It’s been the most powerful narrative in the region for quite some time – exacerbated a million times by the US invasion, and then inflamed by the Arab Spring in Syria. Simon Henderson believes that the Saudis now want Iraq to host a proxy fight against Iran:
ISIS is a ruthless killing machine, taking Sunni contempt for Shiites to its logical, and bloody, extreme. The Saudi monarch may be more careful to avoid direct religious insults than many other of his brethren, but contempt for Shiites no doubt underpinned his Wikileaked comment about “cutting off the head of the snake,” meaning the clerical regime in Tehran. (Prejudice is an equal opportunity avocation in the Middle East: Iraqi government officials have been known to ask Iraqis whether they are Sunni or Shiite before deciding how to treat them.) …
There is an additional and often confusing dimension, although one that’s historically central to Saudi policy: A willingness to support radical Sunnis abroad while containing their activities at home. Hence Riyadh’s arms-length support for Osama bin Laden when he was leading jihadists in Soviet-controlled Afghanistan, and tolerance for jihadists in Chechnya, Bosnia, and Syria.
Tom Ricks tries to make sense of Iraq’s sectarian future:
It boils down to this: The Shiites act like they are a majority in Iraq, or at least the single biggest group. The Sunnis act like they are a majority in the Arab world. Both are right. The question is: Which is more important inside Iraq?
It boils down to this: The Shiites act like they are a majority in Iraq, or at least the single biggest group. The Sunnis act like they are a majority in the Arab world. Both are right. The question is: Which is more important inside Iraq? Unfortunately, the answer likely will come from Iran, in how it supports Maliki in the coming days. I don’t think the U.S. government will conduct air strikes. I don’t even know how it would be done-the big base at Balad will be a juicy target for ISIS, so you can’t use that. So B-1s out of Diego Garcia? Still hard to do and coordinate with someone on the ground.
My guess: We wind up with a de facto partition of Iraq-a Shiite south extending up to the east bank of the Tigris in Baghdad, a Sunni north and west that begins in the western side of Baghdad, and a Kurdish northeast. The Kurds have played this especially well, hanging back and letting Maliki screw up and also cutting a peace deal with the Turks so they can focus on Iraq.
Allahpundit doesn’t think other Sunni states will join the fray:
One obvious possible response [for containing ISIS] is for Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and maybe even Egypt to send troops to Iraq to crush [them]. The jihadis are hugely outnumbered: Combined, the Iraqi army and the Kurdish peshmerga in the country top them more than 30 to one. Add multinational Sunni troops and the ratio would skyrocket. I assume it won’t happen, though, partly because the Sunnis would rather let Iran bleed some more in handling this and partly because they may be nervous about being thin on troops at home at a moment when Islamists are running wild in Iraq.
The local Islamists might seize on the security vacuum as an opportunity for mass protests or worse, which could destabilize the country. In the eternal game of Middle Eastern jihadi whack-a-mole, there are always more moles. And even if the Sunni states managed to keep order at home, what happens once they’re done with ISIS in Iraq? Do they go home, or push on into Syria to fight ISIS there — which could eventually lead to a direct confrontation between Iran, on Assad’s side, and the multinational Sunnis on the other?
I’m not going to pretend I have the expertise to know what’s ahead. But the question to me seems merely at what level of heat the Sunni-Shia war will continue. And continue. And continue. And these fights can go on for ever, especially where order and security are imperiled. Look at how long the Catholic-Protestant fight defined Europe. People were dying over it only a few decades ago in Ireland.
(Photo: Kurdish Peshmerga forces and Iraqi special forces deploy their troops outside of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, Iraq on June 12, 2014. By Feriq Ferec/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images.)
The Dish 