Strategic Assessment
Iraq’s fundamental problems are for the most part not connected to the involvement of any external player, but its troubles make it more vulnerable to any type of foreign interference, particularly Iranian. Until recently, the presence of American forces to a certain extent neutralized foreign influence over Iraq. Now that the troops have been withdrawn, Iraq has once more become the locus of competition, even confrontation, between Iran, Turkey, and the Arab world, primarily Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. This essay seeks to demonstrate, however, that even with the limited new closeness between some of the Arab states and Iraq, old suspicions and grievances among the sides are still active, in part because of the nature of Iraq’s leadership and its policies, which seem to be moving away from ethnic and political pluralism.