Ali al-Sistani

Overview

Ali al-Sistani is a grand ayatollah based in Najaf, Iraq. In 2019, he held marjaiya, the highest clerical rank in Shia Islam. His office exercised religious authority across national borders, while his political interventions carried exceptional weight within Iraq. He supported reconciliation and constitutional government after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, helped end fighting in Najaf in August 2004, and called Iraqis to arms against the Islamic State in 2014. His standing also made the future leadership of Najaf’s religious establishment a matter of national and regional importance.

Al-Sistani’s authority differs from the Iranian regime’s system of rule by a jurist. He holds a senior religious position without serving as a state official and opposes the doctrine embodied by Iranian regime leader Ali Khamenei. Najaf’s school places religious authority alongside, rather than above, Iraq’s constitutional political institutions. That distinction shaped al-Sistani’s responses to elections, armed groups and Iranian regime influence. He pressed for governments capable of exercising public authority and supported bringing the Popular Mobilization Forces under the command and regulations of Iraq’s armed forces.

Career

Al-Sistani built an extensive clerical office in Najaf and established a large office in Qom, Iran, headed by his son-in-law Javad Shahrestani. His effort to establish religious authority in Iran met resistance from Qom’s clergy in the early 1990s. His associates told Iranian officials that his work there would concentrate on financial aid for seminarians and services such as libraries. These activities reflected the reach of his religious office beyond Iraq. They also placed Najaf’s source of emulation in a clerical landscape where the Iranian regime sought influence over Shia institutions.

Under Saddam Hussein’s government, al-Sistani faced restrictions and danger. Attempts on his life had left him confined to his Najaf home by 2000, and the government barred him from leading prayers. His position changed after the American-led overthrow of Hussein’s regime in April 2003. As Iraq entered a political transition, al-Sistani became one of the country’s most influential public figures. He supported political reconciliation and a constitution-based society. His religious authority gave him a means to shape that transition without taking a government post or adopting Iran’s model of clerical rule.

Violence in Najaf soon tested his position. Abd al-Majid al-Khoi, a cleric who had returned from exile, was murdered after emerging from the Imam Ali Mosque. Following the killing, armed followers of Muqtada al-Sadr surrounded al-Sistani’s home. Al-Sistani, then al-Sadr’s principal rival for influence in Najaf, escaped and temporarily went into hiding. He reemerged after reinforcements strengthened his position. The episode exposed the pressure armed factions could place on Najaf’s religious leadership during Iraq’s post-2003 upheaval.

Al-Sistani played a decisive part in ending a later confrontation in the city. In August 2004, fighting between al-Sadr’s forces and the American-led coalition produced a prolonged standoff that Iraqi authorities and the combatants had failed to settle. Armed men had used the Imam Ali Mosque as a base. On August 27, al-Sistani brokered an agreement between the opposing forces. Al-Sadr ordered his fighters to cease hostilities, and the mosque’s keys were handed to al-Sistani. The transfer marked the end of the armed group’s use of the shrine as a position in the fighting and demonstrated the practical force of al-Sistani’s religious authority.

Al-Sistani also intervened when attacks threatened Iraq’s places of worship. In June 2007, he condemned attacks on two Sunni mosques in Basra, the Talha Bin al-Zubair mosque and the Ashrah al-Mubashra mosque. He called on Iraqis to prevent further attacks on shrines and mosques. His appeal addressed the danger that assaults on religious sites would intensify violence between communities. Protection of those sites formed part of his wider support for reconciliation in a country struggling with sectarian attacks and weak public security.

After Iraq’s May 2018 parliamentary election, al-Sistani and Muqtada al-Sadr pressed for a government of technocrats. Al-Sistani had lost confidence in outgoing Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and demanded a next government selected for its ability to govern. Former vice president and minister Adil Abdul Mahdi was subsequently assigned the task of forming a government. Al-Sistani’s intervention showed that his preference for constitutional politics did not mean silence about the quality of Iraq’s political leadership. He used his standing to press for changes while leaving formal office to elected and appointed officials.

Ideology and statements

Al-Sistani leads Najaf’s religious school as its foremost source of emulation. Its approach to government stands apart from the rule-of-the-jurist doctrine upheld by the Iranian regime. That doctrine places Iran’s supreme leader above elected civil officials. Al-Sistani opposes the model embodied by Ali Khamenei and has supported Iraq’s constitutional political order. His position demonstrates that senior Shia clerical authority does not require direct government by clerics. The distinction matters in Iraq, where Najaf’s seminaries are both a center of religious learning and a target of efforts by the Iranian regime to expand its political influence.

His calls for reconciliation after 2003 and for protection of mosques in 2007 expressed an interest in the security of Iraq’s communities and institutions. His political demands centered on the capacity and independence of the Iraqi state. Following the 2018 election, he sought a technocratic government. As armed factions gained power, he backed measures intended to subject them to national command. Those positions were consistent with his separation of religious guidance from direct clerical rule: al-Sistani could urge action on matters of public consequence while insisting that Iraq’s government and armed forces exercise their own responsibilities.

The issue became more acute during Iraq’s 2019 protest crisis. The Shia religious establishment led by al-Sistani identified the Iranian regime and its Iraqi allies as a grave threat to the country. Protesters faced violence and intimidation amid the growing power of Iran-aligned armed groups. Najaf’s resistance to the regime’s political dominance was therefore more than a disagreement over religious doctrine. It concerned who would control Iraq’s institutions, whether armed organizations would answer to the state, and whether Iraqi political decisions would be made free of coercion by foreign-backed forces.

Role in attacks or conflicts

Al-Sistani’s most consequential call to arms came as the Islamic State advanced through Iraq. After the fall of Mosul opened a route toward Baghdad, he called young men to defend the country. On June 13, 2014, he issued a ruling of jihad, a term meaning struggle or effort; in this instance, the ruling concerned armed resistance to the Islamic State. More than 100,000 volunteers answered the call. Their mobilization helped activate the Popular Mobilization Forces after Iraqi army units had collapsed in the face of the Islamic State’s advance.

The volunteers helped prevent the fall of Baghdad and contributed to the fight to drive the Islamic State from Iraqi territory. The formation and later growth of the Popular Mobilization Forces also raised a question al-Sistani repeatedly addressed: whether armed groups created during an emergency would remain under Iraqi state authority. The force included units with different loyalties. Some were aligned with Iran, while Sistani-aligned shrine units resisted pro-Iran dominance and identified with Najaf’s religious school and the national army. The shared mobilization against the Islamic State did not erase those differences over command and Iraq’s sovereignty.

Al-Sistani called in December 2017 for Popular Mobilization Forces units to be integrated into Iraq’s military and security institutions. He later backed a July 2019 order requiring armed groups within the force to operate as part of Iraq’s armed forces and placing their personnel under army regulations. The order followed an American warning about Iranian regime weapons in Iraq. Although al-Sistani supported the measure, Iraq took no steps to carry it out. His position nevertheless made clear that his 2014 call to defend Iraq was no endorsement of armed organizations acting beyond government control.

The internal divisions of the Popular Mobilization Forces illustrate that concern. Commanders who split from a brigade loyal to al-Sistani formed Liwa al-Tafuf in 2014 around Qasim Muslih, a former security chief at a Karbala shrine. Other shrine units aligned with Najaf resisted the dominance of pro-Iran factions. Their competing affiliations showed how an appeal to national defense could produce forces with different political patrons and different relationships to the army. Al-Sistani’s subsequent calls for integration sought to place armed personnel within state institutions regardless of the circumstances in which they had mobilized.

Al-Sistani’s image also appeared in an October 17, 2024, drone-launch video issued by an Iraqi armed group targeting Israel. The image was displayed on a Shahed-101 drone. Its appearance showed the group’s use of his religious standing in its presentation of the launch. It did not alter his stated support for Iraqi state command over armed groups. His image in such material must be distinguished from the positions he took through his own office and public interventions.

Death or current status

Al-Sistani was 89 years old in September 2019, when he was identified as the holder of Shia Islam’s highest clerical rank. He remained a prominent religious interlocutor during Pope Francis’s first visit to Iraq in 2021. The two met in Najaf. Before the meeting, Chaldean Catholic patriarch Louis Raphaël Sako had sought a joint declaration defending human life. The encounter brought the head of the Catholic Church to the office of a cleric whose influence had been central to Iraq’s political and security crises since 2003.

The eventual succession to al-Sistani’s position carries consequences beyond the choice of an individual scholar. Selection of a successor in Najaf could take months or years, creating an opening for interference by Iran and its proxies. His office’s transnational authority makes that transition significant for Shia communities outside Iraq as well. The durability of Najaf’s independence, and of its approach to religious authority and constitutional government, will depend in part on whether its institutions can navigate succession without yielding control to armed or foreign political interests.

Legacy

Al-Sistani’s influence rests on several distinct interventions. He supported reconciliation and constitutional government when Iraq emerged from Saddam Hussein’s rule; his mediation ended the August 2004 Najaf standoff; his 2014 ruling brought volunteers into the fight against the Islamic State; and his later demands pressed the state to control the forces that had formed during that emergency. In each case, his authority came from his position as a religious scholar rather than from an elected office, military command or post in the Iraqi government.

His leadership also preserved a visible alternative to the Iranian regime’s doctrine of clerical supremacy. Najaf’s school, under al-Sistani, maintained that a senior Shia authority could guide believers and intervene at critical moments without ruling over elected civil officials. The struggle over the Popular Mobilization Forces and the 2019 protests made that difference a question of Iraqi sovereignty as well as religious thought. Al-Sistani’s legacy lies in the strength of Najaf’s independent authority and in the continuing contest over whether Iraq’s political and armed institutions answer to the Iraqi state.