An update on the Iraqi Prime Minister

There is good news on the Iraqi political scene. According to the AP, AFP, Reuters, and the Washington Post, the United Iraqi Alliance has chosen Interim Vice President Ibrahim al-Jaafari as its candidate for Prime Minister. The other person seeking the nomination, Ahmed Chalabi, withdrew.

This means that Ahmed Chalabi will not be Prime Minister, and that is very good news indeed. As noted in the AP article, "Chalabi, who stepped down Tuesday, is a former exile leader who heavily promoted the idea that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He later fell out with some key members of the Bush administration over allegations that he passed secrets to Iran." Chalabi not only "heavily promoted" WMD, he supplied--through his Iraqi National Congress--much of the evidence the Bush administration relied upon in claiming that Iraq had WMD and ties to Al Qaeda. Chalabi basically admitted later that much of his "evidence" was fabricated. When confronted with this charge, Chalabi replied,

We are heroes in error. As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important.

Chalabi was the chosen one of the Defense Department, and the Bush administration has since turned its back on him. If he had become Prime Minister, that could have been a dicey situation for the U.S.

Jaafari is the leader of the Dawa Party, one of the leading Islamist parties. That means the party is more religious than secular in nature. As reported by Reuters, "He joined Dawa -- Iraq's oldest Islamic movement -- in 1966, but fled to Iran in 1980 after a crackdown on the party in which thousands of his comrades were killed." The AP article expressed one of the concerns about Jaafari: "Al-Jaafari, the president of the Islamic Dawa Party, is Western-oriented but is considered by many to be a cleric in a business suit." AFP said "His ties with Iran and presumed support for a more Islamic state have sparked concern[.]" The Washington Post noted that the Dawa party "has long advocated a religious government." As I noted in the opening paragraph of Some post-Iraq election analysis, all this sounds precisely like what the Bush administration does not want to see.

Still, there are reasons to temper such concern, at least for now. The Washington Post article also said this:

But in a recent interview with The Washington Post, he said Dawa had tempered that desire to accommodate secular and non-Muslim Iraqis. Jafari said Dawa did not "aim to establish an Islamic state to apply the Islamic sharia," or law. Instead, it would establish a government "respecting human rights and applying justice and respecting the rights of women."

Jafari also said that his new government would include all ethnic parties, including Sunnis who boycotted the election.

More analysis to follow...