TO UNDERSTAND how mightily Iran once dominated Iraq, head to Ctesi-phon, Persia's old capital, just south of Baghdad. A millennium and a half old, its ruined palace still features the world's larg-est unsupported brick arch. Until Arab armies seized it at the dawn of Islam, the city was twice the size of imperial Rome and the centre of a Sassanid empire that stretched from Egypt to the Hindu Kush. Few Iraqis seem eager to remember that history today. The Persian ruins lie behind rusting barbed wire, as if ties with Iran, past and present, were an embarrassment. Officially, Iran has only 95 military advisers in the country, compared with America's force of some 5,800 soldiers, several vast military bases and control of the skies. (In reality, an adviser to the prime minister confides, Iran's forces outnumber America's at least five to one.)
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