The Iranian regime has been putting the squeeze on radical Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada Sadr over the past week, temporarily placing him under house arrest and freezing his bank accounts, sources in Tehran told Newsmax on Tuesday.
The rebel cleric has been in Iran for several weeks, and possibly longer, ostensibly to perfect his religious training at a Qom seminary. But sources within Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, which has trained, equipped, and funded Sadr’s Mahdi Army since 2003, tell Newsmax they now have concerns that Sadr may have gone too far.
They fear that Sadr’s support for the uprising in Basra, which was successfully put down by the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki with U.S. support, could push the United States to attack Iran, the sources said.
President Bush has upped the ante against Iran in recent weeks, giving rise to speculation that the United States is close to making a final decision on whether to launch military strikes against Iran, Newsmax reported on Monday.
On April 10, he called Iran and al-Qaida “two of the greatest threats to America.” He said Iran “can live in peace with its neighbors,” or “continue to arm and train and fund illegal militant groups which are terrorizing the Iraqi people . . . If Iran makes the wrong choice, America will act to protect our interests and our troops and our Iraqi partners.”
President Bush later told ABC News that if Iran continues to help militants in Iraq, “then we’ll deal with them.” Criticism of Sadr and his support for the Basra revolt began in Web sites and news agencies close to former Revolutionary Guards leader Maj. Gen. Mohsen Rezai in early April.
One report at Tabnak.com, a popular Web site controlled by Rezai, accused Sadr of “misrepresenting” the views of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the highest ranking Shiite cleric in Iraq, to suggest that Sistani supported Sadr’s militia and their fight against the Iraqi government.
It was the first time that negative reports about Sadr had appeared in Iranian media outlets that are controlled directly or through proxies by the Tehran regime.
The government-owned Aftab newspaper broke the news that same day that Sadr had decided to remain in Iran “to concentrate” on his religious studies in Qom.
Another Web site close to Rezai, Shahab News, reported that a senior Iranian government official, Ayatollah Jannati, had called on Sadr and his followers to lay down their arms.
Last Saturday, Shahab News accused Sadr of ordering the April 11 assassination of a militia commander in Najaf who had left his organization, and called Sadr an “opportunist” who did not want to end the bloodshed in Iraq.
Far more serious were allegations that appeared on Sunday that Sadr’s Mehdi army had carried out a suicide bombing last month in the Iraqi city of Karbala that killed 50 innocent civilians.
The allegations appeared in Tabnak, the Web site run by Rezai, who now works closely with Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, a pragmatic cleric who is seeking to defuse a potential war with the United States.
Tabnak claimed that terrorists involved in the bombing who were arrested by Iraqi security forces admitted that Sadr had ordered the attack, and included a link to their videotaped confessions.
On Tuesday, Iranian security forces placed 25 members of the Mahdi army under house arrest in the south-western Iranian city of Ahwaz, along the Iraqi border. Ahwaz has long been an infiltration point for Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Qods Force units for bringing IEDs and trained fighters into Iraq from Iran.
The Mahdi army fighters were being trained at the Shahid Ghaem Magham training camp. The leader of the group that has been placed under house arrest went by the nom de guerre Abu Hamzeh, Newsmax sources said. “Abu Hamzeh is 44 years old, and has been a Mahdi army boss in Basra,” the sources added.
Also on Tuesday, the Tehran regime closed five bank accounts at the Bank Saderat and the Bank Melli that were being used by Sadr to cover expenses of Mehdi army fighters undergoing training in Iran and other purposes. Altogther, some $14 million was reportedly frozen in the accounts. But the radical Shiite cleric still has powerful backers, who have allowed him to issue statements while under house arrest.
On Monday, Sadr demanded that the Iraqi government reinstate the more than 1,300 members of the Iraqi security forces and police who were fired for laying down their arms and refusing to join the battle in Basra against Sadr and other radical Shiite elements.
Sadr claimed that the deserters “were only obeying their grand religious leaders" and "were driven by their religious duties."
On Tuesday evening, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei reportedly ordered Sadr’s release from house arrest, after a number of senior Iranian clerics had intervened on his behalf.
The Iranian maneuvers over Sadr show an ability by Tehran’s regime to recognize mistakes and change tactics with extraordinary aplomb, informed observers in the Iraqi capital told Newsmax.
“Don’t forget that the Quds Force was the group responsible for the Basra uprising, which proved to be a severe miscalculation on their part. They never believed that [Prime Minister Nouri Maliki] would step up to the plate and react the way he did,” one observer close to the Iraqi security and intelligence establishment said.
In addition, ”the Basra fighting is starting to generate an “awakening” on the part of Iraqi Arab Shia in the southern part of Iraq who are waking up to the fact that the Iranians are there to control them and not help them,” this source added.
”Many of the tribal Iraqi Arab Shia Sheiks in the south are putting together their own ‘CLCs’ [Concerned Local Citizens], much like the Sheiks in Anbar did against al-Qaida in Iraq in order to root out the Iranians. The next few weeks will be very interesting as this plays out,” he said.
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