dianavan,

as you often do, you are throwing out odd questions whose answers are irrelevant.

The Arabs are an 80% majority in Iraq. In your third post you wrote:

"Iraq and Afghanistan also have Persian majorities."

Again, this is wrong. Afghanistan and Iran have a Persian majority, Iraq an Arab majority. There is no "common Persian identity" to be found between Iraq and Iran. Indeed, less than one percent of Iraq's population is Persian

Now you ask: "If you put Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran together, who is the majority? Arab or Persian? Sunni or Shiite?"

you might as well ask "if you put France, Spain and Britain together, who is the majority? Latinate or Germanic peoples? Catholics or Protestants?"

The answer is, "the question makes no sense."

Afghanis are mostly Persian Sunnis. Iraqis are mostly Arab Shiites. Iranians are mostly Persian Shiites. The very poor population estimates for Afghanistan make it impossible to determine who would have more people if the populations were combined. Quite possibly, there would be more Persians, but more Sunnis because of the Persian Sunnis of Afghanistan and the Sunni ethnic minorities in each country.

However, if you did not arbitrarily pick those three countries, there are far more Arabs in the region than Persians, and far more Sunnis than Shiites. It is much more likely that Iraqis will decide to reclaim their common Arab identity with Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatr and the UAE than a nonexistent Persian identity with Iran.

Many Iraqi Shiites DO feel a sense of common identity with Iranian Shiites. But they are only 60 percent of the Iraqi population, so they would have to do so universally in order to make political common cause with Iran. Furthermore, the Shiite Arabs of Iraq have neither ethnicity nor religion in common with the Sunni Persians of Afghanistan. So the international wave of fellow-feeling you envision would have several important ethnic and religious boundaries to cross. It would have to unite aome Arabs with some Persians on the basis of Shiite religion, some Shiites with some Sunnis on the basis of Persian ethnicity, and some Shiite Arabs with some Sunni Persians on the basis of their common friends, the Shiite Persians. This is not usually the way common identity is constituted.