"The U.S. finds itself on both sides of a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia"

Talk about the United States being in a difficult place. One hour, the U.S. is conducting airstrikes to combat Sunni extremists -- ISIS -- in Iraq. "U.S. warplanes are now conducting airstrikes in support of Iraqi efforts to take the city of Tikrit from the terror group ISIS, the U.S. military said Wednesday," per NBC News. The next hour, it's helping aid Saudi Arabia's bombing campaign against Shiite extremists -- the Houthi rebels -- in Yemen. "Secretary of State John Kerry commended the work of the coalition and underlined U.S. support for the effort — including intelligence sharing, targeting assistance, and advisory and logistical assistance — in talks with his counterparts in the region on Thursday," according to a separate NBC report. The backdrop, of course, is the clear proxy war in the Middle East between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. But as the New York Times writes, one of the reasons why the United States has taken a more active role in the bombing campaign in Iraq is because it's worried that Iran now has too much influence in the country. "If the Americans did not engage, they feared becoming marginalized by Tehran in a country where they had spilled much blood in the last decade, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity."