As the United States contemplates how best to extract itself from Iraq, Saudi Arabia is deeply concerned. It fears just how powerful Iran will be once the dust clears—and for good reason.

Back in October, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S., Prince Turki al-Faisal, said in a speech that “since America came into Iraq uninvited, it should not leave Iraq uninvited.” During U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent visit to Riyadh, Saudi leaders again voiced their anxieties: According to U.S. and Arab diplomats, King Abdullah told Cheney he was strongly opposed to Washington entering any kind of dialog with Iran—an option recently floated by the Iraq Study Group. He also said that, should the U.S. pull its troops out of Iraq, Saudi Arabia may support Iraq’s Sunnis in order to protect them from Iraq’s Shiites. The New York Times commented:

The Saudi warning reflects fears among America’s Sunni Arab allies about Iran’s rising influence in Iraq, coupled with Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. …The Saudis have argued strenuously against an American pullout from Iraq, citing fears that Iraq’s minority Sunni Arab population would be massacred. Those fears, United States officials said, have become more pronounced as a growing chorus in Washington has advocated a draw-down of American troops in Iraq, coupled with diplomatic outreach to Iran, which is largely Shiite.

Throughout the 1980s, Iran and Iraq locked horns in a brutal war of contrition that effectively kept both nations from posing a threat to anyone outside themselves. Once the U.S. entered the fray in Desert Storm in 1991, a conflict that continues to this day, the balance of power began to shift toward Iran. That fact has left other powers in the region not aligned with Iran very uneasy.

Abdullah’s comments reflect a very realistic appraisal of the situation on the ground in Iraq: that weakening the government there removed the primary obstacle to Iran realizing its ambition for regional supremacy, and that the U.S. presence, while it lasts, is the dam holding back the Iranian tide into Iraq.

In a November 29 Washington Postarticle for which he was fired from his position as an adviser to the Saudi government, Nawaf Obaid wrote, “To be sure, Saudi engagement in Iraq carries great risks—it could spark a regional war. So be it: The consequences of inaction are far worse”—the consequences being, in effect, Iran having its way with its western neighbor en route to cementing its regional power even further.

Whatever happens from this point forward, it cannot be refuted that, amid the troubles in Iraq today, Iran is operating from an astonishingly strong position. The Trumpet has been speaking of the biblically prophesied reasons this would likely happen for over a decade.