"Shias are about to inherit Iraq, but the election that will bring them to power is creating deep fears among the Arab kings and dictators of the Middle East that their Sunni leadership is under threat.
"Outside of Iraq, Arab leaders are talking of a 'Shia Crescent' that will run from Iran through Iraq to Lebanon via Syria, whose Alawite leadership forms a branch of Shia Islam. The underdogs of the Middle East, repressed under the Ottomans, the British and then the pro-Western dictators of the region, will be a new and potent political force.
"While Shia political parties in Iraq have promised that they will not demand an Islamic republic -- their speeches suggest that they have no desire to recreate the Iranian revolution in their country -- their inevitable victory in an election that Iraq's Sunnis will largely boycott mean that this country will become the first Arab nation to be led by Shias.
"On the surface, this may not be apparent; Iyad Allawi, the former CIA agent and current Shia 'interim' Prime Minister, is widely tipped as the only viable choice for the next prime minister -- but the kings and emirs of the Gulf are facing the prospect with trepidation.
"In Bahrain, a Sunni monarchy rules over a Shia majority that staged a mini-insurrection in the 1990s. Saudi Arabia has long treated its Shia minority with suspicion and repression.
"In the Arab world, they say that God favoured the Shia with oil. Shias live above the richest oil reserves in Saudi Arabia and upon some of the Kuwaiti oil fields. Apart from Mosul, Iraqi Shias live almost exclusively amid their own country's massive oil fields. Iran's oil wealth is controlled by the country's overwhelming Shia majority.
"What does all this presage for the Sunni potentates of the Arabian peninsula? Iraq's new national assembly and the next interim government it selects will empower Shias throughout the region, inviting them to question why they, too, cannot be given a fair share of their countries' decision-making."
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