IRAQ: The Shia Muslims who marched through the slums of Sadr City yesterday to prematurely celebrate their election victory in the constitutional referendum carried portraits of Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the spiritual leader of Iraq's 15 million Shia.
Were it not for Ayatollah Sistani, Iraq might not have held parliamentary elections last January, or Saturday's referendum.
As early as June 28th, 2003, 2½ months after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, Ayatollah Sistani issued a fatwa demanding free, democratic elections that he knew would bring the Shia majority to power.
Ayatollah Sistani demanded that an assembly elected by Iraqis write the constitution and that it be ratified by referendum.
The Ayatollah also obtained his key condition: "Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation," says article 2.
"No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam."
"I wouldn't have voted for the constitution if Sistani hadn't said to," a Shia businessman told me. "We voted in January and things got worse. But when he said vote Yes, it became a religious duty - as binding as if he had ordered jihad."
It was fear of that one word - jihad - that forced the Americans, grudgingly and tardily, to give in to Ayatollah Sistani's demand for elections. Already facing an unwinnable battle against the Sunni insurgency, the Americans got a taste of a far broader Shia rebellion in the spring and summer of 2004, when militiamen loyal to the young Sheikh Moqtada al-Sadr fought with US troops in Najaf, Kerbala and Sadr City.
Today a significant portion of the US-backed Iraqi army are members of Sadr's Mehdi Army, while the police and interior ministry forces are dominated by the Badr Brigades, loyal to the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri).
It is the greatest irony of the US occupation that Washington is now supporting an Iranian-backed government in Iraq.
"It took three months to form a government because Donald Rumsfeld couldn't accept the people whose names they put forward; they were too close to Tehran," says a US source in the Green Zone.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday confirmed British allegations that Tehran helps Shia militants attack British forces in southern Iraq. But why would Tehran need to do that, when it already wields such influence in the government?
"From the prime minister down, the first thing the Shia ministers did when the government was formed was run to Tehran," says the same US source.
Dr Ibrahim Jaafari, the interim prime minister, is a member of the Dawa ("Islamic call") Party, which was founded by Sheikh Mohamed Hussein Fadlallah, the Lebanese Shia who was the spiritual leader of the Lebanese Hizbullah (still considered a "terrorist" organisation by Washington).
To avenge Western support for Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran in 1983, Dawa bombed the US and French embassies in Kuwait. As Dr Jaafari said on taking office, "Iraq has changed a lot, and so have I."
Sciri and Dawa were the main components of the "Shia House" or "169" list that Ayatollah Sistani supported in January.
They won 140 of 275 seats in parliament. In addition to the politicians and party rank-and-file, Ayatollah Sistani commands the loyalty of the vast majority of ordinary Iraqi Shia. Moqtada al-Sadr dares not criticise him, though he pays allegiance to Ayatollah Qazem al-Haeri in the Iranian holy city of Qom.
Considering the persecution they suffered under Saddam, it was surprising that Iraq's Shia did not seek violent revenge against the Sunni Muslims.
Though they are now beginning to retaliate for the wholesale killing of Shia that started with the assassination of Mohamed Bakr al-Hakim in August 2003, the Shia have shown remarkable restraint, thanks largely to Ayatollah Sistani. He has always believed that it was better to seize power peacefully and now his dream is coming true.
The 75-year-old cleric has neither army nor militia. He heads a foundation that administers millions of dollars, but Sistani lives with his three wives in a small, rented house in the holy city of Najaf. Apart from heart surgery in London in 2004, he has rarely travelled further than the few hundred metres to his rundown office. He never holds press conferences or grants interviews, and has repeatedly refused to meet with US officials, because "His eminence does not wish to be seen in the company of American dignitaries."
Born 75 years ago in the Iranian city of Mashad, Ayatollah Sistani still speaks with a Persian accent. He is living evidence of the powerful ties between the Persian Shia and their co-religionists in Iraq. In the increasingly virulent rhetoric of Iraqi Sunnis, the most common criticism of the government is: "They're all Iranians" or "They all work for the Iranians."
Sistani bears a striking physical resemblance to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the Iranian revolution. They were theologians together during Ayatollah Khomeini's years in Najaf, between 1965 and 1978.
Ayatollah Sistani is a Marja, or "source of imitation" in Shia Islam, the highest status that a cleric can attain, the equivalent of infallibility. Even Ayatollah Khomeini was never a Marja.
Ayatollah Khomeini advocated the Velayat Al-Faqih, the "rule of wise men" - political power for the clergy. Ayatollah Sistani has traditionally tried to keep mosque and state separate, because he feared politics would pollute religion. But the dramatic transformation of Iraq may put paid to his reservations. Seyyid Abdel-Aziz Hakim, the cleric who leads Sciri, is the day-to-day power behind the government.
Saturday's vote was an important milestone in the rise to power of the Shia, a profound upheaval with repercussions throughout the Arab world.
Ever since the Shia lost the battle for the succession of the Prophet Mohamed in the eighth century, the Sunni have dominated the Muslim world.
Sunni Arabs believed it was their God-given right to rule. Now that the Sunnis have been overthrown in Iraq, neighbouring Arabs do not know what to fear most: the democratic example, the extreme violence of Iraq and the looming Shia-Sunni war here, or the advent of a second Shia Muslim republic.