explicitly demand a referendum, which allowed the Maliki government to offer it as a fig-leaf concession to opposition parties. Nor was he demanding that the Iraqi public be allowed to weigh in before the rather leisurely midyear schedule approved by the legislature.
Which leads me to think that Sistani’s real goal is to defuse any public opposition by seeming to share their concerns but postponing any action until the middle of the year. Not coincidentally, the timing of the referendum places it after the deadline for U.S. troops pulling out of Iraqi cities, which will help the Maliki regime in making its case for approval.
Other hints dropped in various news accounts suggest a range of side benefits as well. By voicing concerns over the implementation of the agreement, Sistani keeps the carrot-and-stick of his approval in place for the incoming Obama administration, positioning Maliki to push for more concessions around the edges of the accord to ensure that the referendum passes.
At the same time, he and the marjaiya get to distance themselves from the government, whose ineptitude and corruption have tarnished their image after they used their influence to bring it to power. And Sistani is able to extend a rhetorical olive branch to the Sadrists, keeping the option of their return to the mainstream political fold open, even as the practical effect is to suck the oxygen out of their opposition to the SOFA and marginalize them further.
That grand ayatollah is a pretty smart guy.
Update: Via the sidebar of Abu Aardvark, Iraqi vice president Adel Abed al-Mahdi (a top pol in the Shiite hierarchy allied with Maliki) is quoted in an Arabic-language article as saying the “referendum gives us leverage in the negotiations” with the U.S., just as I described above. So I guess they’re not even hiding it.