Iran's attempts to wield its influence in Iraq have thus far yielded only mixed results, though the formation of a new government that incorporates many of Tehran's closest Iraqi allies, and the impending U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq, will present new opportunities for Iran to extend its reach. Such a move is likely to generate further Iraqi pushback, though it remains to be seen whether Iranian influence will continue to be "self-limiting" or whether this emerging reality will create new opportunites for Tehran to transform Iraq into a weak client state via a gradual process of "Lebanonization." Over the long run, the nature of the relationship between Iraq and Iran will depend largely on the security situation in Iraq, the political complexion of the Iraqi government, and the type of long-term relationship Iraq builds with its Arab neighbors and the United States. Moreover, Iraq's reemergence as a major oil exporter, likely at Iran's expense, will almost certainly heighten tensions between the two oil-exporting nations.

The Centrality of Iraq in the Iranian Strategic Mentality, written by Firas Elias provides readers with a comprehensive insight into the Iranian strategy in Iraq and the region. Researchers, often when analyzing Iranian geopolitics, do not offer a comprehensive description of this complicated variable, unlike Elias who provides throughout this book a richly detailed analysis and description of the dimensions and geopolitical variables which play an integral role in shaping Iran’s strategy in post-2003 Iraq. The book is divided into four chapters: The first chapter provides an overview of the approaches shaping Iran’s strategy through addressing four main topics: the basic approach to understanding Iran’s strategy, its intellectual and theoretical principles; its main goals, and its key tools. The second chapter defines Iran’s significance in the Iranian strategy through analyzing Iranian hegemony and expansion; Iraq’s geostrategic position in the Iranian perception; Iran’s penetration of post-2003 Iraq; and the dimensions and goals of Iranian strategy in Iraq. The third chapter reviews the Iranian strategic output in Iraq through analyzing the main variables affecting the Iranian strategy in Iraq as follows: variables related to the internal environment in Iran and Iraq and variables related to the regional and international environment. Finally, the fourth chapter forecasts the future of the Iranian strategy in Iraq through reviewing potential scenarios. The book was published by the International Institute for Iranian Studies (Rasanah) in 2018 and written by Firas Elias, a political science and national studies researcher.

The final index entry of "zero-sum game" aptly encapsulates much about the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War (or Gulf War I as the author terms it) and its spinoff of the 1991 Gulf War II, particularly from the perspective of the US. Torock (whose background is unspecified except for the Melbourne signoff on the preface) views Saddam Hussein as a Frankenstein monster created by, and later turning against, the superpowers in a familiar pattern of their contest of political intervention in the Third World. Includes 16 pages of references. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Tehran’s ability to fight by, with and through third parties in foreign jurisdictions has become a valuable and effective sovereign capability that gives Iran strategic advantage in the region. Tehran has possessed a form of this capability since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, but its potency and significance have risen sharply in the past decade, to the point where it has brought Iran more regional influence and status than either its nuclear or ballistic-missile programmes. The IISS Strategic Dossier Iran’s Networks of Influence provides an understanding of how Iran builds, operates and uses this capability. Based on original field research, open-source information and interviews with a range of sources, the dossier conducts an audit of Iran’s activities in the principal regional theatres of Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, and its reach into Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It includes an examination of Tehran’s nurturing of groups such as the Houthis in Yemen, the Badr Organisation in Iraq, Hizbullah in Lebanon and Shia militias in Syria, and details related to recruitment, weapons supply, logistics and command-and-control systems. Iran’s Networks of Influence is intended through objective, fact-based analysis to inform both policymakers and practitioners, and to stimulate debate on the wider significance of Iran’s use of third-party partners and the strategic depth they afford Tehran. The dossier also examines the advantages that Iran possesses through its recent experience of conflict, and its ability to mobilise and deploy sympathetic Shia communities across theatres. In a time of rising tension in the region, the dossier looks at how Iran might further develop the use of its partnership capability and the risks and constraints it might face.

The Iran-Iraq War is one of the largest, yet least documented conflicts in the history of the Middle East. Drawing from an extensive cache of captured Iraqi government records, this book is the first comprehensive military and strategic account of the war through the lens of the Iraqi regime and its senior military commanders. It explores the rationale and decision-making processes that drove the Iraqis as they grappled with challenges that, at times, threatened their existence. Beginning with the bizarre lack of planning by the Iraqis in their invasion of Iran, the authors reveal Saddam's desperate attempts to improve the competence of an officer corps that he had purged to safeguard its loyalty to his tyranny, and then to weather the storm of suicidal attacks by Iranian religious revolutionaries. This is a unique and important contribution to our understanding of the history of war and the contemporary Middle East.

Iran and Iraq, though neighbors for many centuries, share both a common and a contentious history. Though both are Muslim nations, they have long been divided by their differing affiliations with the Shia and Sunni branches of Islam and by a cultural tension between Persian and Arab. These tensions have occasionally erupted into all-out warfare, most recently in the 1980s, when half a million Iraqis and Iranians were killed in a decade-long war. Today, however, following the toppling of the repressive Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein, Iraq's previously oppressed Shia majority is forging ties with Shia-dominated Iran and creating a new, potentially destabilizing balance of power in this part of the Middle East. This book explores the long, rich, complex, and charged history between these two Muslim nations and analyzes what path they seem to be heading down in the future, a journey that has weighty consequences for the western world and the United States.

Iran's influence over the post-Saddam government in Iraq is substantial because the dominant parties in Iraq have long-standing ties to Tehran. A key U.S. concern is that Iran, seeking to ensure the political prospects of its proteges, supports Shiite militias that are committing much of the sectarian violence. Since December 2006, the Administration has stepped up efforts to reverse Iranian influence in Iraq, while also conducting limited engagement with Iran on Iraq. This report will be updated. See CRS Report RL32048, Iran: U.S. Concerns and Policy Responses, by Kenneth Katzman.