John Fredrick Parker
Donor
WI Saddam Killed in Dujail (1982)?
- Thread starter John Fredrick Parker
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My guess would be either Izzat Ad-Douri, Khairallah Talfah, or Hussein al-Majid, or possibly one of Saddam's sons. there would be a short and secretive power struggle, involving a few "accidents", then the new leader would take control.
John Fredrick Parker
Donor
^^FWIG, it may be early for the dead man's (future?) son-in-law to be the successor, and the sons are still young; that would leave Saddam's uncle, or the guy who looks a lot like Bryan Cranston...
That's Ad-Douri i believe. The issue with Ad-Douri, from what I can tell, is that he was a good subordinate, but he never really took on a major leadership role in the Iraqi government before Saddam promoted him, likely as a placeholder more than anything else.
John Fredrick Parker
Donor
^^Well, seems that would leave Khairallah Talfah -- though even then, I wonder how much power he could grab with his nephew dead...
By '82? Quite a bit. Saddam basically cleansed the Ba'ath Party's higher ranks of anyone who was not either a) related to him or b) totally and completely his sycophant. Talfah was one of the few people in the higher party who, while related to him, was a relatively competent leader. I did a whole bunch of research for this, check out the thread that's linked from my signature and tell me what you think.
That being said, there likely would have been a collapse of authority in Iraq without Saddam. While Talfah and Ad-Douri (probably together with Ad-Douri as the figurehead and Talfah running things behind the scenes) would have claimed control, local military commanders might have turned into quasi-warlords, with some possibly even going over to the Iranian side in exchange for promises of position in an Iraqi puppet state post-Iranian victory.
John Fredrick Parker
Donor
Sounds like this PoD, combined with Iran successfully taking Basra, could be enough then not only for Iran to clearly win a shorter war, but for Iraq to collapse entirely...
Well, collapse in a way. Likely, rump Iraq will end up under the Ba'athists or an incarnation of them, after the Saudis, Jordanians and Egyptians intervene. There is no way that the Arab states are going to let the Iranians gain Shi'a and Kurdish puppet states in Iraq, with effective Iranian control over their oil supplies. The Americans won't be happy, neither will the USSR. Iran will be forced back to their own borders, and will end up looking like Iraq did after the Gulf War; internationally isolated, bombed, and under an ever-more totalitarian regime.
I think that after the capture of Basra, the Iranians would make a move towards a peace treaty. They would hope for a weak non-Ba'athist regime in Iraq (maybe a "democracy" with the Dawa Party dominant), lifting of international sanctions on Iran, and possibly some "border adjustments" with Iraq, to give Iran some more buffer territory.
