Jaafari's replacement

From Juan Cole on the possible replacements for Iraqi prime ministerial candidate Jaafari.

The chief candidates of the UIA now seem to be Jawad al-Maliki, a long-time Dawa Party activist exiled for decades to Syria, and Ali al-Adib of the Dawa Party's Tehran branch. It is so amusing that the saviors of the Bush administration's political process in Iraq are beholden either to Syria or Iran-- Bush's chief targets for demonization-- for their political survival in the Saddam years.

Update: A little more on the candidates from this AP article.

Al-Adeeb was a member of the political bureau of Dawa based in Tehran in the 1980s — a time when Western governments considered the party little more than an instrument of the Iranian intelligence service.

Al-Maliki was deputy chairman of the committee charged with purging officials of Saddam Hussein's Baath party from government service and politics. Many Sunnis believe the committee's goal was to strip Sunnis of their rights.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the top religious figure and kingmaker favors Al-Adeeb supposedly because he would be more palatable to the Sunnis and Kurds, but I can't help myself from thinking that it's because it's Iran's choice.

UPDATE 2: It's Al-Maliki who was Jaafari's choice. The early reports are that the Sunni politicians support this, but reading the above excerpt, I would say, wait and see. More detail on this guy will come out over the next day, and we should have a better idea exactly how this projects.