Sadr returns

Michael Gordon of the NYTimes reports that American intelligence believes that Moqtada al Sadr has returned to Iraq.

Later: The AP has a more direct article.

Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr appeared in public for the first time in months on Friday, delivering a fiery anti-American sermon to thousands of followers and demanding U.S. troops leave Iraq.....

His associates say his strategy is based partly on a belief that Washington soon will start reducing troop strength, leaving behind a hole in Iraq's security and political power structure that he can fill.

Al-Sadr also believes that Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government may soon collapse under its failure to improve security, services and the economy, al-Sadr's aides say. A political reshuffle would give the Sadrist movement, with its 30 seats in the 275-member parliament, an opportunity to become a major player.

AFP:

During his absence Sadr supporters quit Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government and now claim to have recruited 148 members of Iraq's 275-member parliament to support a law demanding the expulsion of US forces....

This week, a delegation of Sunni tribal sheikhs met a group of their Shiite counterparts in Sadr City and vowed to work together for national unity.

WaPo:

Sadr's movement is wooing Sunni leaders and purging extremists in his Mahdi Army militia in an attempt to strengthen his image as a nationalist who can lead all Iraqis at a time when antiwar sentiments are growing in the United States and Iraq's political landscape is increasingly fractured.....

There are growing signs that extremists in Sadr's militia are disobeying his orders to stand down, as U.S. troops raid and patrol their strongholds.... Sadr's aides have described the cleric's orders as intended to improve his credibility and dispel allegations that the Mahdi Army was fueling sectarian violence.

So, with the US looking at a possible political collapse in September, and Maliki looking at one perhaps sooner than that, with Kurdish power broker Talabani outside the country for three weeks, and with Shia/SIIC leader al Hakim absent for months, Sadr has returned to take advantage of the vacuum.

That's the general analysis from the US perspective. If I see something substantially different from the sites that watch the Iraqi press, I'll post it.

(And, the NYTimes has a revised version adding Jon Elsen to the byline.)