Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of Iraq's largest and most powerful Shiite political party, succumbed to lung cancer in a hospital in Tehran, officials from his party announced Aug. 26. Al-Hakim assumed the leadership of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) when his brother, Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Baqer al-Hakim, was killed by a suicide car bomb in 2003. His elder brother had led the party under Iranian tutelage since the founding of ISCI in Tehran in 1982. As a powerful representative of Iraq's Shiite community and a close ally of Iran, the al-Hakim family is critical to any power-sharing agreement in Baghdad. Though the Iranians have relied heavily on al-Hakim and ISCI to carry out their agenda in Iraq, al-Hakim was also quite diplomatic in his political maneuverings.