I've met Juan Cole.  He is indeed one of the foremost US-based middle eastern scholars, but even with him one has to take statements with a grain of salt.  He was essentially rejected as a hire at Yale University two years ago due to his unceasing mixture of politics into his supposedly academic blog posts. 

Today, they are saying that Al-Sadr might not actually be in Iran.  Maybe the BBC was right to hold the headline.  Gotta love the Foxnews slant, though.  I actually think there is some value in getting a Republican viewpoint into the news, since I think theirs is often neglected.  But the Al-Sadr headline was a blatant, gleeful right wing slant.