In Brief: Iran Parliament chief visits ill al-Hakim

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, May 23 – Iran’s 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 – Iran’s 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.

SCIRI’s ties to Iran date back to 1982, when it was founded in Tehran on the orders of then-Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Iran’s current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was tasked with writing the council’s manifesto and the group’s primary goal was to spread Iran’s Islamic revolution to Iraq.

Iran’s current Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi was the group’s chairman for several years after its founding while Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim was appointed as the group’s 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.