BAGHDAD — Standing at a podium with an Iraqi flag by his aspect, the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr appeared the a part of a statesman as he learn a postelection handle.

Within the 18 years since he shaped the Mahdi Military militia to battle occupying U.S. forces, the onetime firebrand has refined his supply. His formal Arabic is more adept, and his voice extra assured. Wanting as much as handle the digicam, he raised a finger in emphasis in remarks fastidiously crafted to ship messages to each the USA and Iran after his get together picked up seats in final week’s parliamentary election.

In 2004, as Mr. al-Sadr’s fighters took on U.S. forces with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades in Baghdad and throughout the southern provinces, the USA pledged to kill or seize the Shiite cleric.

Subsequent to Al Qaeda, he posed the largest menace to the American occupation in Iraq, miring U.S. troops in preventing within the streets and alleys of Iraqi cities because the army fought each Sunni and Shiite-based insurgencies.

Though nonetheless unpredictable, the cleric is persistently an Iraqi nationalist and now appears to be rising as an arm’s-length American ally, serving to the USA by stopping Iraq from tilting additional into Iran’s axis.

“All embassies are welcome, so long as they don’t intervene in Iraqi affairs and authorities formation,” Mr. al-Sadr mentioned in a reference aimed toward the USA, whose embassy was stormed two years in the past by what have been believed to be members of Kitaib Hezbollah, one of many greatest Iranian-backed Iraqi militias. “Iraq is for Iraqis solely.”

In preliminary outcomes from final Sunday’s elections, the Sadrist Motion gained roughly 20 seats, giving it as much as 73 seats within the 329-member parliament. That leaves Mr. al-Sadr with the largest single bloc in Parliament and a decisive voice in selecting the subsequent Iraqi prime minister.

In his remarks, the cleric made a pointed reference to Iranian-backed militias, a few of which have grown extra highly effective than Iraq’s official safety forces and pose a menace to the USA in Iraq.

“Any longer, arms have to be restricted within the fingers of the state,” he mentioned within the handle, broadcast on Iraqi state tv. “Using weapons shall be prevented exterior of the state’s framework.” Even for these claiming to be the “resistance” to the U.S. presence, he mentioned, “it’s time for the folks to dwell in peace, with out occupation, terrorism, militias, kidnapping and worry.”

The self-styled resistance teams are the identical Iranian-backed militias that launched drone and rocket assaults on the American Embassy and U.S. army bases after the U.S. killing of a number one Iranian commander, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, and a senior Iraqi safety official in Baghdad final 12 months.

An aide to the Shiite cleric mentioned disarming teams that aren’t beneath authorities management would additionally apply to Mr. al-Sadr’s personal militia forces.

“No nation desires forces which might be stronger than its military,” mentioned Dhia al-Assadi, a former prime official within the cleric’s political motion. He mentioned Mr. al-Sadr would go away it to the incoming authorities to resolve whether or not U.S. forces ought to stay in Iraq.

The US has agreed to withdraw all fight troops from the nation by Dec. 31, though Washington doesn’t think about its troops there at present to be on a fight mission. Below that settlement, the variety of U.S. forces — about 2,000 in Iraq at Baghdad’s invitation — is predicted to stay the identical.

“That’s labeling or classifying the troops as trainers and never fighters,” mentioned Mr. al-Assadi, who served as the pinnacle of Mr. al-Sadr’s former Ahrar political bloc. “The choice must be revisited once more and determined by Parliament and the federal government.”

Mr. al-Assadi mentioned he doesn’t foresee any change in an present ban on senior officers of the Sadrist Motion from assembly with U.S. or British officers.

As soon as a fierce sectarian defender of Iraq’s Shiite majority, Mr. al-Sadr has expanded his attain lately, reaching out to Sunnis, Christians and different minorities. After telling his followers to guard Christians, younger males from Mr. Sadr’s stronghold within the principally Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad’s Sadr Metropolis started sporting massive crosses round their necks in an indication of solidarity. In a earlier election, the Sadrists shaped an alliance with the Communist Get together, which is formally atheist.

Externally, he has fostered relations with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates at a time when these international locations’ Sunni Arab rulers have been hostile to Iraq’s Shiite-led authorities. Domestically, one among his fundamental calls for is to wash up Iraq’s dysfunctional and deeply corrupt political system, which appoints folks to senior authorities posts on the premise of get together loyalty slightly than competence.

“He has grown and developed,” mentioned Nabeel Khoury, a former U.S. State Division official who served in Iraq in 2003. “However I believe to some extent we underestimated him within the very starting.”

Mr. Khoury mentioned that he was approached in 2003 by Mr. al-Sadr’s aides as Iraq’s first governing council was being determined.

“We had espresso, we talked they usually mentioned Sadr was concerned with taking part in a political position,” mentioned Mr. Khoury, a fellow at the Atlantic Council. However Iraqi political figures who had returned from exile didn’t need Mr. al-Sadr concerned, Mr. Khoury mentioned, and the USA adopted their counsel.

A number of months later, the cleric shaped his Mahdi Military militia to struggle occupying troops.

When U.S. forces had a chance to kill Mr. al-Sadr throughout a battle in Najaf, Washington informed them to face down, additionally on the recommendation of the Iraqi expatriate politicians, mentioned Mr. Khoury, including: “They knew if Sadr was killed it might grow to be a giant downside for them.”

Mr. al-Sadr, 47, is the youngest son of a revered cleric, Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr, who was assassinated by Saddam Hussein in 1999 after demanding spiritual freedom for Iraq’s Shiites. The Sadr household instructions the loyalty of hundreds of thousands, a lot of them poor and disposed, most of whom consider his election win was ordained by God.

In Sadr Metropolis, the Sadrist group supplies meals, assist for orphans and widows and lots of different companies the Iraqi authorities fails to ship.

“He wish to obtain sure aims, and the principle goal is social justice,” mentioned Mr. al-Assadi of the cleric’s goals. He likened Mr. al-Sadr’s objectives to these of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Mahatma Ghandi.

However not like the Black civil rights chief or India’s pacifist icon, Mr. al-Sadr has overseen an armed militia that has waxed and waned however by no means totally gone away.

The Mahdi Military has been blamed for fueling Iraq’s previous sectarian violence. Because it battled with Sunni fighters of Al Qaeda for supremacy in Iraq between 2006 and 2008, Mr. al-Sadr’s fighters have been accused of working demise squads and conducting sectarian cleansings of Baghdad neighborhoods.

Mr. al-Sadr has mentioned that not all of the fighters have been beneath his management.

In 2008, after dropping a struggle with Iraqi authorities forces for management of Basra, Mr. al-Sadr — who lacks the spiritual credentials of his father — abruptly left for Iran to pursue his theological research.

But he has lengthy had an uneasy relationship with Tehran, and whereas he can’t afford to antagonize its leaders, he advocates an Iraq freed from each Iranian and American affect.

“I believe he has his personal house during which he walks, and his base shouldn’t be dictated by any nation, particularly not the Iranians,” mentioned Elie Abouaoun, a director at the USA Institute of Peace, a U.S. government-funded suppose tank. “I believe that he’s a lot much less sectarian than many, many others as a result of he has a nationalist imaginative and prescient of Iraq.”