On July 16, 2009 Al-Hayat newspaper reported that Moqtada al-Sadr visited Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) in his Tehran hospital. Sadr said he was interested in rejoining the United Iraqi Alliance, which the Sadrists left in September 2007. The new alliance is due to be announced later this month according to a Supreme Council member. In February 2009 Sadr issued a statement saying that he would come back to the Alliance as long as it was renamed, the SIIC was no longer leading it, and that it was non-sectarian. Those talks fell apart in May when the Sadrists said they would run independently in the January 2010 parliamentary vote. The change in the Sadrists’ position could be due to the influence of Iran, which is applying strong pressure upon the leading Shiite parties to re-unite and run together in the next round of balloting in Iraq.
One of the main goals of Tehran is to ensure friendly Shiite rule in Iraq so that it never becomes a rival again. Following this Iran wants the main Shiite parties to be united during elections, so they stay in power. In 2005 Iran helped put together the United Iraqi Alliance, and gave them printing presses, advisors, broadcast equipment, and stuffed ballot boxes. Since the January 2009 provincial elections, Iran has been pushing for the Alliance to be revived. In January, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ran his own State of Law List, which trumped the Supreme Council in most of southern Iraq. Iran was afraid of further fracturing by the Shiites, and began pressuring them to run together in 2010.
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