The prob­lem with such arti­cles like this one FP “Ten­u­ous Agree­ment on Main­tain­ing U.S. Troops in Iraq” is that they all for­get one cru­cial point. This point is sum­ma­rized by Iraqi writer Jawad Bashara in his last para­graph of his arti­cle pub­lished today called “Who is going to impose the de facto in Iraq?”:

The last fac­tor which could turn the whole thing upside down is the posi­tion of [Shi­ite] religious-authority in Najaf from this agree­ment, if they are going to bless or curse the one who signs it.

Described by Kuwaiti news­pa­per Al-Watan as “The three Fat­was sur­round­ing the secu­rity agree­ment”, the arti­cle views the dif­fer­ent reli­gious posi­tions form SOFA. The writer “Sha­boot” clas­si­fies the reli­gious opin­ion into three categories:

1– Per­mis­sion:

This posi­tion is rep­re­sented by Supreme-cleric Ali Al-Sistani, who autho­rized the par­lia­ment to approve or reject the agreement.

Although Sistani’s office never issued a for­mal state­ment, but politi­cians [Maliki] said that the Supreme-cleric spoke about four con­di­tions to pass a secu­rity agreement:

1) The preser­va­tion of the Iraqi national sov­er­eignty. 2) Trans­parency. 3) Par­lia­ment approval. 4) Pub­lic consensus.

Issu­ing his posi­tion to approve the deci­sion made by the Iraqi par­lia­ment, Sis­tani doesn’t want to be seen as the high­est author­ity of the [Shi­ite] Iraqi peo­ple [this posi­tion is dif­fer­ent from the late Iran­ian leader Aya­tol­lah Khomeini]

By trans­fer­ring the mat­ter to the par­lia­ment, Sis­tani indi­rectly wants to sep­a­rate reli­gion from pol­i­tics, sat­is­fied to give gen­eral advice with­out it reach­ing “Fatwa” lev­els which are obliged upon the pub­lic accord­ing to cus­tom tradition.

2– Con­di­tional:

This is the posi­tion of the Iraqi-Lebanese Supreme-cleric Moham­mad Hus­sein Fad­lal­lah, who is a very influ­en­tial in the Islamic Dawa Party.

I already reported his points here.

A source from Fadlallah’s office con­firmed that if the [Iraqi] gov­ern­ment meets these con­di­tions men­tioned above, then it is enough to sign the agreement.

3– Absolute pro­hi­bi­tion [Arabic=Tahreem]:

This posi­tion adopted by Al-Ha’iri the reli­gious ref­er­ence of “Muq­tada Al-Sadr , who con­sid­ers sign­ing any secu­rity agree­ment by the Iraqi gov­ern­ment with the United States in reli­giously forbidden.

Sur­prise for the for­eign read­ers, Al-Ha’iri is one the mod­er­a­tors Shi­ite Supreme-clerics and this is the rea­son that he is stay­ing in Hawza of Qom — Iran which is much more “open” to new reli­gious thoughts than the Hawza in Najaf — Iraq.