Iraq's powerful Shiite cleric deepens religious ties with Iran

[sabra]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/08/news/sistani.php

Iraq's powerful Shiite cleric deepens religious ties with Iran

QOM, Iran The single most influential man in Iraq today, the Shiite religious leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, provides cash, free housing and medical care to tens of thousands of religious students and operates hundreds of religious Web sites across the globe.

Yet this is all going on not in Iraq, but here in the religious capital of Iran.

As the Bush administration seeks simultaneously to stabilize Iraq, in part by empowering its Shiite majority, and contain Iran, it must carefully navigate the complex relationship between the countries. It is not just Iran's influence in Iraq that the United States must confront, but Iraq's connection to Iran, as well.

While Sistani is viewed suspiciously by the leadership of Iran - he opposes clerics' involvement in politics - his relations with the Iranian people have deepened and spread since the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. Divisions that once stood between the Shiites of Iraq and Iran, animosity fed by the eight-year war between the countries, have become less relevant as Iraq's Shiites re- establish their identity after decades of oppression under Saddam Hussein.

"We are a family of Shia," said Javad Shahrestani, who is Sistani's son-in-law and his representative in Qom. "This is the basic fact of our life."