[BBKing]

You're putting too much store by ideological differences

The Shia/Sunni split is not a minor ideological difference, it's a fundamental division of faith (when espoused by loonies on either side, of course - we're emphatically not talking about normal people). 'left wing communists', as you put it, don't actually blow themselves up in football crowds, neither do football hooligans stage mass suicide attacks on 'left wing communists'.

Let me explain what I'm doing - I'm putting myself in the mind of the Iranians, and attempting to work out their motives and aims, and I'm finding that they don't want to be blown up by bin Laden-inspired loonies any more than you or I do.

Remember that OBL and co. regard Shias much as they regard Jews and Christians - as infidels fit only for slaughter. There's no way the Iranians are going to help them, especially when there are much more obvious ways of getting what they want. Like I said, the Iranians *supported* the US over Afghanistan. They may be fanatics, but they spotted the pragmatic benefits of booting out the Taliban as much as anyone else (IIRC Iran does quite well out of the heroin trade).

Of course, they are as ****ed off at the US and the West generally as ever, particularly over the nuclear option, and thus making life difficult for the occupying forces in relatively peaceful eastern Iraq fits in quite nicely, and they certainly want the British and Americans off their doorsteps. But that doesn't mean they'll get into bed with al-Zarqawi. After all, Saddam had a hostile attitude to the US and UK, but he didn't team up with OBL, nor for that matter did he team up with Iran. Just because two sets of people hate us doesn't mean they can't hate each other.

[It's also worth noting that 'al-Qaeda'-in-Iraq would claim credit if a British soldier stubbed his toe getting into his tank. They're master propagandists, remember? So any claims of responsibility for attacks in the South should be treated with caution]

And how many are actually right-wing football hooligans and thugs, who have just turned up for a ruck?

Only the ones in police uniforms...

Oh, and America is a charming country full of people saying 'Let's Bomb Tehran|Mecca|etc.'