It is my understanding that Sadr (while he is descended from a line of high religious figures) got where he is by murdering a more moderate leader of his particular group.

No, he is accused of ordering the murder a more moderate leader of another group, because he was supporting someone who was suspected of involvement in the murder of Sadr's father. Sadr already had his position before this episode.

It is my understanding that Sadr (while he is descended from a line of high religious figures) got where he is by murdering a more moderate leader of his particular group.

At least that is how James Joyner is spinning it. Let me excerpt from a comment there (with typo fixed): Sadr could have made this much messier than it was if he wanted to So true. He could have had......

So true. He could have had 5,000 dead to clean up instead of only 500. You have to give him credit for not wanting a bigger mess.

This has been going on in Iraq for over a year.

It amazes me that so many here do not understand the dynamic.

It is rather simple. Not hard to understand. It has been repeated repeatedly.

Will Sadr come back? Well you have to ask yourself why he is hiding under a bed?

Did Nasrallah gain victory? Another guy who has to use a bed as cover. Victory for Nasrallh - “We are never going to do something that stupid again. We can shoot a few rockets every once in a while to keep up appearances.”

My favorite picture of that war - the “victors” high tailing it across a river with the unwounded holding plasma infusions for the “walking” wounded. Real winners at least have ambulances.

Sadr is in Iran bolstering his religious credentials so that he can challenge (to some extent) the religious authority of more senior religious figures like Hakim and even Sistani. If Sadr progresses, he may get to the level where he can issue his own religious rulings (fatwas).

He is not in Iran to hide, but rather to assist his larger objectives. His fighters are more than aware of this. In fact, they derive inspiration from his religious mission in Iran due to the wider implications.

Sadr didn’t press his victory further because of the gradually growing possibility that Maliki would tricked, wheedled or coerced American troops into fighting for him.

From the reports I've heard, Coalition forces were already involved in the fighting. Specifically they were providing air fire against Sadr's forces in Sadr City and I believe Basra as well.

and it allows Sadr’s body parts to stay attached to each other.

Ha! That's some of the best wording I've read in a while.

That's not why. Sadr didn't press his victory further because of the gradually growing possibility that Maliki would tricked, wheedled or coerced American troops into fighting for him.

Sadr clearly has a quiet deal with the Petraeus. it's not without moments of friction, but it allows American troops to stay out of the South - which is a strategic neccesity for them, because they have their hands full already - and it allows Sadr's body parts to stay attached to each other.

Sadr had a tricky situation - a military assualt with the threat of a *competent* American escalation behind it. He dealt with it rather wisely, by humiliating the initial assualt and then de-escalating.

MORE BASRA....I don't think James Joyner is right when he suggests that Muqtada al-Sadr "sued for peace" in Basra on Sunday, since, after all, it was Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's side that made overtures to Sadr, not the other way......

Michael is right; Sadr could have made this much messier that it was if he wanted to - Maliki certainly couldn't have prevented him from doing so - and the most likely reason is that he wants to take over an actual, vaguely-unified Iraq when Maliki's puppet administration gets kicked out by legitimate processes, rather than a bloody coup. You say those elections are scheduled for October? Right before our next elections? Hmmmm.....

I think it’s very hard to read the PNAC documents, look at the massive permanent bases we’re building and say that this wasn’t anyone’s intention.

But that is not the same as not standing down in Iraq. Presumably we couldn't move on to Iran and Syria without having stopped military actions against Iraqis. Just as we've "stood down" in Japan and Germany, but keep bases there so we can "stand up" in other parts of the region.

pushing dominoes over in the middle east requires bases and Iraq was obviously the first of these.

Well we already had Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, but Kuwait would be vulnerable to Saddam (or even Iran), and Saudi Arabia is already a tricky ally at best, and launching our democratization initiatives from there would have caused us other political problems. Obviously a liberal democratic Iraq would have been the ideal launching point, and the war planners seemed to have assumed it would be easy to create.