The cradle of civilisation and conflict

Under Shah Abbas the Great in the early seventeenth century, Persia extended over Mesopotomia for the first time in a century and retook Baghdad from the Ottoman Turks.  It wasn't to last though and the Ottoman Empire reconquered the area in the 1630s following the death of Shah Abbas.
Now, thanks to a very providential and incompetent US-led invasion of Iraq, Iran's biggest regional foe fell under its aegis in large part due to the predominance of Shi-ites resident along the banks of the Tigris-Euphrates.  However, the uselessness of their puppet government threatens to throw away their gains as the Iraqi military collapses in the front of a small but determined jihadist movement.  It wouldn't be cataclysmic only for the West were Baghdad (and the oilfields) to fall - it would represent a severe strategic reverse for Tehran too, as I said yesterday on Twitter.  It also dawned on the Iranian government, who are now sending troops or 'volunteers' (just as it is merely 'volunteers' who enter Ukraine from Russia) to fight the insurgents, just as they did (and continue to do) in Syria.
I'm glad Obama has also made US military help contingent on Iraq's leaders reversing the sectarianism they have been promoting in recent years.  American airstrikes and Iranian ground support should be irresistible - it remains to be seen whether Nouri al-Maliki and his kin gamble on relying on Iran alone, as Obama really does not want to get into another quagmire and only governmental changes will induce him back.