Hassan Rohani, chief of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), told visiting Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh on Aug. 30 that Tehran would help Baghdad establish security in Iraq, Islamic Republic News Agency reported. Hours later, Sheikh Ali Smeisim, a senior aide to radical Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, told The Associated Press that al-Sadr called upon his militia — the Mehdi Army — to halt fighting with U.S. and Iraqi forces all across the country. Taken together, these two statements indicate that Iraq's Arab Shia and their Persian co-sectarians across the border have, for the moment, returned to the path of cooperation with the United States in an effort to realize their mutual goal of a Shia-dominated Iraq. This cooperation — taken as a sign that active armed resistance by Iraq's majority community will not happen, at least not yet — helps U.S. President George W. Bush as he begins critical campaigning before the Nov. 2 presidential election. The Shia, however, are looking at the Iraqi elections scheduled for January 2005. The manner in which al-Sadr's followers agreed to halt their insurgency — the second one since April — at the request of Iraq's leading cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani suggests that Shiite forces hoping for a Shiite-dominated Iraqi republic have come to an agreement on how to proceed before the elections. Following their internal agreement, they are now sending a signal to the United States and the Interim Iraqi Government (IIG) that they are willing to cooperate as long as Washington and Baghdad provide for fair elections. Having the numerical strength, the Shia remain confident they will emerge as the largest political force in the upcoming polls. Notwithstanding their confidence about the elections' outcome, the Shia are skeptical that the United States will try to fashion the electoral process in such a way so as to thwart their victory. This concern would explain why there is no mention of the Mehdi Army disarming. Besides the Badr Brigades — the military wing of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) — the Mehdi Army is the only militia force at the disposal of the Shia. And the Shia, with dreams of dominating Iraq, do not trust SCIRI because of its tacit opposition to al-Sistani and its close relationships with both Baghdad and Washington. Should Washington and Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi make any attempts at electoral engineering, which the Shia would see as an attempt to deny them dominance in Iraq, a new uprising — one not limited to just one faction — could begin. Grand Ayatollah Bashir Hussein al-Najafi — one of four grand ayatollahs comprising the Marjaiya, the Iraqi Shiite supreme religious authority led by al-Sistani — says an armed struggle against the U.S.-led occupation is not currently an option but remains a possibility. The main problem is the paradigm of the U.S.-Shiite relationship. There are limits beyond which neither side can go — and in the long run, all will depend on how they handle their differences. The Shia and Washington can cooperate now because Shia need elections to get their dominance in Iraq, and Bush needs peace in Shiite areas to win the U.S. presidential polls. The Bush administration, however, understands that if the Shia win big in the January elections, they will be closer to a position in which they can tell U.S. forces to leave Iraq. So, while Washington tries to secure a working relationship in the short-term, it will continue to pursue the long-term goal of preventing the Shia from dominating Iraq. Another problem — insofar as the Shiite-envisioned Iraqi state is concerned — is the fault line between the Shia and the Kurds. The Kurds want to maintain their current status of self-rule in a future Iraq. This is the most blatant challenge to the Shiite dream of an Iraq dominated by followers of Twelver Shiite Islam. While Shiite-Kurdish tensions on this issue linger in the background, Tehran seems to be trying to work out a solution to the seemingly mutually exclusive political objectives of the Shiite and Kurdish communities. Nascent movement along these lines can be seen in the assurances Iran's SNSC chief gave Saleh, Iraq's Kurdish deputy premier. Usually such diplomatic gestures are extended to Shiite Iraqi leaders visiting Iran or vice-versa. Saleh's visit and reception in Tehran is quite a shift in relations between Iran and Iraqi Kurds. It was only a few weeks ago that another Kurdish member of the IIG cabinet — Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan — accused Iran of interfering in Iraq's affairs. That a very senior Iranian official told a Kurdish official from the IIG that Tehran would work with Baghdad on making Iraq stable is a sign that the Shia realize they can not rely only on their status as the majority in Iraq. As a result, they are looking at negotiating a settlement to appease the Kurds while maintaining an upper hand for their Shiite brethren in Iraq. Details on an Iranian plan to broker an agreement between Iraqi Shia and Kurds will likely come in the near future, and whether a Shiite-Kurdish agreement can be achieved will become clear. Before that, the Shia will work on getting al-Sadr's movement into the political process in order to secure Shiite numbers in the polls. Washington, in the meantime, will try its best to secure a post-election coalition government along the lines of the current IIG while avoiding a backlash from the Shia.