Al-Sistani, the absolute ruler of Iraq

Due to the time difference between New York and Baghdad, the head of the Coordination Framework government, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, woke up early to an urgent alert from one of his aides about a statement by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani regarding the escalation of the war on Lebanon.

Al-Sudani, who was visiting the United States, had to pay close attention because the statement came from al-Sistani, even though, as prime minister and the country s de facto supreme authority, he did not expect al-Sistani to coordinate with him on political issues such as Israel s war on Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Al-Sudani knows deep down that al-Sistani is a supreme authority that cannot be approached, but rather obeyed completely. At first glance, he may appear to be a sectarian and jurisprudential authority, but the reality is much greater than that. Al-Sistani has absolute, unseen authority over everything that happens in Iraq.

Al-Sudani responded quickly while in New York when he called for an ‘emergency meeting’ of the heads of Arab delegations to the United Nations General Assembly, based on an invitation from Sistani! It was as if he was saying unequivocally that Sistani is the actual ruler and leader of Iraq!

The political value of Al-Sudani s call for a meeting that was devoid of any usefulness and did not even take place is irrelevant. what mattered to him was to show his complete obedience to Sistani, without bothering to answer the question of Sistani s political importance to Arab officials, so that they would respond to his call while they were on official business at the United Nations.

Naturally, Al-Sudani s call was ignored and no such meeting took place. However, Sistani s statement became a media story for news agencies, without their correspondents bothering to answer a question that has been repeated in Iraq since 2003: what political authority does Sistani have to exercise political power parallel to his religious authority?

None of the millions of followers of the religious authority had the opportunity to listen to this man closely yesterday´-or-today, and Sistani s appearances on television were very rare. They began after 2003 when he left for London for treatment, then in repeated images from a single angle in which he receives politicians and leaders in his modest home. The only time he agreed to receive reporters from international news agencies, he stipulated that they will not bring their cameras´-or-phones. What they wrote afterwards depended on their memory. Indeed, reporters from Agence France-Presse, Reuters and the Associated Press came out with brief reports on al-Sistani s speech.

Amid all this talk about Sistani s importance in shaping Iraq s future and its policies, no one, including the religious authority himself, is able to answer the question: who gave him the political authority to do so?

He is modest, a fact that begins with his isolation and austerity, even though the religious authority manages a huge financial fortune equivalent to that of entire countries. The fact that he still holds an Iranian passport and has rejected all attempts by Iraqi politicians to grant him Iraqi citizenship confirms that the Iranian cleric has remained unchanged since his arrival in Iraq in 1952.

If there were a state governed by the rule of law in Iraq, Sistani would be held accountable. Who gave him the political legitimacy to correspond with UN Secretary-General Antó-;-nio Guterres, for example, bypassing the government and its foreign ministry?

But merely thinking about this issue becomes futile, as the Najaf authority is a state with its own economy and vast wealth, and no one can approach it. If Sistani is not corrupt and lives an austere and isolated life, he is the front man for a corrupt institution run by his son, Muhammad Reza, and representatives of the religious authority who are described as the biggest businessmen in Iraq and run a parallel state within the state. This is something that Iraqis are now aware of.

We are talking about a fully-fledged state with its own funds and fighting forces within the Iraqi state. Most importantly, it cannot be held accountable financially´-or-subject to the laws and authority of the state.

Ali al-Sistani is a man outside of history, ascetic in his lifestyle, who rarely leaves his modest home in Najaf, does not meet with politicians, and does not speak. He does not appear on television, and there is no information to confirm that he even watches television! But all this asceticism and humility, which no objective observer can question, allows him to ‘rule’ Iraqi politics in one way´-or-another. The wealth of the religious authority, headed by an ascetic cleric, is not for the poor of Iraq, even though it is mostly obtained from Iraqi funds.

The religious authority has existed for decades in Iraq, specifically in the city of Najaf, and has managed its jurisprudential, legislative and academic affairs and accepted zakat funds and donations from outside Iraq. It only became a state with such financial and political power after 2003.

A report by the Atlantic Council of the United States has previously mentioned that a new political economy has emerged, based on a wide range of institutions linked to the sectarian elite, which acts as a governmental entity within Iraq.

The Sistani authority has seized cultural and historical sites and mosques and included them in its property holdings as part of a policy of sectarian appropriation of Iraq s past.

This authority is a state independent of the Iraqi state, with the power and authority to influence what happens in Iraq, from the approval of the constitution and election laws to the selection of the prime minister. The experience of recent years has shown us unequivocally that anyone who is not approved by the Najaf authority cannot become prime minister in the Green Zone.

Years ago, I wrote about Sistani s house and how anyone who enters it will be safe in terms of their political future. Although Al-Sudani did not enter this house, according to published news reports, he has the approval of the religious authority, otherwise he would not have been allowed to pass through the Green Zone. He also does not miss any opportunity to show his complete obedience to the religious authority and to present it as the supreme political guide for his government s decisions. That is why his invitation came when he was in New York, under the pretext of ‘responding to the call of the wise religious authority’!

Let us search for ‘wisdom’ in everything that has been issued by the religious authority since 2003 to this day, so that we may discover a country different from the current Iraq, which ranks among the most corrupt countries in the world!

Thus, the sectarian and political tragedy in Iraq continues, with the source of everything that happens being a basement where a 90-year-old Iranian cleric lives, strong and calm in his isolation and disconnection from the world, even though he has a powerful influence on it!

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