What Civil War Could Look Like

[RedEarth]

TWO days of mob violence last week after the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine did not simply aggravate Iraq's sectarian hatreds. Like a near-death experience, the carnage seems to have shocked Sunni and Shiite leaders into a new realization of what civil war would cost, and new efforts to avoid it.

But what happens if such efforts — and frantic ones by Americans — prove incapable of stopping an all-out war? What if, as Abraham Lincoln famously said of America's greatest ordeal: "All dreaded it, all sought to avert it ... And the war came." The greatest fear of leaders throughout the Middle East is that an unrestrained civil war, if it ever comes to that, would not only give birth to warring Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish enclaves inside Iraq, but that the violence could also spread unpredictably through the region.

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BUT Iraq poses a threat that dwarfs these problems. The pivot of what could become a regional conflict is almost certainly Iran. Shiite leaders close to Iran won the Iraqi election in December, and although American and many Iraqi leaders defend their Iraqi nationalist bona fides, a civil war would almost certainly drive them to seek help from Iran. That stirs Sunni Arab fears of Iranian dominance in the region.

"What you have in Iraq is not just a society coming apart like Yugoslavia or Congo," said Vali R. Nasr, a professor of national affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. "What is at stake is not just Iraq's stability but the balance of power in the region."

Historians looking at such a prospect would see a replay of the Shiite-Sunni divide that has effectively racked the Middle East since the eighth century and extended through the rival Safavid and Ottoman Empires in modern Mesopotamia and finally into the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980's. This time, however, Iran's suspected nuclear ambitions could accelerate a nuclear arms race, with Saudi Arabia likely to lead the way among Sunni nations.


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/weekinreview/26weis.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

[IsItJustMe]

1. Civil war in Iraq means a US Iran war.

Don't see how you get around it. The US has already pushed Iran into a corner over the nuclear power issues.

The Shite population in Iraq are very close to the Iranians and Iran is not going to sit around while a civil war rages next to them. They will act in their best interest.

[Botany]

2. Mission Accomplished.