And who is the winner six years after.

Questions:

1. It's already 6 years since the beginning of the war in Iraq. How did the war change the balance in the broader region of Middle East? Who are the winners and losers of the conflict in the region?

2. If the US decided not to attack Iraq and keep focus on Afghanistan, how do you think would the region look like today? Do you think Saddam will be still at power? Do you think Iran would be so confident and so insisting on its nuclear program as it is today?

Answers:

Nathan Brown, professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University.

1. The big winner so far is Iran. Islamist movements in the Arab world have done well, but that is not wholly because of the war in Iraq.

2. The Iraqi regime was in trouble in 2003 in many respects but it did not appear unstable. The sanctions were beginning to erode and the regime had a patronage system in place that managed to keep critical constituencies from action against it. So it is possible and even likely that the regime would still be in power.

As far as Iran goes, that is more difficult to say, since the state of their nuclear program and the motivations behind it are unclear. But Iran at the beginning of this decade was surrounded by unfriendly regimes. That is no longer true today. I do not think that the nuclear program was solely a response to the security challenges posed by those regimes, and indeed it has outlived them.