If my previous post didn't get you excited, this surely will. Once again its Spencer Ackerman with the goods:
Throughout 2005, when U.S. military commanders met for talks with Sunni insurgents, one message the insurgents delivered, according to several sources of mine, was that the U.S. was handing Iraq over to the Iranians by allowing the Shiites to take power through elections. If the U.S. didn't want to see Iran claim a hegemonic role in the region, said the insurgents, it had better return to its traditional posture of preferring Sunni rule in Iraq. Nor were insurgents the only ones articulating that fear: so were key Sunni allies of the U.S. in Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Fast forward two years and the Bush administration's premiere argument that the war is proceeding well is the cleavage between Sunni insurgents and al-Qaeda. Shiite political leaders, knowing that the Sunnis largely consider the Shiite-dominated government illegitimate, view the emergent Sunni-U.S. alliance with extreme concern. It's only a matter of time, many reason, before the Sunni tribal figures and ex-insurgents attempt to reclaim Baghdad by force -- something that they view as consistent with the U.S.'s hardening posture outside Iraq against the Iranians. It's within that context that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, visiting Tehran last month, praised Iran's "constructive role" in "fighting terrorism." Sectarianism in Iraq is such that the U.S. inching closer to Sunni tribal leaders creates an incentive for Iraqi Shiite politicians to inch closer to the Iranians.
To put this more simply, it looks as if we may be working to restart the Iran-Iraq war. Only this time around, it will be fought within the failed state of Iraq.
I sure picked a good week to restart blogging, eh?
UPDATE: The rumor mill really is firing on all cylinders now. This via Andrew Sullivan is very very not good:
Someone whose proximity to knowledge of such things is so great that I cannot identify him in any other way, told my interlocutor that President Bush would be inclined to accept suggestions for withdrawing some troops from Iraq and moving as many as possible into more secure bases, as a safeguard against reprisals in the event of a U.S. attack on Iran.
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