Kuwaiti news­pa­per Al-Qabas inves­ti­gates the real rea­son the pre­vented the Iran­ian Ahmadine­jad from vis­it­ing Kar­bala and Najaf saying:

It is very hard to imag­ine that an Iran­ian offi­cial vis­its Iraq with an offi­cial invi­ta­tion with­out vis­it­ing the two holly Shi­ites cities.

Away from the rumors, we decided to inves­ti­gate the issue and it is revealed that vis­it­ing the two cities wasn’t on Ahmadinejad’s sched­ule, but why?

Prob­a­bly, that the Iran­ian com­mit­tee who put the sched­ule three days before the visit learned that Shi­ittes high-rank cleric Sis­tani does not receive or meet with presidents.

While many news­pa­pers wrote about Iraq’s sec­tar­ian divi­sion on Ahmadinajad’s visit and they put it like [Shi­ites wel­comed the visit, Sun­nis rejected it], the news­pa­per reported about the Shi­ites – Shi­ites divi­sion on the visit.

The facts on the ground shows that those who wel­comed the Iran­ian Pres­i­dent Ahmadine­jad, are the rest of the Shi­ite coali­tion allied with the PKK in the Iraqi government.

There are about 16 Shi­ite par­ties and blocs [IISC] did not attend the cer­e­mony and boy­cotted the visit (The Iraqi Gath­er­ing, Al-Jaafari Bloc, Mazin Makiya Bloc) add to this Al-Fadhila Party, the Sadrists and other small groups in the coali­tion, in fact the major­ity are unwill­ing to meet guest the Iranian.

Con­trary to the com­mon believe that Iraqi-Shiites have ties with Iran, many Shiite-sectors of Iraqi Shi­ite aware of the impor­tance of their polit­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal independence..