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Will Iraq Return to Full-Blown Sectarian Civil War?

Jamie Dettmer

   The expulsion of U.S. troops from Iraq, which Iran has long wanted and
   the Iraqi Parliament is now demanding, may rebound on Tehran, say some
   analysts, especially if the Iranians seek to amplify the political
   turmoil in Iraq with the aim of pushing U.S. forces out of that country
   this year.

   "The danger is a return to civil war," according to Niall Ferguson, an
   analyst at the Hoover Institution, a U.S.-based research group.

   Amid heightened sectarian tensions, a Sunni-Shi'ite conflict is one of
   the possible outcomes of the killing of top Iranian general Qassem
   Soleimani in a U.S. drone strike. Soleimani was Iran's master fixer in
   the Middle East and commander of the country's elite Quds Force, the
   unconventional warfare and military intelligence wing of Iran's Islamic
   Revolutionary Guard Corps.

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