Rather strange that those posting here expect that the Shia South would willingly become part of Iran. All evidence indicates that the "Arab" Shia's currently dwelling in Iran actually seek to break away from Persian rule (By the bye, they have the bulk of Iran's oil production). Any independent Shia Iraq actually poses a threat to the twelve "Old Gits" who rule Iran, i.e. this is not something they would welcome. Therefore what happens in the South of current day Iran does not phase the West one jot, or the the US in particular, Iran and Iraq is not where the US gets its oil from, now Japan and other far-eastern countries is a different story.

Now the Kurds, both Shia and Sunni, that is again a different story. Had Saddam used this cards correctly during the Iran/Iraq War he would have won it hands down. He didn't, and ultimately paid the price for it. Now the UN could do the same for the Kurds as they did for the Israelis in 1948, and recognize a Kurdish State in the break-up of Iraq. Now this would not go down well with Iraqi Sunni's, or with the Turks and Iranians, but it would give those regimes something to deal with, seems like a lot of folks here are mightly concerned about artificial borders set for Iraq but not of those set for modern day Turkey and Iran. Unlike Ron Davies I don't believe that the Sunni population of Iraq deserve anything, they are the equivalent of the hard-line Nazis in Germany, in 1945. From 1933 to 1945 they had milked every advantage out of their political allegiance as they could get, let them run to Ba'athist Syria for whatever hand-outs may come their way, those will be damn few and far between, but no less than what they richly deserve. The end of December 2006 marks the end of the UN Mandate for MNF troops to be stationed in Iraq. The Iraqis should be given notice that that is a dead line, by which time they should be looking after their own affairs, and if that has to be resolved by sectarian militias, then so be it, let them get on with it, it was the same solution A. J. Taylor suggested for Northern Ireland back in 1972, (secterian violence was not worth the life of one single British soldier) I agreed with him then, I would agree with that premise now in Iraq.