INTERVIEW – MICHAEL PREGENT –  is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. He is a senior Middle East analyst,  is a former intelligence officer with over 28 years experience working security, terrorism, counter-insurgency, and policy issues in the Middle East, North Africa, and Southwest Asia.  Pregent spent considerable time working malign Iranian influence in Iraq as an advisor to Iraq’s Security and Intelligence apparatus, including an embedded advisory role with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s extra-constitutional Office of the Commander-in-Chief. An office set up to ensure Iranian-backed Shia militia party control of Iraq’s security and political process.

• Anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s political coalition has won Iraq’s parliamentary election, the election commission announced late Friday. The Saeroon Alliance led by al-Sadr, the Shia who many US military officials hold responsible for the deaths of US troops, won by taking the most number of seats in the May 12 parliamentary elections.