Key Take-away: The government of Iraq is planning sweeping political reforms and attempting to reshuffle the cabinet. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is even calling for the elimination of the Vice President and Deputy Prime Ministers positions.

These officials include former Prime Minister and current Vice President Nouri al-Maliki, a rival of Haider al-Abadi. These events mark the first anniversary of the formation of current Prime Minister (PM) Haider al-Abadi’s government. Iraq’s leading religious figure, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is actively backing the Prime Minister and thereby pressuring Shi’a political parties to comply. The Sadrist Trend and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), two of Abadi’s major, Shi’a coalition partners, have supported the reforms, which will go to Iraq’s Parliament on August 11. It remains to be seen whether they pass and whether the officials will step down.

Several major political parties are now endorsing PM Abadi’s reformsSeveral major Shi’a political factions had publically supported Abadi’s reform program following Ayatollah Sistani’s Friday sermon. ISCI’s Mowatin Bloc declared its support for PM Abadi in implementing reforms on August 7 and called for an emergency session of the CoM to discuss the reforms. The Sunni Speaker of the Parliament, Salim al-Juburi, stated that protesters’ demands were legitimate and that the parliament will discuss the demands in its next session on August 11. The Sunni Etihad Bloc on August 8 affirmed the importance of anti-corruption reforms and stated that the responsibility lies with PM Abadi. The pan-Shi’a National Alliance also voiced its “full commitment” to Ayatollah Sistani’s directive and for PM Abadi in preparing reforms on August 8, as did Moqtada al-Sadr, the Sadrist Trend leaderadr’s response, and those of other major Iraqi Shi’a political formations such as ISCI, indicates that the major Shi’a parties are concerned that the demonstrations will undermine their positions and political power, as they hold office in many of the southern provinces. Shi’a parties are also likely attempting to keep the protests non-violent.

PM Abadi’s government appears to be in a strong position to execute reforms immediately. Instead of leading to greater instability, protests, Shi’a politicians, and the marja’iya all seem to be empowering PM Abadi and bolstering him against rivalries and cascading challenges.

Ayatollah Sistani has used the protest movement as a platform to raise a national political reform agenda on Abadi’s behalf. His sermon gave rise to an immediate, coherent, and drastic reform agenda by PM Abadi, which was received with shocking equanimity by a vast array of political actors, whose COR votes auspiciously equate to a majority – which is exceedingly hard to achieve in Iraq, especially without VP Maliki’s camp within the State of Law Alliance (SLA). This rapid coherence of a national reform agenda and potential COR majority on the heels of a sermon by Ayatollah Sistani suggests premeditation and preparation. One might therefore look to the past few weeks, or months of protests, political moves, and sermons for evidence of an alignment forming in advance of the events of August 7-10.

Prime Minister Abadi hits his first anniversary in office this week, likely prompting a review of his tenure. Iraqi politicians had likely agreed to give Abadi a year in office under the current power sharing arrangements. Sistani confirmed Abadi as Prime Minister but allowed him to alter the terms of the deal by which he came to power. Ayatollah Sistani may also have used his sermon and its influence over protesters to head off a politically de-stabilizing effort that would have undermined Abadi’s government. There is evidence that AAH tried to undermine Abadi on August 7, in events described below.

Shi’a political competition has been intensifying since January 2015. Some Shi’a political parties have answered more faithfully to Iran than to Najaf over the past year. Based on national elections, the basic internal rivalries reflect realignment with or opposition to Maliki, who had ultimately stepped down from office under intense domestic, international, and Shi’a clerical pressure. PM Abadi was chosen as a compromise candidate for PM. Abadi’s first year in office may be characterized as one in which he faced multiple existential threats to his office and to the integrity of Iraq’s central government: namely, a difficult war against ISIS and attempts by Iranian-backed Shi’a militias to subvert the control of the ISF.

Over time, PM Abadi’s vulnerabilities have likely increased, due to lack of confidence, turmoil, internal competition, and direct rivalries. For events instead to be going in Abadi’s favor, it is reasonable to hypothesize that Abadi took preemptive measures not only to reform the central government through anti-corruption and decentralization campaigns as promised, but also to execute political re-shuffles of a drastic nature to eliminate direct threats to his office and make reform possible. It seems unlikely that Abadi just got lucky. Rather, it seems more likely that Ayatollah Sistani, PM Abadi, and other political players determined to combine forces ahead of time in pursuit of national reforms.

The question is, what specific threat were they countering?

Maliki had been trying to undermine Abadi. When he stepped down as Prime Minister, Maliki retained significant influence within the SLA, which is also Abadi’s party. He has previously attempted to position himself since January as amilitia leader; and he unleashed a social media campaign against Sunni Defense Minister Khalid al-Obeidi following the fall of an Anbar military outpost in April, though Maliki himself never issued statements implicating himself in the campaign. Maliki thereafter took further steps to represent himself as a leader of the militias that were mobilizing to fight ISIS, thereby attempting to marginalize or possibly re-capture the Ministry of Defense for his agenda. Maliki was also making a play to convert Iraq from a parliamentary to a presidential system by having alliesadvocatefor that new system. Pro-Maliki media outlets and AAH have echoed this theme for nearly a year.

Sistani has put Maliki in a bit of a twist. Since August 7, VP Maliki has been doing what he can to the language of reform to redirect the attention at his political opponents while he has publicly declared his support for Ayatollah Sistani’s reformdirective. It will remain important to monitor VP Maliki’s response to the unfolding political developments in light of PM Abadi’s initial steps to enact government reforms.

The Iranian-backed militias and their political affiliates were corporately making a move against Abadi at the behest of Qom, which Ayatollah Sistani and many nationalist Iraqi Shi’a political parties rejected. The Iranian-backed Badr Organization endorsedthe peaceful protests on August 6, prior to Ayatollah Sistani’s sermon, but did not declare its intent to participate and warned against losing focus on the anti-ISIS fight. Badrissueda brief statement following the sermon in support of Sistani’s call for reform, without providing any additional details on either the sermon or the demonstrations. Amiri statedthat he “added his voice” to the demonstrators, but that he could not participate because he was “busy” with the fight against ISIS, in line with Badr’s ongoing political agenda to promote itself as a capable national military force that will liberate tracts of ISIS-occupied Iraq. Kata’ib Hizbollah (KH), another Iranian-backed militia, did not issue a statement on the subject at all, despite havingstatedits interest on July 18 in interrogating the Electricity Minister, seeking to punish corruption, and ending the electricity crisis. The Nujaba Movement (NM), another Iranian proxy militia, hadstatedits intent to participate in the Friday protests but there was little indication of significant Iranian proxy participation in the largely-peaceful protests on Friday. The Iranian proxy groups’ limited public responses to the unfolding political developments are likely due their inability to rally direct opposition to Ayatollah Sistani as well as their preoccupation with anti-ISIS operations.