Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 4/25/24 Dana Taib Menmy on the Impending Return of Muqtada al-Sadr

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Scott interviews Iraqi journalist Dana Taib Menmy about an article he wrote on the possibility that cleric Muqtada al-Sadr may return to Iraqi politics after a nearly three-year withdrawal. Scott and Menmy discuss who Sadr is, why he left, why it seems he may return and how that will impact both Iraqi politics and the stability of the whole region. Discussed on the show: “Will Iraq's Muqtada al-Sadr end his political quarantine?” (The New Arab) Dana Taib Menmy is The New Arab's Iraq Correspondent, writing on issues of politics, society, human rights, security, and minorities. Follow him on Twitter @danataibmenmy This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right y'all introducing dana taib menme he's a reporter for the new arab and he's got this really important piece will iraq's moktada al-sauder end his political quarantine, deep into Iraqi politics here, where we belong. Welcome to the show. How are you doing, Dana? Thank you. Thank you for having me. I am fine. Great. Really appreciate you

joining us here. All right. So, we're having this conversation in the future, and a lot of people are new and don't know who Muktaud al-Sauder is. So can you give us a brief sketch of the subject of our discussion? here today? Yeah, thank you for having me for this too. Mukda al-Sadr is a prominent Shia Klerak in Iraq. He has been engaged in Iraq's politics since 2003, and he's now have a wide population. I mean, he has large grassroots in Iraq, mainly the Shiates, and he has also supported from the four classes across Iraq. And then, importantly, in Iraq War II, he was sort of one of the three major groups in the United Iraqi Alliance that America fought the War IV, even though they fought him at certain.

times as well um yeah and so but it was essentially the supreme islamic council the dawa party and the soderists back then were sort of the the three legs on the stool of shiite power in the civil war right yeah right and then so it really is interesting because here's a guy who i don't know it seems like he could be the iatola if he wanted or something but instead he drops out of politics from time to time, I guess just in protest over things not going his way, or I don't really know, but you describe it here, your headline writer calls it political quarantine. So how long has it been since he had dropped out of politics and what's he been doing in the

meantime? Yeah. Noctod al-Sadr withdrew from the Iraqi political process recently due to pressure from Iran-backed groups. You know, he won the majority of seats following Iraq's early elections, and then he wanted to form a national unity government or a government from the Sunnis and the Quds. But pro-Iran groups did not lead that and boycotted the parliamentary sessions. Thus he could not form the government. And then he decided to withdraw from the Iraqi politics.

And that was how long ago? It was following the October 2021 elections in Iraq, Souther, emerged Victoria, securing 73 seats. And he placed to establish a national majority government in collaboration with several Sunni-ancho's blocs, educating disagreements with other Shia blocs aligned with Iran. But he failed to fulfill his promise to his voter. Sutter instructed lawmakers from his blog to resign, and they did it on 12 June, 2021. And then he decided to withdraw from politics. He said, I'll not do politics anymore.

And he acted as a clergyman or a cleric. And so now you're writing here that looks like Sauter's preparing to come back into politics. So that means he's going to run a sleigh to guys in some upcoming elections? Yeah, there are indications, wrong indications. That says wants to interact with politics again. He recently made an important visit to Iraq's Ali al-Sistani, who is the Marjaia, or for all peers in the world. So, following his visit to Ali Sustani,

there are indications that are certain ones to read Iraqi politics. First, he activated his parliamentary bloc. And he also ordered his aspect of body within his party to engage to engage and to engage and contact his grassroots. He also recently changed the name of Sparky. Previously, it was known as the Sadi's movement, but now he changed the name of Spocki

into the National Sheed Movement. The National Tejaroid Movement, the National Teyar al-Watani-Shii, the National State Movement. And he also changed the flag of his party. The flag consists of the colors of the Iraqi flag with the name of his party, a new party on it.

And there are also further indications that Sats wants to put. into Iraq politics and participate within the upcoming parliamentary elections in the country. There are education. There are some political sides really want Iraq to hold an early election. But currently Iraq's Prime Minister, Mohammad Shia Sudani and other state political parties, really they do not want these early elections to be held and that's a problem southern southern wants to to read the politics but he will he wants a better

ground and if not his conditions met he will not decide is it to reintegrated politics because there are many challenges facing him Now, it's interesting to read this article. It's really the same story since 2003, where, you know, the people in the chair are a little bit different, but it's still Dawes Skiy and Sauter here are the major players, right, with Nuri al-Maliki representing the Dawah Party. And al-Sudani, the current prime minister, is from Iski, right? and um and uh so you know back then it's almost 20 years ago now i guess it's 20 years ago in the last war or no sorry two wars ago um the idea was that in the the american government story was that saudder was the one who was closest to iran when really it was dawa and

scary that had lived in iran for 20 years at that point and saudder was seem to be the more nationalist and more willing to cooperate with the Sunnis, like in Fallujah in 2004, you know, with the, the Najaf uprising at the same time and all that. So, but you quote an expert in your article here saying that, well, right now, Maliki from Dahwa is representing Iran's interests. That's George Bush's guy. And, but he also says that, I think, think, I don't have the exact quote here, but I think the point is that Sauter will be representing Iran's interest now as he reasserts himself. In other words, saying that Sotter is really the one who's closest to the government in Tehran. Did I read that right? And is that correct? Yeah, but I think this quote represents the expert himself. I really I don't think that Satter may represent or will try to implement Iran's agendas in Iraq.

Because if that's the case, why Suther withdrew from Iraq's Iraqi politics? Souther himself put politics under pressure from Iran and the pro-Iran factions in Iraq. So, reading the general political landscape in Iraq, it seems to be more nationalistic rather than other pro-Iran trade parties. This represented from changing the name of the political party and the flag of the party. And in his stance, Suther always keeps a nationalistic view regarding doing politics in Iraq. He often said that Iraq should not be aligned either to Iran or the West.

Iraq should have its own policies, and back your question. I think the current government, led by Mr. Mohamed Shia Sadani and the pro-Iran factions who are behind him are more close to the Americans and the West. So I don't think Sala will be pro-Iran enough. to re-engage in Iran, but it's politics. I think if Iran promises him that he'll back him, maybe if he secured the majority of Iraqi parliament seats, maybe he'll form a majority government.

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But you're still going to need your caffeine in the morning. Well, you guys are going to love Moondos coffee. It's so good, and the price is right. Check out a massive variety of awesome tasting coffees at Moondosartisancoffee.com. You'll be glad you did. That's Moondosartisan coffee.com. Well, so far, you know, in 20 years of this, he is not... really been the winner but always just the kingmaker in the background who kind of helps to put

the coalition together but is never the chief of the thing so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out i guess um but so what about the idea then that he would bring sunni arabs from the west into his coalition and that that would be you know some kind of major reconciliation after the ISIS war could be the basis of a new government? Yeah. So initially made an alliance with the Sunnis represented by Muhammad Al-Fusi, the Ustead Parliament Speaker and other factions, including Chimits al-Khunter, and the Kurdish political party led by Masu Bersani.

But Sadr's coalition collapsed after Sadr withdrew from politics and ordered his lawmakers to resign, who they all resigned from the parliament. So the Sydney, led by Albuci and the Kurds, led by the Barzani Party, all joined the They turned government led by Prime Minister Mohamed Fyar Sudani. Currently, Mohammed al-Fusi is Usted from leading the Iraqi parliament and as per a decision by Iraq's federal court, he's been sacked. he has several minister portfolios in the Iraqi government. So, recently Halbussi threatened that he will withdraw from Iraqi politics or the Iraqi

political process if his agreement he made with the ruling coalition will not met. So I think it's a possibility that Sadr re-engaged to – make an alliance with the Sunnis or the Quds, mainly the Basradi Party. All right. Now, all the various attacks on American forces in Syria and in Iraq have been blamed on Iraqi Shiite militias. Do you accept the, you know, the way that they say that it's the Shiite militias like Khadib Hezbollah that are doing the attacks against American forces, I guess, up in Kurdistan? in Syria? Yeah, I think, I think, yeah, they are launching attacks against the U.S. forces, the coalition

forces, and the U.S. bases in the capital city of the Kyrgyzah region. And they did not hide this. They publicly said that their aim and their demand is that the U.S. forces, all the coalition forces should withdraw from Iraq, and they granted Prime Minister Sudani some time to negotiate with the Americans and the coalition forces to arrange for withdrawal from Iraq. So now if Sudani fails to convince the American to withdraw their forces, maybe they'll return their attacks and also connected to the Israel War on Gaza. They lost tens of drones and missile attacks against U.S. forces or U.S. bases in Iraq,

in Syria. Even they claim they have attacked Israeli targets inside Israel in Haifa and so on. But they do not announce their activities, let's say, with their own names. They announced their operations under the Islamic resistance in Iraq, which is an umbrella name for all Shiite groups along to Iran and fulfilling Iran's agenda in Iraq. I mean, they are properties what we are. And then, so how independent are they from the Iraqi army? How much control over them does the central government have, if any?

The Iraqi central government, or let us say, Iraq's prime minister, who's the commander-in-chief of all the security forces according to the Iraqi constitution, These factions do not follow orders from Siddha Pramish Dutani. They follow orders from Iran's good force and Iranian supreme leader alia Fahmane. This is not my speech. Recently, one of the leaders of Iraqi civilization forces or Hershey Shabin in the city. in Arabic.

He said he was in Iran. He said that we are ready, we are waiting for orders from Ali al-Khamenei to launch attack against the US forces in Iraq, in Syria, or in Israel. That came, the statement came after Israel attacked the US consulate in Syria and led to several ranking Iranian general killed, you know. They do not hide that they are following orders from Iran and they are working as a resistant access. They are defending.

They claim they are defending the people of Gaza and so on. So they are public saying that they are following orders from Iran, not the Iraq. government right and in fact after a few of those attacks apparently the iatollah told them to knock it off and they did stop because he was trying to prevent the war from spreading you know to to great of a degree at that point so um all right listen i'm sorry i'm all out of time but uh this has been a great interview i really appreciate your time on the show today dana thank you thank you very much have Go ahead. The Scott Horton show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on K-P-F-K 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.