Special to WorldTribune.com

By Brian M Downing

Events in Iraq have been overshadowed by the Arab Spring and the Iranian nuclear crisis, but Sunni-Shia conflict there is worsening.

Sunni Iraqis are increasingly vocal in their demand for fuller participation in national affairs, which they see as unjustly dominated by Shias. Bombings of Shia targets have been going on for years but they are growing in number and deadliness.

More recently, there was an attack on the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) base where an anti-Iranian group has long been encamped. The attack was likely done by Shia militias, Iranian Revolutionary Guard personnel, or the Shia-dominated government. There are considerable mutual interests in those three groups.

Two matters are driving the increasing tensions: the unresolved sectarian conflicts stemming from Saddam’s ouster (2003), and the escalating regional conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Violence is likely to increase, especially once Assad is driven from Syria just to the west. In fact, Syria and Iraq are battlegrounds in the Saudi-Iranian/Sunni-Shia struggle for ascendance in the Gulf.

When anti-regime demonstrations began in Syria in 2011, Saudi emissaries tried to convince Assad to break with Tehran in exchange for Riyadh’s support. Clearly, the Saudis prefer a non-democratic country to their north – especially if it opposes Iran. Assad, however, declined to break with Iran, and the Saudis, in conjunction with other Sunni monarchies, began backing rebel groups with arms and diplomatic support.

Assad is unlikely to survive the year and once he is removed or reduced to ruling an Alawi-Shia redoubt, Saudi Arabia will shift its attention to Iraq. Many Sunni fighting groups now in Syria will head east to counter Shia-Iranian power there. The transition will not be difficult. During the insurgency against the U.S., arms and men came from Syria into Iraq. Now the flow is the other way – and in time it will reverse itself once more, fueling the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.

The social bases of the old Iraqi insurgency are intact and amenable to Saudi intrigue. There are still hundreds of thousand of demobilized Sunni soldiers, including the officer corps, who resent Shia power in Baghdad. Sunni tribal structures remain, including that of the Dulayim confederation – mainstays in Saddam’s army and security forces. The Dulayim live on both sides of the Iraqi-Saudi border and have benefited from Riyadh’s largesse. Salafi and other religious groups consider Shiism a dangerous heresy whose influence from Tehran to Beirut must be rolled back.

The aims of the Saudi-backed movement are not entirely known, as they are clandestine in nature and Saudi goals may not entirely coincide with those of the insurgents. An autonomous Sunni region in central and western Iraq is one possibility; an independent Sunni state allied with a post-Assad, Sunni-dominated Syria is another.

The Saudis may settle for financing a war of attrition with the Shia powers, which would hopefully lead to fiscal ruin and political turmoil in Baghdad and Tehran alike. In any case, the Shia arc stretching from Tehran to Beirut will be blocked off by a Sunni region with indigenous military forces and generous foreign backing. It will cost Saudi Arabia only money; no Saudi troops need be committed.

Turning Iraq into a new front in the Saudi-Iranian contest will place Washington in an uncomfortable position. It will challenge U.S. polices dating back to Saddam’s fall and endanger arrangements with Sunni powers going back many decades.

The U.S. has been working with the Shia government in Baghdad, obtaining oil licenses, selling arms, and otherwise seeking to keep the country from becoming too close to Iran. By forging these ties to the U.S., Prime Minister Maliki has adroitly maneuvered the U.S. over the last several years into supporting his Shia government – despite its ties to Iran. Most recently he has asked in U.S. intelligence personnel to help counter the bombing campaign by Sunni groups, thereby further aligning the U.S. alongside Shia interests.

The most important U.S. goal in Iraq is the promotion of democracy in the region. This was one of the hopes of the neo-conservatives in the previous administration. While many parts of the present administration opposed the 2003 invasion – and the neo-conservative agenda in general – they nonetheless support Iraqi democracy owing to its resonance with longstanding liberal foreign policy goals.

This puts the U.S. at odds with its Sunni allies, including Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, the home of the U.S. Fifth Fleet. The Sunni principalities oppose democracy as much as they do Iranian influence – two interlocking and reinforcing creeds in the Sunni principalities. They seek to build an autocratic, Sunni buffer between Iran and Lebanon and have allied with militant Salafi groups who favor an austere, authoritarian, and anti-western theocracy.

The U.S., then, owing to polices going back to the ouster of Saddam, now finds itself, albeit indirectly and reluctantly, supportive of Shia interests – as presented by the majority of the Iraqi population. This dilemma will present a serious challenge to the administration’s diplomacy and to its selection of priorities in the world as well.

Brian M Downing is a political/military analyst and author of The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.

  Alawites, Dulayim, Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps, Sunni-Shia conflict, The coming struggle for Iraq in the ongoing Iran-Saudi regional war