Iran’s religious leaders have been moving to expand their influence over the Shiite Muslim establishment in neighboring Iraq in a gamble aimed at gaining sway over Iraq’s largest religious group.
The Iranian campaign is most apparent here in the holy city of Najaf, home to Iraq’s clerical hierarchy and a gateway to the wider Shiite population, which represents about two-thirds of all Iraqis. In Najaf’s dusty warrens, Iran has bankrolled schools and charities, built elaborate mosques and nurtured links with religious scholars in a bid to undermine the local clergy, who have long been fiercely independent.
The late Sheikh Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi is pictured in Najaf in February. Shahroudi, who died in December, was a senior representative of Iran in the city, and some saw him as Tehran’s preferred successor to the elderly leader of Iraq’s Shiites. Iran has become particularly powerful after Tehran-backed militias took a leading role in vanquishing the Islamic State, which had occupied a broad swath of northern Iraq, and Iranian proxy forces retain control over extensive Iraqi territory.
Meanwhile, Iran also pays stipends to religious students through offices managed by Iranian clerics and their allies and, at times, has used those connections to recruit Iraqis to fight for pro-Iranian militias. As Mandalawi recites prayers, he counts with the aid of a tasbih. Mandalawi was an associate in Iraq of the late Iranian official Sheikh Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi.
When Shahroudi came to Iraq, “he was preparing himself to become the marja of Iraq after Sistani’s death,” said a close aide to Sistani, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the motivations of a senior Iranian politician.
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