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Tuesday marked the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq that effected regime-change in Baghdad. Although the United States did the heavy lifting to oust the Baathist regime in Iraq, the biggest beneficiary of the American move was Iran. In the post-Baathist Iraq, pro-Iranian Shiite Islamists dominated the democratic system that Washington instituted.
It is not possible that the neoconservative architects of the Iraq war didn't foresee that regime-change would benefit the Iranians. After all, their Iraqi partners -- mostly Shia and Kurds -- had deep relations with the Islamic republic for decades. Those within the administration of former President George W. Bush who were pushing for the ouster of the Saddam regime likely thought that because the Shia and the Kurds would come to power through American military support, they would be more beholden to Washington than to Tehran. Thus, they thought the clerical regime would be unable to exploit the American move to topple the Sunni-dominated polity.
That proved to be a miscalculation, as the last decade has shown. Iranian allies dominate the Iraqi republic forged by the Americans. The U.S. initiative unintentionally allowed Tehran to project influence across the northern rim of the Middle East and threaten the interests of the Sunni Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia. This created an imbalance of power in the region.
Iran found itself in a very comfortable position, especially after using its influence in Iraq to prevent U.S. military forces from staying in Iraq beyond Dec. 31, 2011. A year earlier, its Iraqi Shiite allies won a sizable majority in the second parliamentary polls since the Americans established an electoral democracy in 2005. In Lebanon, Iran's premier Arab Shiite ally, Hezbollah, had for the first time engineered the fall of the pro-Saudi and pro-Western Lebanese government and replaced it with one that aligned with its views.
The Islamic republic of Iran had never before enjoyed this level of influence in the region. Lebanon and Syria had long been part of Iran's regional sphere of influence, but between Tehran and the Levant stood a hostile Iraq. When Iran finally was able to bring its western neighbor under its control and it seemed as though the Shiite Islamist state would influence that extended west all the way to the Mediterranean (including the Palestinian territory of Gaza), it began to lose Syria. In light of the Arab Spring, the situation in this country has in the past two years turned into a full-fledged civil war.
Iran's international and regional opponents saw that regime change in Damascus could undo the unintended consequences of regime-change in Baghdad. From the Iranian point of view, its gains in Iraq appear to be temporary, since a toppling of the Syrian regime threatens to undermine Tehran's position along Iraq's western flank.
Iran has taken comfort in the fact that unlike the Tunisian, Egyptian and Libyan regimes that gave way very early on, the Syrian regime is still in power two years after the uprising. But Iran knows that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad is in decline. This is a major reversal for Iran, who not too long ago was rejoicing that the U.S. decision to topple Saddam Hussein not only eliminated an enemy but also turned Iraq into Iran's closest ally.
But the Iranians are not completely without options. Removing al Assad from power is not the same as establishing a Sunni-led regime in Syria. The Iranians are operating on the idea that if they can't have Syria, they will do their utmost to see that no one else can have it either.
Courtesy : Stratfor (www.stratfor.com)