The ISIS and its allies are in a position today that closely resembles the ISI's position prior to the US surge back in early 2007. More than 130,000 US troops, partnered with the Sunni Awakening formations and Iraqi security forces numbering in the hundreds of thousands, were required to clear Anbar, Salahaddin, Diyala, Ninewa, Baghdad, and the "triangle of death." The concurrent operations took more than a year, and were supported by the US Air Force, US Army aviation brigades, and US special operations raids that targeted the ISI's command and control, training camps, and bases, as well as its IED and suicide bomb factories.Today, the Iraqis have no US forces on the ground to support them, US air power is absent, the Awakening is scattered and in disarray, and the Iraqi military has been humiliated while surrendering or retreating during the jihadists' campaign from Mosul to the outskirts of Baghdad. The US government has indicated that it will not deploy US soldiers in Iraq, either on the ground or at airbases to conduct air operations.
ISIS is advancing boldly in the looming security vacuum left by the collapse of the Iraqi security forces and the West's refusal to recommit forces to stabilize Iraq. This has rendered the country vulnerable to further incursions by al Qaeda-linked jihadists as well as intervention by interested neighbors such as Iran. Overt Iranian intervention in Iraq would likely lead any Sunnis still loyal to the government to side with ISIS and its allies, and would ensure that Iraq would slide even closer to a full-blown civil war, and risk a wider war throughout the Middle East.