| This study proposes that Iraq's democracy and stability turmoil since 2003 can be well elucidated by concentrating on the link between internal and external challenges that military intervention has introduced in the country. The source of that link is the emerging external security vacuum that Iraq's neighboring state, Iran has exploited to its own advantages that has resulted in first, increasing Iran's influence in the region where balance of power between Iran and Iraq has dramatically changed to the advantage of Iran in retrospect, and second, ruining Iraq's path to democracy and stability where the sense of togetherness and power sharing is greatly threatened. This is, of course, in addition to the foundational domestic challenges that Iraq's major ethnicities such as the Arab Shiites, the Arab Sunnis, and the Kurds are experiencing in the process of state building. |
