Here Are The Worst And Best Scenarios For The Iraq Civil War

Iraq War: Here Are The Worst And Best Scenarios -- Everett Rosenfeld and Yousef Gamal El-Din, CNBC

As radical Sunni militants violently wrest away control of much of Iraq, the country's ultimate fate is still open to debate. What are the worst- and best-case scenarios? CNBC turned to several experts from the United States, Middle East and elsewhere for their thoughts.

Worst-case scenario: 'This is going to burn'

For Rick Brennan, a senior political scientist at RAND Corp. and former senior civilian adviser to the U.S. forces in Iraq, the worst possible outcome is the total disintegration of the country.

That, he said, would occur if Sunni militias—currently led by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)—successfully conducts "spectacular terrorist attacks" that unleash a sectarian bloodbath. Ethnic cleansing would follow, with Shiites in Baghdad and southern Iraq turning on their Sunni neighbors.

Eventually what would happen, Brennan said, is a tense three-state stalemate with the Shiites in the south and east, the Kurds in the north, and a Sunni caliphate from western Iraq to Syria that would "make what we had in Afghanistan pre-9/11 pale in comparison." In this scenario, Brennan said, the Shiite territory becomes so dependent on Iran for safety, that it is "nothing more than a client state of Tehran."

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My Comment: My prediction is that when the fighting dies down the country that will be divided along sectarian lines .... Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the west and in the central part of the country, and Shiites in the southern and central parts of the country.