Once more, and ten months after Iraq’s last general election, controversial Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his supporters are at the centre of a politically motivated storm that threatens to degenerate into Shia-on-Shia political violence. Since ordering his deputies to relinquish their parliamentary presence and cede their position in the Iraqi legislature to their rivals, Sadr has been behind the storming of parliament and its subsequent occupation twice in the space of a single week, paralysing official business in the capital and amping up tensions between rival and heavily armed Shia gro…