AH challenge: The People's Republic of Iran

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to have Iran as a communist state at the end of the Cold War with a POD no earlier than 1978. Khomeini can't die more than one year earlier than he did in OTL, there can be no Soviet attack on Iran, and any Iraqi attack has to be unsuccessful.
 

ninebucks

Banned
It doesn't fit the brief but some draft TL I wrote featured the founding of the Peoples' Republic of Persia with the major POD being that communism didn't succeed in taking control of China, thus the USSR shifted its funding westwards.

But for these conditions...

Okay: the Sino-Soviet split is considerably worsened, to the point where during the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan China sends troops into Afghanistan to fight against the Russians. China's policy as to whether it will support Afghanistan's Marxist government or the Muhajideen insurgents is left deliberately ambiguous, China says that it is "protecting the sovereignty of our Afghan friends".

At first the Afghans view the Chinese as another horde of invading atheists, but through words and actions the Chinese convince them otherwise over the following years.

China assists Afghanistan's Marxist leaders in escaping to neighbouring Pakistan and Iran - in doing this the war starts to spill into those countries. Pakistan, while already being militarily involved can handle the border raids, but neutral Iran has trouble maintaining its security, especially in the light of the devastating purges to its military following the Islamic Revolution, and the preoccupation with the Iraqi invasion in the west (which is much more successful in TTL). And so, in 1982, China begins talks with Iran with the aim of forming a military co-operation pact, this is hammered out and signed in Shengzhou the following year. The treaty of obliges Iran to allow socialist parties to compete for election... Iran hesitantly agrees as it fears for its future survival if it does not. Upon ratification military aid begins flooding into Iran, military-industrial links and Chinese-influenced purges begin to Maoicise the Iranian top brass before too long.

By 1987, Soviet discontent towards the Afghan War is rising, public protests by veterans begin to plague major cities, and they are getting harder to suppress. In reaction to this, Soviet propagandists begin turning the tables of hate toward the old Soviet enemy, the Chinese. Although by this point the Chinese are a mostly logistical force based in the south of Afghanistan, the USSR brands them as the insidious puppet masters. Meanwhile, in Iran, Saddam has secured Khuzestan and much of the Shatt al-Arab, and incursions are still common along the Afghan border. However, the Iranian Army is coming along nicely.

1988, Leonid Brezhnev dies and is replaced with an anti-China, pro-military hawk. More and more is invested in the war. Later in the year anti-war protests are brutally suppressed in Leningrad. The Chinese reaction has also got more hawkish, the PLA upgrades its actions in Afghanistan from logistical to flat-out offencive against the Soviet forces. Chinese forces, together with their allies, begin a game of cat-and-mouse by chasing the Russians further and further into the fringes of Afghanistan, Soviet forces act with desperation by levelling entire villages.

1990, the Cold War is running extra strong as America witnesses its two adversaries struggling for Asian supremacy. China's military presence has once again been downgraded to a skeleton occupation force. Russia seems to be in a state of open dissent against the war policy, and, when the Soviet leader is deposed in September, a policy of disengagement is begun. However, before this comes into effect the Sino-Iranian forces begin a renewed campaign of aggression. With the end of the war in sight Iran has grown more daring in its military adventures in Afghanistan, including a renewed campaign against the Muhajideen, whom even China are now less eager to protect - while they made good allies at the start of the war they now prove to be more of an annoyance, and many Muhajideen begin to be assassinated.

In 1991, the Soviet Union, now more concerned with anti-Moscow movements growing in Eastern Europe announces an immediate withdrawal from Afghanisatn, however, they continue to fund Saddam's war against Iran. Immediately after Russia withdraws from Afghanistan, the USA offers to mediate for a lasting peace, calling particularly for an immidiate withdrawal of Chinese and Iranian troops. China and Iran respond that they are merely peacekeepers - they are however much more than that, several thousand Afghan Talebanis and foreign Muhajideen have disappeared in Afganistan over the past decade.

At this point it is important to note the success of the Iranian army... as it is now the only organ of the Iranian state to be particularly successful. The Persian Peoples' Party (the Chinese-backed Iranian socialist party), who since they first contested elections had won around 40-50% of the Majlis, deadlock Iran's legislature, no harsh Islamic laws... or indeed, many laws of any kind, have been passed while the PPP has been actively preventing them. The Ayatollah has been resorting to stretching his own constitution to effectively include rule by decree just so his country could continue running. Half of the Iranian public blame this on China, the other half on the Ayatollah... but the military, in many peoples' eyes, can do no wrong.

1992. Iran hosts the Esfahan Accords, a conference to discuss what the future of Afghanistan should be, in attendence are the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Emirate of Afghanistan, the Peoples' Republic of China and the United States of America (but not the USSR). At the accords it is agreed that China should withdraw from Afghanistan immediately (which China more or less agrees with, with the Russians gone, and the only real group capable of running Afganistan surviving a gang of Maoist puppets, they feel their work is done), Iran is allowed to continue to occupy the Afghan-Iranian borderlands for the purpose of security. The Islamist government of Afghanistan is established as the sole legitimate government... but its hold is weak and threatened by Maoist revolutionaries.

With Afghanistan taken care of, Iranian attentions turn again towards Saddam, whose air strikes against Iranian targets have increased in ferocity and frequency. The Islamic government treads a cautious path in regard to Saddam, prefering to rely on the international community, in March 1993, an Iraqi airstrike against Shiraz rattles the Iranian military into action. That evening they march into the Supreme Ruler's palace, have him imprisoned and over the next week nullify his constitution and introduce a new one. The Peoples Republic of Persia is founded. Its first act is to remove all non-socialist parties from the Majlis and declare a bold offensive against Iraq.

A tactic of Blitzkrieg, much more severe than that Saddam used in 1980, was hugely successful. Collumn upon collumn of Iranian armoured infantry stormed Iraq. By May, Basra has been levelled and Baghdad has fallen, with every building related to the Ba'athist regime demolished. Saddam is betrayed by a confident and handed to the Iranians, who have him put before a show trial and executed. As the dust settles, Iran redraws its borders across Iraq to include the holy city of an-Najaf and the mountainous Kurdish north, whose support for Iran during the war had been noted.

In 1995, the USSR finally collapsed due partly to pro-Persian attitudes growing in the Central Asian SSRs. The Peoples' Republic of Persia, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, the Republic of Azerbaijan (which is engaged in the process of uniting with Iran proper), and the Soviet Socialist Republic of Tajikstan sign the Treaty of Socialist Friendship in this year. However, the ideologies of these states are not antagonistic and favour economic liberalisation and peaceful coexistance with the West.

A Western/Saudi-backed Republic of Iraq is established post-Saddam, it is another Sunni dictatorship, but its leader is not an expansionist.
 
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to have Iran as a communist state at the end of the Cold War with a POD no earlier than 1978. Khomeini can't die more than one year earlier than he did in OTL, there can be no Soviet attack on Iran, and any Iraqi attack has to be unsuccessful.

Such a "people's republic" in Iran can be established only if the PMOI (People's Mojahedin of Iran) is successful in doing so.
 
Such a "people's republic" in Iran can be established only if the PMOI (People's Mojahedin of Iran) is successful in doing so.

Or if it's the communists rather than the Islamists who hijack the revolution. Which is why I added the Khomeini Survivability Clause, to make such a scenario trickier.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Howsabout this:

Carter listens to Brzezinski and the other hawks in his administration and tells the Iranian generals that if they launch a coup to quash the revolution the US will back them up.

The generals do this. Khomeini is taken prisoner and has done to him what some devout but anti-Islamists wanted to do (I believe it was Gen. Nader Jahanbani who suggested it): in public, strip him, shave him, and throw him in a cart full of dung then wheel him through Tehran and down to Qom so he would lose so much face as to be ignored.

So let's say the generals launch the coup, but something goes wrong. Maybe they screw up capturing Khomeini, maybe they kill too many protestors, whatever.

Anyways, Iran goes even deeper into the de facto civil war it was already in, the cities stay warzones, generals and mullahs and politicians are assassinated left and right.

Carter realizes what a mess the whole place has become and how everything's spinning out of control, so he pulls out sort of defanging the generals since now their major backer is gone, yet the Islamist movement has been fragmented without Khomeini's unifying presence.

More people begin turing to the Mojahedin with their attractive ideology of Islamic Socialism. The Soviets aren't stupid, so they tell Tudeh to play nice with the Mojahedin and follow their line for now.

While all of this is going on in Persia, you'll probably have the (largely Soviet-sponsored) Azeri seperatists that Khomeini managed to quell get more noisesome. They may very well (again with Soviet backing) declare independence and down the road "elect" to join the Soviet Union.

And before you go saying how outraged the Persians might be about this, save it. They by and large didn't give a fig about Azerbaijan. They saw it as a backwards place filled with half-civilized Turks. Even Khamenei dislikes the place, and he's Azeri! (though by way of Tehran, so he's really more culturally Persian than anything.)

Anyways, if the Soviets provide even more support to the Mojahedin and Tudeh than they did IOTL (and it was fairly sizeable; flooding Iran with AK-47s prior to the Revolution, for example), the urban areas will quickly fall under their control and the generals will most likely follow whatever new government takes hold, their own bid for power having failed, though we should expect a lot more military experts and officers to flee than IOTL. You can also expect Khomeini to be quietly killed or sent to the wastes outside of Meshhad to die, but this is all post-Mojahedin taking power.

This would give you a pink Iran that is very friendly to the USSR and just as anti-Western as it became post-Revolution. Given time, I could see the USSR supporting Tudeh in a sort of Bolshevik-like coup, but I think the Soviets would be more pragmatic and be happy to settle for a strong ally and de facto satellite on the Gulf that controls so much of the world's oil.

"Soviet tanks on the Hormuz" was always the West's nightmare and the Soviets' fantasy. In this scenario, I believe it could just happen.
 
Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy

What about if for some reason Saddam is not stupid enough to attack Iran? Khomeini had basically organised a coup against the revolution that, let us recall had occurred before he returned from exile. There was a lot of resentment from this, especially by the local communists and the brutal repression his regime was imposing. As such things were getting very bloody with murders, massacres and bombings and there was some doubt if the regime would hang onto power. This all changed after Sadam's attack as that served to unify the country behind Khomeini's regime in defiance of the invasion.

True the problem with this is that, unless he flees into exile, if Khomeini's regime falls he's unlikely to survive, whether assassinated or tried and executed afterwards.

Steve



 
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