Brookings' Pollack: 'Iran trying to prevent further Shia'-Sunni deterioration'

from the ever-adapting Ken Pollack:

"...Although most Americans tend to assume that the U.S. and Iran will be on opposite sides on every issue across the Middle East, in Iraq, that has often been untrue. In the early years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iran was actually very helpful to the United States: Iran did not support the militias and insurgents, and instead it encouraged its Iraqi allies to go along with the American project of building a democracy there, probably because Tehran feared an open confrontation with the U.S., feared Iraq descending into chaos and civil war, and recognized that any Iraqi democracy would inevitably be dominated by the Shi’a, who would probably be on reasonable terms with Iran....The same seems to be true today. ..."