John Cullinan squares on the threat to Iraqi liberalism posed by Ayatollah Sistani in National Review today. On the one hand, he takes the disturbing similarities between Sistani's rhetoric and clerical rule, even if "indirect," seriously; on the other, however, he recognizes Sistani's brief opportunity to capitalize on domestic uncertainty and President Bush's statements of resistance to the kind of theocratic mischief currently brewing in Afghanistan. He summarizes:

Present circumstances in which nationalist passions and religious sentiments are mutually reinforcing will not last forever. Indeed, one Iraqi observer puts it this way: "The religious parties are afraid that in a year or two, the standard of living will increase and prosperity will increase and the people will not go for these religious parties," according to Jabber Habbib, a political scientist at Baghdad University. In fact, the clergy's indecent haste to settle Iraq's political future in advance reflects a senior State Department official's celebrated 1990 characterization of Islamic democracy as "one man, one vote, one time."

It is above all on this paramount religion-and-state issue that battle lines are being drawn. But this dispute is also a straightforward test of strength between the U.S. and its nominal allies in the IGC, on the one hand, and Ayatollah Sistani and the senior Shiite clerical establishment, on the other. "We cannot deny there is an attempt to set a precedent on Sistani's side and our side," said one IGC member, understandably on condition of anonymity. "This is more than about elections. It's about whether we will allow one man to dictate the terms of our sovereignty."

Operative word being, I think, "dicate."