... Gulf War of 1991, the latter of which led to a change in the domestic policy of President of Iraq Saddam Hussein and thus brought about new dynamics in the relations between the Iraqi government and the country’s ethnoreligious groups (mainly the Shiites and the Kurds). Iraq was under an embargo imposed by the United Nations at the time, which limited access to resource distribution for a part of the elite and, combined with the government’s practices that marginalized a part of the population, led many to flee the ...
... protesters. There are also nuances. For instance, the Communist Party withdrew its deputies from parliament and is apparently striving for closer solidarity with the protesters as an individual political force. Ali al-Sistani, the spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shiites, also expressed his support for some of the demands of the protesters and called for an investigation into the actions that had resulted in people’s deaths. This can be taken to mean that the emerging rapprochement between al-Sistani and al-Sadr ...
... involvement of spiritual leaders in politics. The emergence of so-called Islamic State forced al-Sistani to issue a fatwa in 2014 calling on the people of Iraq to unite in the face of this threat to the country. The
fatwa
was addressed to the entire Iraqi population: it did not differentiate between Shiites, Sunnis, Christians, or any other religious denominations or ethnicities.
Shiite non-governmental paramilitary movements, previously fragmented, have
consolidated
under the umbrella of the PMF, whose strength eventually reached around 120,000 ...
... and new alliances for the movement’s parliamentary representation, the Al-Ahrar Bloc. Ahmed al-Sadr holds meetings with influential Iraqi politicians, people with different views and faiths. His action have led to a “blurring” of the National Iraqi Alliance — the body that gave the Shiites a majority in the county’s decision-making process.
The Sadrist Al-Ahrar Bloc distanced itself from a coalition with the State of Law Coalition headed by the influential former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and moved towards rapprochement with ...
... proximity to its borders constitutes a direct threat to Iran's national security. Hence, sources suggest, Iranian troops have already entered Iraqi territory to support local Shiite militias
[23]
. Tehran is keenly aware that the extremists in Central Iraq will never accept the dominance of the Shiites, who risk sharing the terrible fate of the Kurdish Yazidi if IS prevails. The Iranians are also helping Baghdad by supplying weapons, military hardware, equipment and food
[24]
.
At the same time, recent developments in Iraq to a certain extent ...
... case of the country’s division, an economically deprived Sunni state will be established (there are extremely scarce developed oil reserves on the territory of the Sunni provinces), while the Basra oil fields will be under full control of the Shiites.
Thus, the most likely scenario is the continuation of the civil conflict in Iraq, which will occasionally pass into acute phases. And since Iraq is an object of the regional policy, the country’s stabilization will largely depend on normalizing relations within the Iran-United States-Saudi Arabia triangle.
1
. Ottaviani ...