*“if the highest Shi’ite religious authority demand it”.

It was the first time Sadr has offered to dissolve the Mehdi Army militia, whose black-masked fighters have been principle actors throughout Iraq’s five-year-old war and the main foes of U.S. and Iraqi forces in widespread battles over recent weeks.

The news came on the day Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who launched a crackdown on the militia late last month, ordered the Mehdi Army to disband or Sadr’s followers would be excluded from Iraqi political life.

Senior Sadr aide Hassan Zargani said Sadr would seek rulings from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most senior Shi’ite cleric, as well as senior Shi’ite clergy based in Iran, on whether to dissolve the Mehdi Army, and would obey their orders.

“If they order the Mehdi Army to disband, Moqtada al-Sadr and the Sadr movement will obey the orders of the religious leaders,” Zargani told Reuters from neighboring Iran, where U.S. officials say Sadr has spent most of the past year.

That puts the spotlight on the reclusive Sistani, 77, a cleric revered by all of Iraq’s Shi’ite factions and whose edicts carry the force of Islamic law.

Sistani, who almost never leaves his house in Najaf, has intervened in Iraqi politics only a handful of times but on each occasion his rulings have been decisive.

It speaks volumes for the state of things in Iraq and our considerable poor estimations and cultural misunderstandings that a feat we (including U.S. backed Iraq Prez Nuri Kamal al-Maliki) have been trying to accomplish for years could come to pass on the words of a reclusive cleric living in Iran- a country that our government has no love lost for.

The fighting in Basra and Baghdad has brought Iraq back into the headlines after a long stretch of relative calm following the surge strategy that was put in place as well as a cease-fire called for by Moqtada al-Sadr last year.  With General Petraeus set to report to Washington again in the next few days, including face time with Presidential hopefuls Clinton, Obama, and McCain, it remains to be seen how the recent events will influence talks of withdrawing troops from Iraq, not to mention dialogue about the overall future of U.S. involvement in Iraq.

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