[Cronos]

When Iraq joins the GCC and the might of the military there is honed to American quality, the power shift will be complete

Not a chance -- Iraq has a large Shia population who will look to Iran, while the Kurds are an Irani people. in the East, the Baluchis (who are related to the Kurds), the TAjiks (who are Iranis, descendents of the Sogdians and Bactrians) who feel Irani, and the Uzbeks, Azeris and Turkmen are really Iranis with a thin veneer of Turkic language on top.

There will be a greater Iran, a return to the Achaemenid Empire -- I only hope that the Iranis realise that the thing holding them back isIslam and they would return to the worship of Ahura Mazda.

[lentulusgracchus]

the Kurds are an Irani people....

But the Kurds of Iran have frequently been at war with both the Shah's and the mullahs' government in Tehran.

There's little love lost nowadays between the Kurds and the Persians.

The Ansar al-Islam group was an Al Q'aeda-affiliated terrorist NGO supported by Saddam Hussein's government that operated against the Iranian government in Kurdish areas of Iran. They were dispersed by peshmerga and Special Forces attacks and bombing attacks by B-52's.