The US strategy of external democratization has failed. Iraq is threatened by
state failure, militarization and confrontation shape US-Arab relations. These
and other global “Iraq Effects” should not cover the equally important but
less recognized developments on the regional and local level of Middle Eastern
politics. Thus, Iraq effects have primarily affected political processes
beyond the “classical” nation-state level. The Iraq war has decisively
contributed to the development of a new regional order of escalating intra-and
inter-state violence, the rise of Iran as a regional power as well as a
general polarization. Secondly, the Iraq war has affected the emergence and
consolidation of new forms of cross-border, trans-local mobility of radical
Islamist groups, Kurdish activists, but also of business people. Thirdly, the
war has caused a massive refugee crisis in the Middle East which transforms
local structures in Iraq’s neighboring states of Jordan and Syria. These
complex dynamics constitute the “radiance” of the Iraq war for Middle Eastern
politics after 2003