Official announcement: Qa'ani visits al-Sadr in al-Hannana
Shafaq News/ The commander of Iran's expeditional Quds Force, Esmail Qa'ani, held a meeting with the leader of the Sadrist movement, Muqtada al-Sadr, earlier today, Tuesday.
The meeting took place at the residence of the Shiite cleric in al-Hannana, north of Najaf, according to a brief press release issued by his bureau.
Qa'ani's visit to Iraq is the third in less than a month amid the growing rift between the Shiite Iraqi parties since October 10.
Garnering the support of the leading Kurdish party (Kurdistan Democratic Party-KDP) and the two leading Sunni blocs (Takaddom and Azm), the bloc of the firebrand Shiite cleric -the biggest in the October 10 election- has been mobilizing impetus behind a "National Majority Government", challenging the status quo "consensus governments", which the forces of the Shiite Coordination Framework have been lobbying for.
al-Sadr has said he will ally himself with whoever puts Iraq's national interests first. That is an indication that he may exclude some Iran-backed Shiite blocs in favor of parties with cross-sectarian support.
For the maverick leader whose parliamentary bloc won 73 seats of the 329-seat assembly, the point of contention remains the head of the State of Law Coalition, Nouri al-Maliki, whom he blames for the endemic corruption and even the ISIS invasion in 2014.
