When the US and its British ally decided to invade Iraq in 2003, certain consequences were always clear, except, perhaps, to those driving the strategy in Washington and London. It was clear beforehand that this was a step that would proliferate jihadism, risked turning Iraq into a Lebanon cubed and would destroy western credibility and legitimacy in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

But there was one intriguing aspect of the policy that was not then clear. What was Anglo-American thinking about the Shia, the disadvantaged and dispossessed minority in Islam who, in Iraq, are the majority?