Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr bequeathed a rich political and cultural legacy that is the subject of unremitting reinterpretation and contestation until today. His disciples and diverse Shi‘i actors have struggled to arrogate his authority and articulate his views on critical political, religious, social, and economic issues while deriving their own legitimacy from him. This struggle commenced in the immediate aftermath of al-Sadr's execution, as the Iraqi Shi‘i opposition sought refuge in Iran where their extant theological differences and personal rivalries were exacerbated by leadership conflicts and the scope of fealty to the Iranian revolutionary system. This presentation focuses on the ideological evolution of two of the main contenders in the symbolic competition for the powerful capital of al-Sadr's legacy: the Islamic Da‘wa Party (IDP) and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). The presentation examines how the turbulent period of wars and shifting international alliances in the 1980s and 90s influenced these parties' positions on issues such as clerical authority and popular sovereignty. The uncritical acceptance of narratives and information from Shi‘i opposition organs, hagiographic biographies, and IDP and SCIRI activists has complicated the scholarly discourse on al-Sadr. This paper locates sources attributed to al-Sadr posthumously in their relevant political and theological contexts, in an effort to not only disentangle al-Sadr's writings from the instrumentalization of his ideas, but also demonstrate how the appropriation of his legacy evolved in tandem with the exigencies of American influence, Iraqi exile politics, and the Shi‘i milieu in the 1990s. Following the Gulf War and the 1991 Uprisings against Saddam, SCIRI understood the need to recalibrate its relationship to Iran and the United States. Similarly, the IDP abandoned its Iranian host and set up its organizational base in Damascus where it sought broader cooperation with Iraqi opposition groups. For the IDP and SCIRI, the new post-Gulf War reality necessitated policy changes influenced by their host countries and the new-found international political support for the Iraqi opposition. This presentation will show that whereas in the 1980s, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr's ideas were utilized to legitimize loyalty to wilayat al-faqih and assert primacy in various leadership conflicts, from 1992 onward, party programs such as the IDP's Barnamijuna and SCIRI's ‘Aqidatuna reflected the new constellation of international politics vis-à-vis Iraq, which led both parties to draw upon al-Sadr in authorizing their respective reorientations and revised positions on wilayat al-faqih, democracy, and Iraqi nationalism.