Reply #3: Territorial expansion

[Jacobin]

They recognize that without Saddam or a similarly vile dictator at the helm that Iraq will split in three, one of which pieces will be the Kurdish north.

They are expanding their sphere of influence in the area for oil and security. While I haven't looked at the Likkudnicks biblical map of "Israel" in a while, it was once a good bit larger than it is now, and many want to expand the territory to include what it was like thousands of years ago.