Iran is biggest winner in the Iraq War

In the cold, hard world of geopolitics, the increasingly cozy relationship between Iraq and Iran does not bode well for U.S. interests in the region. In the eyes of many American officials, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are working hand-in-hand. /Image via pbs.org


Of all the terrible consequences of the misguided U.S.-led war in Iraq, Americans are likely to regret the strengthened standing of Iran in the region most of all.

Those Americans with a conscience will beg to differ, given the more than 110,000 Iraqi civilians killed in the war and the 4,800 coalition troops lost in the fighting, among them 4,486 U.S. Armed Services members who never came home to their families. But for far too many of my fellow citizens, war is nothing more than the cost of doing business because the American way of life is non-negotiable.

Those millions of Americans who bow at the altar of self-interest have much to bemoan with the passing of Saddam Hussein, who was a brutal dictator but served as a powerful counterweight to hold Iran in check. Let us count the ways:

- Iraq's nascent dictator, Nouri al-Maliki, is walking a fine line between Washington and Tehran. During his visit to Iraq over the weekend, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry scolded al-Maliki for allowing Iran to use Iraqi airspace to deliver arms and ammunition to Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad. After meeting with the Iraqi leader, Kerry said he had told al-Maliki that the Iranian overflights were "helping to sustain President Assad and his regime" along with a warning that members of the U.S. Congress were puzzled over "how it is that Iraq can be doing something that makes it more difficult to achieve our common goals."

- With Tehran no longer worried about the possibility of an Iraqi invasion, the country's theocratic regime is free to throw its considerable military muscle around the region. Iranian leaders have been making threats to close down the Strait of Hormuz for decades, which would choke off a crucial shipping route for Persian Gulf oil exports. Those threats are now more credible than ever and can throw global financial markets into turmoil instantaneously.

- Saudi Arabia and other U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf are nervous about Washington's policies in the region, particularly when it comes to restraining Iran's military and nuclear weapons ambitions. "Kerry is not tough enough on Iran," Dubai-based strategy analyst Mustafa Al Alani recently told gulfnews.com. "They think the United States should leave the military option on the table in case the policy of sanctions fails."

- And with less need to throw resources into conventional weaponry with Iraq on its knees in more ways than one, Iran can accelerate its nuclear weapons program. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month, the commander of the U.S. Central Command said a nuclear-armed Iran would spark an arms race in the region. Gen. James Mattis said Iranian possession of nuclear weapons would be the "most destabilizing event that we could imagine for the Middle East."