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Backgrounder: Iraq's Meddlesome Neighbors

Council on Foreign Relations

Author: Lionel Beehner, Staff Writer
August 31, 2006

Introduction

Iraq is sandwiched between six states that hold competing views of what its future should resemble. Where some of Iraq's neighbors see instability on their borders, others see opportunity. In Washington, the biggest worry is that the low-level civil war in Iraq might spread beyond its borders and engulf its neighbors, setting off a regional conflict or, worse, triggering a third world war. The presence of oil, millions of Kurds with no homeland, and an ascendant Shiite underclass all provide kindling for a potential regional conflagration. Below is a rundown of the foreign policies of Iraq's neighbors vis-à-vis Baghdad.

Iran

Tehran, which fought Saddam Hussein's Iraq throughout the 1980s, has a vested interest in seeing Iraq develop into a stable and united neighbor, provided it does not pose a future military threat. To be sure, experts say it is not in Tehran's interest to see Washington's regime-change experiment succeed in Iraq. "The Iranians want us to withdraw in embarrassment and shame," says F. Gregory Gause, a Middle East expert at the University of Vermont. "It's a threat to them if we can consolidate our position [in the Middle East]." That may partially explain Iran's logistical, financial, and political support for some of Iraq's southern-based Shiite militias, as well as the presence of Iranian paramilitary units in places like Baghdad and Basra. The longer a manageable conflict remains in Iraq, the thinking goes, the longer the U.S. military will be bogged down there and unable to threaten Iran militarily.

Yet a full-blown civil war in Iraq is not in Iran's interest either. Tehran fears Iraq may splinter into three states, which might embolden its own domestic Kurdish population to push for greater autonomy.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.