FILE - Influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr speaks during a press conference in Najaf, Iraq, Feb. 10, 2021. Al-Sadr who's followers have been staging a sit-in outside Iraq's parliament announced his resignation from politics and the closure of his party's offices on Monday, Aug. 29, 2022. It is an unexpected plot twist more than four weeks after his supporters stormed the parliament building to prevent his Iran-backed rivals from forming a government. (AP Photo/Anmar Khalil, File)