Shit, now I'm going to have to read more Robert Kaplan. The Revenge of Geography pretty much breaks the world up into its natural spheres of influence - based not on who's in charge or what religion is running things, but by what mountain ranges protect what groups and by what river valleys provide what resources. One of Kaplan's tenets (and he bases it on a long list of thinkers going back to the Greeks) is that a straight border is an imaginary border. Iraq has some straight-ass borders. Kaplan points out that historically, Babylon is Greater Persia. He also points out that from a geopolitical standpoint, the Middle East from Israel to India is Greater Persia - organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah have more influence than local governments in many instances. So by walking into Iraq and Afghanistan and wrecking the local order, we're essentially making these countries easier for Iran to influence. Goddamn it, and it's not exactly engaging reading, either.