Iraq and a Hard Place
PHILLIPS: Iran, the U.N. and uranium. Lines are being drawn, sides taken, including potentially in Iran's next-door neighbor and one-time enemy. CNN's Aneesh Raman is in Baghdad.</s>ANEESH RAMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Iran and the U.S. are now likely to battle at the United Nations over Iran's nuclear program. But it's a battle that has Iraq right in the middle.</s>KEN POLLACK, CNN ANALYST: The Iran nuclear issue tends to be divorced from the reconstruction of Iraq. But most senior officials here in Washington recognize that the two are intimately intertwined.</s>RAMAN: The backbone of Iraq's government, the Shia Religious Alliance, is very close to Iran. Many of its leaders spent years there in exile during Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, when the Shia were persecuted in Iraq. The two countries are the biggest in the Muslim world, where Shias outnumber Sunnis. And the U.S. says Iran is undermining American efforts in Iraq, smuggling weapons, arming and training Shia militias.</s>DONALD RUMSFELD, U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: They are currently putting people into Iraq to do things that are harmful to the future of Iraq, and we know it.</s>RAMAN: An allegation made by Sunnis, as well. The leading Sunni politician fears his country will become an even bigger battlefield.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They want to do their attack first. They want to start the attack on the Americans in Iraq, and they want to make from Iraq the ground for the battle, not Iran.</s>RAMAN: The United States worked hard for more than two years to create a secular government in Iraq, a U.S. ally in the region. But Shias linked to Iran won big in every election.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But we will not allow our Iraqi territory to be used against any of our neighbors. We do not want to get involved in this.</s>RAMAN: Something not lost on Washington.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They are forced to temper their actions regarding Iran's nuclear program by the recognition that if they push too hard, they might wind up dooming the reconstruction of Iraq.</s>RAMAN: Reconstructing Iraq, analyst say, is the most important national security issue facing the Bush administration. (on camera): Iraq's government is currently in the midst of its own political crisis, a bad time to be drawn into a brewing international dispute, one that could prove the first real sign of where new Iraq's allegiance lies, with the West or with its neighbor Iran. Aneesh Raman, CNN, Baghdad.</s>PHILLIPS: Stories developing right now in Iraq. Let's head straight to Carol Lin with more in the newsroom -- Carol.</s>LIN: This is north of Baghdad, Kyra. CNN now confirming with Iraqi police that 20 people died in a bombing on a Shiite mosque north of Baghdad. Twenty people dead, 40 wounded, as this blast targeted worshipers at a mosque in the town of Hawidir (ph). Hospital officials are saying that there were dozens of casualties being treated, and this in light of last week. There was a bombing -- in fact, it was a triple suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in Baghdad which killed 90 people last week -- Kyra.</s>PHILLIPS: We'll continue to follow the stories, of course, coming out of Iraq throughout the next hour and a half or so. An update now on a story that we brought you on Monday, also Iraq-related. You may remember a 10-year-old Iraqi girl who suffers from spina bifida was brought to this country through the efforts of a Tennessee reporter that was embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq. Well, little Gufran underwent almost eight hours of surgery yesterday to correct an opening at the base of her spine. Her doctors say it was a huge success. She's expected to remain in a Knoxville hospital for a couple of weeks. She'll recuperate at the home of