Shafaq News..Exclusive: New CF effort seeks Al-Sadr’s return to politics

Shafaq News-
Baghdad

Iraq’s
Coordination Framework (CF) has launched a new effort to persuade Patriotic
Shiite Movement (PSM) leader Muqtada Al-Sadr to return to the political
process, an informed source in the coalition told Shafaq News on Monday.

The source
said a prominent leader in the CF —the alliance of Shiite parties that has run
Iraq since 2022 and excludes Al-Sadr’s movement— had given members of his party
the green light to open channels with the PSM to convince Al-Sadr “in any way possible.”

“The forces
behind this effort believe the Sadrist movement’s presence is necessary in the
political process,” he said, adding that the outreach is continuing but has so
far received no response from the PSM.

Meanwhile, Salam
Al-Zubaidi, a political researcher close to the Framework, told Shafaq News
that Al-Sadr remains opposed to returning to the political process or
participating in elections unless his conditions are met, particularly reforms,
an end to Iraq’s partisan power-sharing system, and measures addressing the
issue of weapons outside state control.

Al-Sadr
withdrew from Iraq’s political process in June 2022 after calling on all 73 of
his lawmakers to resign from parliament, saying he would not participate
alongside politicians he described as “corrupt.” He also boycotted the October
2025 parliamentary elections and urged his supporters neither to vote nor run,
citing the participation of “corrupt individuals and Baathists while Iraq is on
its last breath.”

Read more: Iraq’s political enigma: The unpredictable maneuvers of al-Sadr

Despite
remaining outside the political arena, Al-Sadr has backed Prime Minister Ali
Al-Zaidi’s recent anti-corruption campaign and urged him to pursue corruption
cases regardless of political affiliation. He has also repeatedly called for
armed factions to come under state control, separating Saraya Al-Salam, the
PSM’s armed wing, from the movement in May and ordering its members and weapons
integrated into state institutions, a move welcomed by Al-Zaidi.

Read more: Al-Zaidi at 100 days: Iraq’s toughest tests still ahead