Leading Shiite party distances itself from Iran

Iraq’s largest Shiite Muslim party pledged its allegiance Saturday to the country’s top cleric in a move apparently aimed at establishing its distance from Iran, where it formed and grew for decades before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion here.

The announcement by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq did not signal a sudden shift. The party has sought to align itself with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani since it came out of exile in Iran. It won a quarter of the seats in Iraq’s parliament and control of the southern provinces. The party’s power is centered in Najaf, where its Badr Organization militia is based.

But the group, which leads the ruling Shiite bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, did seem to be making an effort to build a stronger image of Iraqi sovereignty, and it pledged to oppose “terrorists” and cooperate with Sunni Arabs, commitments sought by the United States.

Party leader Abdelaziz Hakim said the changes were a reflection of “the new equilibrium ruling Iraq.” The party dropped “revolution” to rename itself the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.

With its declaration of loyalty to Sistani, the party has chosen a famously reclusive figure who is the spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shiite majority.

Sistani rarely makes public statements from his Najaf headquarters or becomes directly involved in politics, stepping in only on major issues. Early on he insisted on direct elections and urged Shiites to vote in the January 2005 balloting. He also insisted that the constitution could be written only by a body directly elected by Iraqis.

The platform of the Supreme Council, which was formed in the 1980s in Iran to oppose Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his Sunni-dominated Baath Party, had said that it took its guidance from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

That sort of Iranian involvement is now proving to be a liability in the party’s relationship with the United States.

Vice President Dick Cheney used the hangar deck of a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf about 150 miles off Iran’s coast as the setting Friday to reiterate concern that Tehran is seeking to dominate the region by obtaining nuclear weapons. The administration has also alleged that Iran has been providing weaponry used to attack American troops.

The party’s leadership is “clearly trying to sanitize their image to something that would be much more acceptable to Washington,” said Vali Nasr of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.

The goal, Nasr said, is to present the party as an entity that can manage the southern provinces as a semiautonomous state if the U.S. pulls out and Iraq develops strong Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish political entities under a weak central government.

The party’s main political rival in the southern region is radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, whose Al Mahdi militia has clashed repeatedly with the group’s Badr Organization.

In an incident last week in Kufa, Mahdi members prevented Badr-affiliated police from responding to a suicide bombing. The Mahdi members chanted with protesters that the security forces’ weaknesses had allowed the attack.

“Both would like to have control over the south,” Nasr said. “It’s the law of politics that the political system cannot accommodate two bosses.”

Meanwhile, the Iraqi parliament rebuffed American calls to focus on so-called benchmark legislation to resolve conflicts over distribution of oil revenue, provincial elections and other divisive issues and spent Saturday working on bills that expressed displeasure with the U.S. presence.

After fiery debate, parliament members voted overwhelming to call on U.S.-led forces to halt construction of a barrier to wall off Baghdad’s Adhamiya neighborhood, a Sunni district, from surrounding Shiite.

In a separate action, the lawmakers voted to call on security forces across Iraq to obtain court-sanctioned search warrants before raiding neighborhoods in search of car bombers, sectarian death squads and other militants.

The denunciation of U.S. military actions is largely symbolic because the United States has a mandate from the Iraqi government to manage security until Iraq’s forces are capable of taking over. There is no sign that will change.

“We are going to continue to put up protective barriers in Adhamiya and any other place the Iraqi commander on the ground says they need them,” U.S. Army Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said Saturday. “Our efforts to protect the population will continue.”

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garrett.therolf@latimes.com

Times staff writers Raheem Salman and Said Rifai contributed to this report.