The Bush administration's main goal in Iraq at the moment is to halt the sectarian killings — blamed in large part on Shi'ite militias, including the armed wing of Hakim's own party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Known as the Badr Organization, the militia was formed in Iran during the Saddam era, and it is known to take guidance (and, some of its critics allege, perhaps even its orders) from Tehran. U.S. officials have been pressing the Iraqi government to disarm such militias. The President brought up that suggestion at his breakfast meeting with al-Maliki in Jordan, only to be swiftly rebuffed. And that's exactly the reaction Bush is likely to have gotten from al-Hakim.
The Shi'ite leader has long maintained that the militias perform a valuable service, defending neighborhoods from attack by Sunni insurgents. In interviews with TIME, he has described the militias as akin to neighborhood watch committees. Bush may also find al-Hakim unwilling to listen to any complaints about the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr. Although the two Shi'ite clerics are rivals, they have a mutual interest in keeping the U.S. at arm's length. Al-Hakim knows that if he goes along with any American plan to crack down on al-Sadr's militia, his own Badr Organization will likely be next.
Like other Shi'ite politicians — including Prime Minister al-Maliki — al-Hakim believes the U.S. military and Iraqi security forces should be expending their entire resources and energies in crushing the Sunni insurgency. That will likely be his message to President Bush.
Al-Hakim is also unlikely to go along with some of the other suggestions that, according to leaked reports, will be put forward by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group in Washington aimed at remedying the situation. He has, for instance, dismissed the idea of an international conference to discuss Iraq's problems. "We think it is neither reasonable nor correct to discuss questions relating to Iraq in the framework of international conferences," he told journalists in Amman, while en route to Washington. And he reiterated that message at the White House.
What Bush may have been able to glean from al-Hakim, however, was some sense of how Tehran views developments in Iraq. Having spent many years living in Iran, al-Hakim is plugged into the political and religious currents in the Islamic Republic. Bush has dismissed direct talks with Iran, but it would be a smart idea to listen to Tehran's proxies.