In a nightmare scenario, America's will in Iraq fails and the United States ultimately leaves an even-larger power vacuum Iran will then exploit. Iraq could very well drift, not just partly, but completely into Iran's orbit. Whether the United States leaves in 2011 or ten years later, Iran will understand how to co-opt the mess: the divisions between the Shia and the Sunni, and between Iraq's two main ethnic groups, the Kurds and the Arabs. The irreducible fact is that the only country that can stop Iraq from tipping into complete chaos will be Iran, if for no other reason than that Iran can quickly put a million people into uniform-and is more than willing to intervene. Even if Iraqis wanted to, they could not resist either Iranian meddling or occupation.

And so, Iran also intends to dominate the Iraqi Kurdish question. Capitalizing on historical and economic ties to the group, Iran will quietly play off tensions between the Kurds and the central government in Baghdad and between the Kurds and Turkey-all in the interest of spreading Iran's proxy empire. Tehran has already established a record of arming and financing the Kurdistan Workers' Party, keeping Turkey on the edge of civil war. At the same time, Iran has kept its borders open with Iraqi Kurdistan, reminding the Kurds they cannot do without Tehran. Finally, Iran looks at Kurdistan as a potential energy corridor for both Iraqi and Iranian oil and natural gas. If one day Iran succeeds in building a gas pipeline to Europe, it will need the Kurds on its side to protect the line.

Aside from having a vital security interest in a stable Iraq, Iran looks at its neighbor as potentially its most important economic trading partner. Iranian goods and products have already flooded into the south. And among other overtures, Tehran has offered to build an oil-export pipeline from Basra to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, consolidating control not only over Iraq's politics but also its oil. As OPEC's second-largest producer, Iran's hope is to create a partnership with Iraq that will further increase its power in the trading bloc.

It is a waste of time trying to predict exactly what Iraq will look like after the United States leaves, but in the worst case, the country would succumb to the same fate as Lebanon, with a Hezbollah-like party taking over, or in an extreme scenario, turning into a full-blown Shia Islamic Republic. Assuming that a weak regime in Damascus will remain in Iran's sphere of influence, the Levant at that point would be Iran's. It would be a direct threat to Israel and would endanger the Arab Gulf states with their large Shia populations and weak monarchies.

Clearly, Iran has no intention of letting Iraq slip out of its hands. Although in name Iran has not abandoned Khomeini's revolution, Iran's real interest is territorial acquisition-by proxy. Iran no longer exports only militant Islam, but a raw anticolonial message that barely disguises its quest for Iranian dominion in the Middle East. And so, on to another battlefield laid to waste by America: Afghanistan.

 

ON THE seventh anniversary of 9/11, al-Qaeda's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, released a video in which he said, "The [leader of Iran] collaborates with the Americans in occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and recognizes the puppet regimes in both countries."

An American-Iranian conspiracy aside, Zawahiri's point is that Iran is the victor in Iraq and Afghanistan. And to be sure, Zawahiri isn't alone in his alarm about a looming Iranian threat. Earlier this year in Pakistan I caught up with Colonel Sultan Amir, the Inter-Services Intelligence officer who was the godfather of the jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s. It was Amir who was given responsibility for training and bankrolling the Afghan mujahideen, including the current leaders of the Taliban. He was also one of bin Laden's Pakistani points of contact.

I asked Amir how, today, the jihadists look at the Afghan war against the Soviet Union. Did they win or lose?

"We lost, of course," he said, "Iran won. In both Afghanistan and Iraq."

The consensus in the Middle East is that Iran has turned the Iraqi and Afghan wars into major strategic victories. When the Taliban occupied western Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, Iran considered invading with its own forces, but ultimately decided to show patience. It paid off after the October 2001 invasion, both bringing western Afghanistan back into Iran's shadow and putting Tehran's old ally, the Tajik Northern Alliance, in power in Kabul.

Since, western Afghanistan has been, more or less, economically annexed by Iran. Make a visit to Herat, and Iran's influence is unmistakable. Iranian goods fill markets. The Iranian rial is the preferred currency. Tehran is building a railroad from the Iranian city of Khaf to Herat. With a 40 percent Shia population, Herat is an obvious piece of the world Iran intends to break off and bring under its control. A bit more difficult to conquer is the proposed gas pipeline from Central Asia, set to traverse either Afghanistan or Iran. If Iran is incapable of securing the corridor for itself though, it will certainly make sure it has control over the Afghanistan route-either through the threat of proxy unrest or an appeal to the hearts and minds of the people who live along the route.

And there are more than enough cultural connections between Iran and Afghanistan for Iran to exploit. Both of Afghanistan's primary languages, Dari and Pashto, are Iranian. Iran is home to millions of refugees from the Afghan-Soviet War. Many have returned to Afghanistan but still maintain ties to Iran, knowing they cannot afford to break with the country because they may again need Iran for sanctuary.

Not only does it have a friendly government in Baghdad, but Iran also has an enormous amount of sway in Kabul. And again it is through proxies. Iran's cause is aided by the fact that the Shia and many Sunni Afghans understand that they are better off with Iran than the Taliban. With Iraq and a large part of Afghanistan in its control, the Iranian empire's thirst for power and energy could carry it across the Persian Gulf.

 

IRAN HAS made little secret of its strategy: widen its power through proxy warfare and gain control of the Gulf's oil. It has the means, motive and opportunity to expand its empire across the Persian Gulf.

Not only does Iran intend to become the first hydrocarbon empire, Tehran is painfully aware that oil is its lifeblood. Given the widening disparity between Iran's real and claimed reserves-and if current levels of depletion continue-Iran knows that it could be tapped out within ten years. Without energy, or revenues from energy exports, Iran would become domestically unstable, and obviously any of its greater international ambitions would die. To satisfy domestic demand, Tehran in the not-too-distant future must look elsewhere, and Saudi Arabia for one-with its extensive reserves and weak government-is a prime target for takeover.

That may not be as difficult as it seems. Iran's reach is long. On one level, its proxies have the ability to stir up domestic unrest and sabotage oil fields along the Persian Gulf (which is 90 percent Shia and where, incidentally, the bulk of Gulf oil sits). The area's Arab Shia are increasingly susceptible to Iran's gravity, putting the Sunni sheikhdoms in peril without a single missile ever being fired. Since the 2003 invasion, Iran has moved quickly into Iraq's Shia shrine cities, in particular Najaf, where it has embraced Iraq's Shia clergy. The objective has been to demonstrate to the Gulf's Shia that Iran dominates all the spiritual centers of Shia Islam. If Iran is as successful in this as it was in exploiting Lebanon, then most of the Gulf, at least in the sense of sectarian allegiance, will be under Iran's sway.

Then, on another level, there's pure military blackmail. As tension with Washington rose after the invasion of Iraq, the Iranians made a point of going to the Gulf states to inform them that in the event of a conflict with the United States or Israel, Iran would either prohibit exports through the Strait of Hormuz or destroy the Arab oil facilities that sit along the rim of the Gulf-all vulnerable to attacks by surface-to-surface missiles. The Arab sheikhdoms are militarily weak; there's nothing they can do to fight back. And lest we forget, Iran is the only true local power in the Gulf. If the United States were to reduce its presence in the region, Iran, without serious impediment, could intimidate the Gulf Arabs into accepting Iranian suzerainty over the Gulf's waters.

Worst-case scenario, this is where we end up: Bahrain would be the first Arab sheikhdom to fall under Iran's control, and as Bahrain goes, so goes the Persian Gulf. With its 70 percent Shia population, gaining control of the country would only be a matter of Iran inciting its Bahraini Shia proxies to declare the end of the monarchy and then stepping in with armed force to support the new "legitimate" government.

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