Iraq’s Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr has announced he is stepping down from political life and closing his political offices in a move that could further fuel tensions in the country. The statement, posted on Twitter on Monday, comes amid months of protests by his supporters who support his call to dissolve the Iraqi parliament, which has seen ten months of deadlock representing Iraq’s longest period without a government and for new elections to be held. “I announce my final departure,” al-Sadr said. In his statement, al-Sadr attacked his political opponents and said they had failed to listen to his calls for reform. The announcement came two days after al-Sadr said “all parties” including his own should leave government posts to help resolve the months-long political crisis, while calling on those “who were part of the political process” since the invasion under the US leadership in the country in 2003 to “no longer participate”. Sadr’s party, the Sadrist Bloc, won the most seats in an October 2021 election but ordered its lawmakers to resign en masse in June after it failed to form a government of its choice that would have excluded powerful Shiite rivals close to Iran . . The move, however, handed the initiative in parliament to his Iranian-backed Shiite rivals, the Coordination Framework Alliance. Many of al-Sadr’s supporters have been participating in a sit-in outside the Iraqi parliament since late July after storming the building and preventing al-Sadr’s opponents from appointing a new president and prime minister. Mustafa al-Qadimi, an ally of al-Sadr, remains Iraq’s interim prime minister. Reporting from Baghdad, Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud Abdelwahed said more al-Sadr supporters had joined those organizing the meeting in parliament, raising fears of an escalation that could further destabilize the country. He added that al-Sadr’s statements appeared to seek to distance himself from any coming unrest. “This resignation comes at a time when the political crisis in Iraq has reached an elevated stage,” Abdelwahed said. “It can be read in terms of frustration, disappointment, from the Sadrist movements, but on the other hand it could also be read as an attempt to try to put more pressure on his opponents.” He added that the political impasse has halted services that “affect regular citizens”. Reacting to their leader’s withdrawal, many of Sadr’s supporters tried to break down security barriers and converge on a rival sit-in on Monday. Dozens of protesters also entered the Presidential Palace, a source in the Iraqi presidency told Al Jazeera. Protests last week spread to the country’s Supreme Judicial Council, the country’s top administrative judicial authority, as al-Sadr called on the judiciary to dissolve parliament. The council said at the time that it did not have the power to dissolve parliament. Iraq’s Supreme Federal Court meets on Tuesday to decide whether parliament should be dissolved, although Farhad Alaaldin, chairman of Iraq’s Consultative Council, told Al Jazeera that the Iraqi constitution says it is “up to the parliament to dissolve itself”. Alaaldin added that it is unlikely that al-Sadr will permanently withdraw from Iraqi politics. He has announced his retirement from political life in the past, only to take back his decision. “He wants to see Iraq in a way that he has been working systematically since 2010, or you can say 2006 onwards,” he said. “I don’t think he’s going to throw away everything you’ve worked for the last 18 years in just one tweet.” “He has a mission and he has a plan and he believes he has a way to do it in a different regime where he would be the dominant force,” he said.
