Reza Pahlavi and his advisors continue to try to go it alone. While for decades, the brand of the former Iranian crown prince was a coalition builder, his current crew of advisors emphasizes more on autocratic control. Meanwhile, some members of the more representative and pluralistic Iran Freedom Congress continue to play political games, maneuvering for advantage among coalition partners, criticizing other parties, and issuing internal ultimatums. Such politicking had a place when regime change in Iran was a distant dream, but as its reality looms, those Iranian leaders playing such games risk snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. As they bluster and threaten non-cooperation, they should remember Sharif Ali bin al-Hussein. If they do not remember who he was, then they have proved a point without realizing it.
Members of the ... Iran Freedom Congress continue to play political games, maneuvering for advantage among coalition partners.
In 2002 and 2003, as war and regime change loomed in Iraq, the U.S. and British governments went into overdrive to get Iraqi opposition groups to work together. It was a difficult task. Not only were different U.S. bureaucracies—the State Department, the Pentagon, and the Central Intelligence Agency—not approaching Iraq with unity of purpose, but each had different ideas about who should run the country after regime change came.
There were several competing trends and visions. Some were authentic, and others’ projects wholly directed by foreign intelligence services. Kurdish parties hoped to formalize their autonomy and perhaps even win independence, while the Ankara-directed Iraqi Turkmen Front bizarrely claimed to be the majority population in the region. The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq envisioned a Shi’ite theocracy. The Iraqi Da’wa Party, with both its London and Tehran factions, sought more religious governance. The Iraqi National Accord, founded by former Baathist Ayad Allawi, wanted a more secular society. Backed by the Central Intelligence Agency, he sought cooperation with many Sunni Arab tribal groups in Al-Anbar, many of whom would first support the insurgency and then switch sides during the surge. Ahmad Chalabi, meanwhile, laid claim to leadership as head of the Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella group supported in its early years by U.S. grants.
Sharif Ali bin al-Hussein
Jim Wallace (Smithsonian Institution), CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Sharif Ali was another major political figure. He was heir to Iraq’s Hashemite throne. After the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the League of Nations awarded Iraq as a mandate to the United Kingdom. The 1920 Iraqi revolt derailed that plan, and the Kingdom of Iraq was born, with the United Kingdom largely running its administration under terms of the 1922 Anglo-Iraqi Treaty. The British installed Faisal I, a Hashemite leader of the World War I-era Arab Revolt in the Hijaz as Iraq’s king after his short, unsuccessful stint as king of Syria. Faisal I, his son Ghazi I, and his grandson Faisal II ruled Iraq until the 1958 revolution. Rebel Iraqi soldiers killed the king, the crown prince, and several other royals; only the crown prince’s wife, Princess Hiyam, survived. As Iraqis suffered first under the republic and then under the Baathist regime, nostalgia for the monarchy grew. It was against this backdrop that Sherif Ali, whose maternal first cousin was Faisal II, laid his claim.
Sharif Ali was smart, effete, and personable. He was one of the Group of Seven—prominent Iraqi and Iraqi Kurdish groups with whom the United States and United Kingdom worked in the run-up to the war. He attended all the conferences and meetings but, as Saddam fell, he refused to join the governing council. Several factors colored his decision. First, he thought that he might gain a competitive advantage if he played the Iraqi nationalist card and stood apart from those cooperating with the United States. He also argued that the monarchy was a unifying institution and should not sit equal to the politicians underneath it. Accordingly, when the Coalition Provisional Authority stood up the Iraqi Governing Council, as a revolving leadership during the transitional period, he declined.
[Sharif Ali] thought that he might gain a competitive advantage if he played the Iraqi nationalist card and stood apart from those cooperating with the United States.
It was a fateful mistake for him. The Governing Council was ridiculous, but it became the base upon which Iraq’s new political system grew. Sherif Ali was left behind, and without the resources of office, he was unable to dispense patronage. His followers soon evaporated. That his staff, to whom he was slavishly loyal, was incompetent only accelerated his decline, an uncomfortable parallel with Reza Pahlavi now. Within the space of a year or two, Sharif Ali went from aspirant for Iraq’s leadership to irrelevancy. When Sherif Ali died in 2022, few Iraqis noticed.
Iranian’s oppositionists should take note. Pahlavi may be prominent, but his missteps and his aides’ antics have made his rise more difficult, if not knocked him out of contention completely. The Iran Freedom Congress has a chance to rise, but the effort of any member to play hardball against other members or issue ultimatums may appease Persian egos but will disqualify in the broader policy arena, as such antics only play into the arguments of those who seek a Venezuela situation. Sharif Ali blew his opportunity in Iraq. That so many Iranian groups misread the mood in Washington and the patience of those prepared to help them suggests history could repeat.
