Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, May 23 Irans Majlis (Parliament) Speaker has paid a visit to the head of an Iraqi Shiite group who is currently in Iran for cancer treatment. Iran Focus
Tehran, Iran, May 23 Irans Majlis (Parliament) Speaker has paid a visit to the head of an Iraqi Shiite group who is currently in Iran for cancer treatment.
Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel visited radical Shiite cleric Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim in a Tehran hospital, the state-run news agency ISNA reported.
Since 2003, al-Hakim has led the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) which recently announced that it had changed its name to the Supreme Islamic Council in Iraq.
SCIRIs ties to Iran date back to 1982, when it was founded in Tehran on the orders of then-Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Irans current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was tasked with writing the councils manifesto and the groups primary goal was to spread Irans Islamic revolution to Iraq.
Irans current Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi was the groups chairman for several years after its founding while Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim was appointed as the groups spokesman. Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, the elder brother of current SCIRI chief Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, died in a deadly bomb blast in August 2003 in the Iraqi city of Najaf.
