In his first speech since returning from almost four years of self-imposed exile in Iran, the 37-year-old cleric whose Shiite militias once battled US troops stopped short of explicitly urging violence against Americans. But he left open the possibility that some 50,000 US troops in Iraq could be targeted before they are set to leave at the end of this year.
“Let the whole world hear that we reject America. No, no to the occupier,” Sadr said during his 35-minute speech in Najaf, 160 km south of Baghdad. “We don’t kill Iraqis — our hands do not kill Iraqis. But we target only the occupier with all the means of resistance,” he added.
“We are still resisters and we are still resisting the occupier militarily and culturally and by all the means of resistance.” Sadr has long branded the US military as occupiers in Iraq, and Washington considers him a security threat. Yet after winning 40 seats in March parliamentary elections — and taking eight top leadership posts in the new government — Sadr’s political muscle makes him a force that cannot be ignored.
Addressing an adoring and frenzied crowd of thousands, Sadr called the US, Israel and Britain “our common enemies.” “Maybe during the past few days and months, we forgot the resistance as we were busy with politics,” Sadr said. “Our aim is to expel the occupier with any means. The resistance does not mean that everyone can carry a weapon. The weapon is only for the people of the weapons” — fighters.
US Embassy spokesman David J. Ranz brushed off Sadr’s remarks. “We listened to the speech, but heard nothing new,” Ranz said.
A security agreement between Washington and Baghdad requires all US forces to be out of Iraq by the end of the year. Although both Nuri Al-Maliki and the Obama administration have maintained the roughly 50,000 US troops will leave by then, officials in both nations have acknowledged that Iraq is not yet ready to protect its borders from possible invasion. That’s led to widespread speculation that Al-Maliki ultimately will ask a small number of American forces to remain.
Sadr rose to power after the March 2003 invasion and has since been revered by poor Iraqi Shiites. His Mahdi Army gunmen were a formidable foe of American troops and Iraqi government forces between 2004 and 2008, but Sadr fled to Iran in 2007 under threat of arrest for allegedly killing another cleric. Although absent from Iraq for four years, he has maintained strict control over the political and military wings of his movement from his base in Iran.
It’s not clear whether Sadr will remain in Iraq or return to Iran. Followers and detractors hung on his words, delivered outside his ancestral home, for signs of where he plans to take his political movement.
