This will provide a new opportunity for confrontation between the Iraqi and the British and American governments. Third, the decade has seen the Iraqi regime strengthened. The 1991 civil war that almost toppled it is distant history. Impoverished Iraqis have since preferred to collect rations from their government to toppling it. While assessments of their likely success are largely poor, the presidential candidates swear by them.
Regimes can, of course, change very quickly.
One bullet or cancer is all that it takes for this to happen. Fourth, the 1990s has been a less violent decade for the region than that which followed the Iranian revolution. To be sure, Turkey invades Iraqi Kurdistan annually and the Iraqi Kurds fight among themselves from time to time, but these are leftovers from the Iran-Iraq war, the Anfal campaign and the Gulf War. Iraq's invasion hiatus may reflect its reduced means to make war. But the decade holds trouble for the future.