largely made up of the urban poor, are recruited in quarters that were once strongholds of Iraqi communism. The expeditionary armies from America and Britain could not last a month in Iraq, if the Shi'a at large followed the example of their Sunni compatriots. Indeed, it would take only a vote in the puppet parliament demanding the immediate withdrawal of foreign forces to make the position of Washington and London untenable. Given the modern history of Iraq, there would still be many grave tensions in the relations between the two communities, not to speak of the recent role of the Kurds as the Gurkhas of the invader. But until the spreading poison of Western intrusion is removed, there is no chance of wounds, past or present, healing. The Anglo-American armies need to be driven out of the country, bag and baggage, for Iraq to have any future. Iran in the crosshairs In Basra and Maysan provinces, in the far south-east of Iraq, the local Shi'a authorities are now refusing to cooperate with the British occupiers. Their change of attitude is likely to bear some relation to the new situation across the border. The victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran's presidential elections of 2005 represents the biggest political upset of the new century in the region. The mayor of Tehran, a hard-core clerical militant from a working-class family and soldier in the war against Iraq, handsomely defeated the candidate favoured by the Western media and its masters: the corrupt clerical tycoon