Is current U.S. policy regarding Iran related to the situation in neighboring Iraq?
Possibly. Perhaps the sole benefit of Saddam’s horrific rule was that it facilitated centralized government in a country with deep ethnic and religious divisions. Saddam’s Baath party was dominated by the more secular Sunni Muslims who are a minority in Iraq. With the advent of the U.S.-imposed democracy, Shiite Muslims have the upper hand, but the U.S. and the fledging Iraqi government has its hands full with the Sunni insurgency. On the one hand, the U.S. wants to militarily control the insurgency but it also needs to address and protect Sunni and Kurdish interests to achieve a long term workable solution. Iran is a natural ally of the Iraqi Shiites and due to both religion and its enmity with the U.S., Iran is likely to support the Iraqi Shiites in rejecting a shared power solution. What have been the key developments in the current nuclear crisis? In September 2002 Russia began preparations for a reactor worth $800m near Iran’s south-western port of Bushehr. The plan at this stage
