Taming the hegemonic power: SCIRI and the evolution of US policy in Iraq

Abstract

This article discusses the historical development of the United States' special relationship with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI also known as SIIC or ISCI), one of the Shi'ite religious parties of Iraq. It surveys SCIRI's ideological heritage from the 1980s onwards, with particular emphasis on SCIRI's long-standing principle of subordination to the supreme leaders of Iran through the concept of wilayat al-faqih. The article then goes on to discuss the modalities by which the United States came to choose the most pro-Iranian of the Iraqi political parties as its preferred partner in Iraq after 2003. SCIRI managed to achieve this status by playing on the superpower's predilection for an ethnosectarian reading of Iraqi politics, by emphasizing professionalism in all its dealings with Washington, by exploiting the United States' lack of knowledge about how power works in Shi'ism, and by playing down its links to Iran. As a result of these manoeuvres, the Bush administration has chosen to sideline the other Iraqi Shi'ite parties (which historically have far weaker ties to Iran), and has ended up with a partnership that in the long term will probably mean a marked strengthening of Iranian influence in Iraq.