Muqtada al-Sadr

Because in a way he's, um, he, uh...

he studied under Mohammed Sadeq as-Sadr, under Moqtada al-Sadr's father, and if you look at the, um, ideological orientation of the group or of, uh, of his movement is very much Sadrist.

Sadrist meaning adopting the, the beliefs, the teachings of Mohammed Sadeq as-Sadr, not being a follower of, of, of Moqtada al-Sadr.

And, uh, what, what was, uh, striking with him now to, to bring more of a, of a fresh context, uh, December after the latest round of elections, he gave this, uh, electoral, uh, victory speech after his movement, uh, won 27 seats.

And he said, "Yes, I mean, w- we as Muqawama, we as resistance, we have to be the one who lead by example when it comes to bringing the weapons in the hands of the state." And before you now start cheering and saying, "Here, like this revolutionary now developed into pragmatic actor," he also added the context.

Broadly speaking, you can divide the PMFs into three categories.

Organizations that maintained close ties with Iran and organizations that stayed steadfastly loyal to the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sustani and organizations that were linked to Muqtada al-Sadr.

After years of being caught in between the US and Iran, what do the Iraqis actually want?

When you look at it, yes, the target assassinations weaken militias, but it doesn't destroy militias.

Right.

So there were originally there were seven militias including Katai Bhasbullah and Mujabah, AAH and others and the Sadarists.

So Sadarists are basically they belong to the movement of Muqtada al-Sadr who's also a very influential cleric in Iraq.

Okay.

And in your experience, because you talked about al-Qaeda in Iraq, you talked about different Shia groups.

So there's the Jaysh al-Mahdi with Muqtada al-Sadr.

There's the Bata Brigades with Iran.

There's a whole bunch of other groups.

And this, this is where the challenge lies.

The Iraqi government will try, can try to go after these groups, but if you remember during the Civil War many years ago, the Iraqi government was able to go after Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army with the support of a hundred thousand plus U.S. troops, and that was still a long and very difficult battle.

Is the Iraqi government both capable and then willing to go after these groups? I think most would say no.

Mm-hmm.

Turning to geopolitics on the U.S.

Deadline to end a 12-year presence in Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr demanded American compensation for occupation damages and urged Iraqis to file claims.

Troops entered in 2003, left in 2011, and returned in 2014 against the Islamic State.

Sadr said Washington and neighbors should stay out of Iraqi affairs and that weapons should come under the state.

Remember that when we were going through this thing called the purge, we were fighting large numbers of people, and then all of a sudden, more than 50% of the opposition dropped out.

Well, that was Soleimani who went down and got Muqtada al-Sadr, transported him to study theology in, uh, southern Iran, and we benefited enormously from that because that removed large numbers of people that we might have otherwise had to fight.

And in addition to the Sunnis that we were fighting, we then drowned most of the opposition in cash.

It still cost us 1,000 American lives, more than 1,000 wounded, and of course, now in retrospect, you have to ask the question, "Well, why did we do this? What was the purpose?" I think the real purpose at the time was to convey the impression to the American public that the war in Iraq was over.

Instead, Iraqi media reported that the date would open a 90-day freeze on militia attacks, with a detailed disarmament timetable due and full completion pushed back to June 30, 2027.

The Sofan Center said the more heavily armed groups, including Khatib Hezbollah, Khatib Syed al-Shahada, and Harakat al-Najaba, had rejected disarming by the announced date without ruling out disarmament eventually, while As-Sab al-Alhaq and followers of the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had begun folding into state structures.

Before the plan was revised, Iraqi analyst Sajjad Jiyath had predicted that no group would disarm by September 30th.

In the Gulf, the European Union's foreign policy chief, Kaya Khalas, said the bloc was applying for observer status in a Saudi-led maritime defense coalition formed to protect the kingdom's energy exports.

And, uh, that, that legacy continues today.

So in Iraq war two, David Petraeus turned the biggest militia, the Bada Brigade into the Iraqi army and Muqtada al-Sadr still had his group.

And there were a couple of smaller militias, but it was really in Iraq war three after Obama built the caliphate for Osama bin Laden.

Well, for Ayman al-Zawahiri anyway.

Now there's this entire new set of Shiite militias with, I don't know, 10 different names or whatever that have to be corralled that they're always referred to as Iranian-backed, I think mostly, plausibly so, as we saw from Quds Force and IRGC intervention in Iraq War III there against ISIS.

So that makes sense.

I did read a thing a few weeks ago that said that Muqtada al-Sadr has given in, and he already told his Mahdi army to join the army, although I don't know if that actually happened or not.

And then you say in here, a Saba al-Haq, which I know is a very important Shiite militia, that they have agreed to either lay down their arms or join the military or both, one or the other, or something like that, but then...