Formed in Tehran in 1982 at the behest of Iran’s clerical elite, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) was conceived to provide a bureaucratic framework for the unification of the various Iraqi Shi‘i organizations exiled in Iran. Due to the circumstances surrounding the Council’s formation scholars have fixated exclusively on SCIRI’s relationship with Iran, a focus that has yielded characterizations of the Council as an Iranian sycophant. Yet during the United States’ pre-war planning phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom, SCIRI secured privileges and political concessions that were disproportionate to those received by other Iraqi opposition groups. Not only was SCIRI able to obtain the lion’s share of political representation during the U.S.-sponsored London opposition conference held in December 2002 but, come May 2003, the Council secured a position of leadership in the Iraqi Interim Authority. Given SCIRI’s designation as an Iranian proxy, these realities are quite striking as they ostensibly challenge claims that officials in Washington were determined to curtail Iranian influence in post-war Iraq. Consequently, understanding how the Supreme Council obtained these prerogatives within the Bush administration’s initial vision for a post-Saddam Iraq is the central aim of this paper. Beyond adding several layers of complexity to a historiography that has focused primarily on SCIRI’s relationship with Iran, this paper will also further scholars’ understanding of the new political contexts that members of the Iraqi opposition movement were forced to navigate throughout the 1990s. By utilizing memoirs from SCIRI officials and U.S. diplomats tasked with coordinating the pre-war planning phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom this study will show that, whereas SCIRI’s hopes of installing an Islamic government in Iraq had initially relied solely upon an Iranian military over Saddam, the shifting priorities and commitments of its host-state in the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq War prompted the Supreme Council to seek new allies within the Iraqi opposition movement and the United States. It will then demonstrate how these relationships enabled SCIRI to emerge from the 1990s as the United States’ preferred partner within the Shi‘i bloc of the Iraqi opposition movement, and show that officials within the Bush administration displayed a predilection towards empowering familiar elements within the Iraqi opposition when forging their initial plans for post-war Iraq. When considered collectively, these findings suggest that SCIRI’s exploits between 2002 and May 2003 can be attributed to the new partnerships the Supreme Council acquired during the 1990s.