saavedra77 | And the winner is ... Iran

Historians may conclude that the U.S. in 2003 invaded a dysfunctional, decaying, sanction-ridden Iraq over weapons of mass destruction that weren't there any more and that Hussein might never have been able to reconstitute, while helping establish the conditions for Iranian dominance of Persian Gulf:

As Juan Cole pointed out recently in Salon, Iran already exerts considerable influence in post-Baathist Iraq.

A nuclear Iran would surely wield even wider influence over its neighbors. The secrecy surrounding the country's nuclear program has long suggested that Iran aspired to nuclear-power status--an impression which has been deepened by the new hardline government's recent decision to spurn E.U. incentives and resume uranium enrichment.

Moreover, as Michael Mazarr argues in The New Republic, there may be little that the "overextended, exhausted, nearly bankrupt, internationally unpopular United States" that has come out of the Iraq War can do about it. Subjected to U.S. air strikes against its nuclear facilities, Iran could "make Iraq a hell for the United States" by activating "agents and cells it has [reportedly] been developing inside Iraq to [further] destabilize the country"; "generate a wave of terrorist attacks against U.S. embassies, military bases, companies, and allies all over the globe"; and disrupt "traffic in the Strait of Hormuz," and thus global oil supplies, via air and sea attacks. On the other hand, a full-on U.S. invasion of Iran would "draw every available Army and Marine unit not already in Iraq, as well as many naval and air assets, into the region for an Iranian campaign; the global U.S. military presence would be essentially on hold until the conflict ended."

But wouldn’t Iran’s leaders cringe at the prospect of such a conflict? Maybe not, says Mazarr: "If we offer the hard-liners a chance to martyr themselves in the name of cultural heroism, they might just take us up on it."