Despite join­ing a coali­tion with other Shi­ite polit­i­cal par­ties (INA), the Sadrists are try­ing to dis­tance them­selves from Al-Hakim’s supreme Council.

In his last offi­cial state­ment which I expect will cause dif­fer­ent reac­tions among Shi­ite parties, Al-Sadr urged his fol­low­ers to cast their votes “wisely” for a sin­gle “direc­tion” and not to dis­trib­ute their votes among other par­ties (within the same coali­tion), because (as Al-Sadr put it) the “oppressed” can stay united in the com­ing election.

The state­ment goes fur­ther to this very inter­est­ing part:

There is no polit­i­cal bloc that will sup­ports you to achieve your demands or rights … If you join them (other par­ties), then be with them but not part of them …. “pol­i­tics have no heart”.

At the same time, the Sadrist spokesman Salah Al-Obeidi said that the Iran­ian occu­pa­tion of the Fakka oil well is unac­cept­able, and that all data and evi­dence con­firms that the oil belongs to Iraq.

Al-Obeidi even crit­i­cized Iran:

Iran didn’t respect Iraq’s sov­er­eignty … There are the inter­na­tional diplo­matic chan­nels to issue its com­plaints, but Iran didn’t use these ways.

Al-Sadr timed these new posi­tions, while the Supreme Coun­cil is totally silent about the Iran­ian inva­sion of the Fakka oil­field (or tried to play down the Iran­ian inva­sion), despite the demon­stra­tion of the thou­sands of Shi­ites in Ashura rit­u­als in Ker­bala against the Iran­ian occupation.

Coali­tion and not an alliance

As a result of the dif­fer­ences arose between the Sadrists and Maliki, the Sadrists have been forced to enter the com­ing elec­tions in coali­tion with one of the most promi­nent oppo­nents, the Supreme Coun­cil led by Ammar al-Hakim (INA).

INA also includes the National Reform Move­ment, led by for­mer prime min­is­ter and close Sadrists asso­ciate Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

What is hid­den between Al-Sadr lines and accord­ing to the Shi­ites polit­i­cal coali­tion scene: Moq­tada Al-Sadr’s call to his fol­low­ers to vote for one “direc­tion” means to vote for Al-Jaafari, hop­ing to set him again as the next prime min­is­ter chal­leng­ing the Supreme Council’s can­di­date Adel Abdul-Mahdi, which means that the dif­fer­ences within the INA mem­bers has started now, and this would be in Maliki’s interest.