In 2003, I watched American tanks enter Baghdad from Karachi.

Saddam Hussein’s government disappeared with astonishing speed. Television cameras showed his statue being pulled down. American military power looked overwhelming.

There was another consequence that received much less attention in those television pictures.

Washington had just destroyed one of Iran’s most dangerous enemies.

That thought returned to me after a reader commented on my recent article about the American withdrawal from Iraq. His argument was wrapped in sarcasm about weapons of mass destruction, oil and the justifications used for the invasion.

I disagree with some of his claims, particularly the suggestion that Saddam Hussein’s wrongdoing can somehow be reduced to oil. Saddam’s government had an appalling record of repression and war.

But the comment raises a better question. What did the invasion actually do to the balance of power in the Middle East?

More than two decades later, the answer is uncomfortable. The United States removed Saddam Hussein, dismantled much of the political and security order surrounding his government, and then spent years trying to build another Iraqi state. Iran, meanwhile, worked through relationships with political parties and armed groups inside the new system.

Washington did not invade Iraq in order to strengthen Iran. But removing Saddam changed the regional balance. The institutions dismantled after his fall, the return of political movements that had spent years in exile and the later rise of armed groups during the fight against Islamic State created opportunities Tehran could exploit. Iran did not create all of those conditions. It proved unusually well placed to operate inside them.

Saddam Was Iran’s Enemy Before He Was America’s

It is easy to forget how different the regional map looked before 2003.

Iran and Iraq fought from 1980 to 1988. Saddam invaded Iran in September 1980, and the conflict dragged on for eight years. Cities were attacked, oil facilities became targets and Iraqi forces used chemical weapons. The human cost on both sides was enormous.

For Tehran, Saddam was therefore not simply another difficult Arab ruler. He represented a direct military threat.

The two governments remained rivals after their war ended. Saddam’s Iraq remained one of the principal military and political constraints on Iranian power to its west.

Then the United States removed it. American forces did in a few weeks what Iran had failed to accomplish during eight years of war: they destroyed Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Iran did not have to invade Baghdad. Its greatest regional enemy was removed by the United States.

Washington Did More Than Remove Saddam

Regime change created another problem. What exactly should replace the regime?

The American occupation authorities made two early decisions whose consequences travelled far beyond the offices in which they were written.

Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 1 began the de-Baathification of Iraqi society. Senior members of Saddam’s Baath Party were removed from government positions and barred from future public-sector employment.

Then came Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 2. It dissolved the Iraqi armed forces and several institutions associated with the old security system.

The justification was understandable: these institutions had served a dictatorship. But dismantling institutions is not the same thing as dismantling loyalties, grievances or military knowledge.

Thousands of people who had worked inside the old system suddenly found themselves outside the new one. At the same time, Washington needed Iraqis who could run ministries, maintain security and construct a new political order.

Into that opening came organisations Saddam had previously suppressed. Some had spent years outside Iraq, including years in Iran.

Iran Already Knew Some of the People Coming Home

Tehran did not suddenly discover Iraqi politics in April 2003. It already had relationships with several Iraqi Shiite opposition movements that had operated abroad during Saddam’s rule.

The organisation that became the Badr Organization had been created in Iran during the Iran-Iraq War and fought against Saddam with Iranian backing. The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq also had deep roots in Iran. The Dawa Party suffered severe repression under Saddam, and some of its leaders spent periods in exile in Iran. The United States Institute of Peace’s Iran Primer has documented these relationships and their importance after 2003.

When Saddam disappeared, these networks did not need to be invented. Many of the people involved returned to an Iraq whose political rules were being rewritten.

American officials had overwhelming military power, but Tehran had spent years dealing with Iraqi politicians and organisations that were now returning from exile. That advantage was harder to measure than tanks or troop numbers, but it mattered after Saddam disappeared.

Elections Changed Who Could Govern Iraq

There was another transformation that gets lost when Iraq is described simply as falling under Iranian influence. Post-Saddam Iraq became an electoral system.

That mattered because Iraq’s Shiite majority had been politically disadvantaged under the old order. Once elections became the basis of political authority, Shiite political parties naturally acquired much greater influence.

Some had relationships with Tehran. Others were strongly Iraqi nationalist and suspicious of Iranian interference. Those differences still matter.

Iran did not simply select Iraq’s governments. It cultivated relationships across a complicated political field while also maintaining links with armed groups, businesses and religious networks.

The United States had removed the political structure that had constrained these forces. Iran learned to operate inside what replaced it.

Then America Left Once Before

American forces withdrew from Iraq in 2011. The withdrawal did not transform Iraq into an Iranian possession. Iraqi politicians continued balancing relationships with Washington, Tehran and Arab neighbours.

Then Iraq nearly collapsed again.

In June 2014, Islamic State captured Mosul. Iraqi army units disintegrated, and the group swept through large areas of northern and western Iraq.

The United States returned. Iran moved too.

For a strange period in Middle Eastern history, Washington and Tehran found themselves fighting the same enemy without becoming allies. American aircraft attacked Islamic State positions while Iran supplied weapons, advisers and support to Iraqi forces and Shiite militias.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s call for Iraqis to defend the country helped produce a huge mobilisation of volunteers. Armed groups gathered under the Popular Mobilization Forces. Many were genuinely defending Iraq against an organisation capable of extraordinary brutality. Some also had longstanding relationships with Iran.

ISIS Gave Armed Groups New Political Weight

The battlefield changed the standing of these organisations. Iran-backed armed groups participated in the campaign that pushed Islamic State out of Iraqi territory, and their fighters died in that struggle.

Military service against ISIS gave some militia organisations greater legitimacy and political influence. Several developed political wings or relationships with parliamentary blocs, while parts of the mobilisation became embedded within Iraq’s formal security architecture.

The boundary between state and non-state power became increasingly difficult to draw. An armed organisation could receive state resources while retaining commanders, political relationships and external connections that complicated Baghdad’s authority.

That question of authority is also at the centre of my companion article, America Is Leaving Iraq Again. The Real Test Is Who Controls Iraq Afterward.

Iran Has Influence. That Is Not the Same as Owning Iraq

It would be tempting to turn this history into a neat story in which America repeatedly loses and Iran repeatedly wins. Iraq is too complicated for that.

Iranian influence has generated substantial Iraqi resistance. In 2019, protesters in predominantly Shiite areas demonstrated against their own political system and against Iranian interference. Iranian diplomatic facilities were attacked during the unrest.

Shared religion does not erase nationalism. Iraqi Shiites are Iraqis. Najaf has its own religious tradition and authority, while Iraqi political movements have constituencies and interests that do not automatically coincide with Tehran’s.

Iran can exert influence without possessing Iraq. That distinction is important because otherwise every decision made by a Shiite politician in Baghdad risks being misread as an instruction from Tehran.

Geography Gives Iran an Advantage Washington Cannot Copy

Iran worked through political parties, militia commanders, religious networks and trade. None gave Tehran complete control over Iraq. But unlike Washington, Iran did not have to decide whether eventually to leave. It shares a border with Iraq.

Iranian strategy since 2003 has reflected the memory of the Iran-Iraq War and Tehran’s concern about hostile military power operating next door. The Iran Primer has described preventing Iraq from again becoming a major threat as a longstanding Iranian objective.

Seen from Baghdad, however, that creates its own sovereignty problem. Iraq has to maintain relationships with Iran without allowing outside relationships to determine who possesses coercive power inside the country.

Watching the Withdrawal Takes Me Back to 2003

Watching the American withdrawal now takes me back to those television pictures from 2003.

American tanks were entering Baghdad. Saddam’s government was disappearing. Washington believed it was eliminating a threat and reshaping the Middle East.

Iran was watching the same pictures.

To Iran’s east, the United States had already overthrown the Taliban government in Afghanistan in 2001. To Iran’s west, American forces were now destroying Saddam Hussein’s government. For a time, Tehran faced American military power on both sides.

But something else had happened. Two governments hostile to Tehran had been removed by the United States within eighteen months. The Taliban eventually returned to power in Afghanistan. Saddam never returned to Iraq.

The political order that replaced him gave Iran opportunities it had never possessed while he governed Baghdad.

That does not prove that the Iraq War was fought for oil. Nor does it mean Washington intended to strengthen Tehran. Intentions are only one part of what matters when judging a war more than two decades later.

I remember the tanks entering Baghdad and wondering what kind of Iraq would emerge after Saddam. Today the American military presence is again being reduced while armed groups with longstanding Iranian relationships remain embedded in Iraq’s political and security landscape.

America removed Saddam Hussein.

Iran never had to.

What Iraq eventually makes of that inheritance is still being decided.