Still, countries of the Middle East cannot ignore the potential role of a resurgent Iraq, a nation of 28 million people, bordering Iran to the east, Syria and Jordan to the west and sitting on one of the world's major pools of oil.
For those reasons, the United States cannot afford to lose focus on Iraq, which will remain a strategic and important country even after the last of the 140,000 American soldiers have gone home.
Clearly Iraq is a long way from re-establishing itself as a major force in the region. In a first step, however, representatives of 35 international oil companies are to meet this month with Iraq's oil minister in London to discuss improving Iraqi gas and oil fields. Fellow Arab countries are talking about upgrading their relations with Iraq.
Iraq is likely to play a significant role in America's Middle East policy for decades
- even as the Pentagon scales down military operations here and ramps them up in Afghanistan.
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The Middle East has long confounded forecasters, and the rosy predictions from the Bush administration that Iraq would emerge as a beacon of Western-style democracy in the Arab world have been long discredited.
However unlikely it may seem today, a relatively stable Iraq would have all the cards necessary to emerge as a major player in the Persian Gulf, where Saudi Arabia and Iran are competing for leadership.
Those three countries account for most of the population and most of the oil in the Gulf, which has about 60 percent of the world's proven reserves.
How the three deal with one another will shape the Middle East for decades.
Iraq's vast oil reserves alone should guarantee the country a major regional role.
Current estimates put Iraq's proven oil reserves at 115 billion barrels. But many experts believe that figure could rise by another 70 billion to 80 billion barrels once better security allows for renewed exploration.
If those estimates prove accurate, Iraq would have the world's second-largest proven oil reserves behind Saudi Arabia and ahead of Iran.
As Iran and Saudi Arabia compete for influence in the region, each has a strong interest in using Iraq as leverage against the other.
Neither Iran nor Saudi Arabia can afford to have Iraq throw itself solidly behind the other. Each wants a stable Iraq
- but not one strong enough to threaten its neighbors as when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990.
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In competing for influence in Iraq, Iran would seem to have the advantage. Most of Iran's nearly 70 million people are Shiites, the Muslim sect that includes about 60 percent of Iraq's population.
Iran offered asylum to thousands of Iraqi Shiites who fled Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime. Many of them returned home to assume positions of power after the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.
Iran has also cultivated close ties with the Kurds, who along with the Shiites have dominated political life in Iraq since the fall of Saddam.
Despite those advantages, Iran faces major obstacles in building influence in a country with bitter memories of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and a legacy of centuries of rivalry between Arabs and Persian Iran.