So this is interesting for a few reasons, despite being a Telegraph article. For starters, Iraq is essentially a vassal state of the US at this point. Meanwhile, Iran is normalizing towards the US. People forget that prior to Mossadegh and the Shah, Iran was the most Western-friendly nation in South Asia. And while the US has been flying drone recon over Iran (although I'll bet they cut that shit out after the Iranians got one), they haven't been flying drone interdiction.

Stephen Kinzer wrote an interesting book called Reset in 2010 that argues, in no uncertain terms, that the United States would benefit most from tempering our relationships with Israel and Saudi Arabia and realigning around Turkey and Iran because they're both recently emergent economies with a largely secular past and a great deal of historical entanglement with the United States. We installed the Shah in Iran primarily to kick the British out and, in doing so, ending their world hegemony. And the Ayatollahs, no matter how crazy they act, are a mere fraction as crazy as the Mullahs.

I'm a little hazy on the demographics on the ground, but Persia has always been the land of the Shiites. Iraq is kind of the center ground where the world shifts from Shia to Sunni. This could very well lead to nothing more than Sunni-on-Shia violence.