Saddam would be a lot less reasonable if Israel was immediately next door to him, I'll guarantee you that.
And I believe you're right - the SCUD capabilities were really a byproduct of the massive arms shipments for Iran-Iraq.
Bicentennial Man: Ford '76 and Beyond
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
And I believe you're right - the SCUD capabilities were really a byproduct of the massive arms shipments for Iran-Iraq.
The Soviets may send some older equipment but that may be it.
Haboob - Part IV
Haboob - Part IV
The events of late May and early June in Lebanon and the Golan had opened up a question in the Middle East - what, exactly, was coming next? It seemed clear that the much-hyped "Ba'ath Bloc" was clearly not up to the task of dislodging Israel from its strongholds captured in 1967 or its new expeditionary advancements in Lebanon, but nor was it clear that Israel could or would advance much further, especially with European leaders making plain that an attack into Beirut proper would be a red line from which Tel-Aviv could not return. The Israelis had devastated the Syrian Air Force and tank divisions at the Golam, but the Iraqi Expeditionary Force had performed well to the north and Saddam made clear he would not retreat under present conditions. As May and June had advanced, Iraqi logistical tails had expanded through Syria, dozens of new air squadrons had arrived in Syrian airbases, and the tension could have been cut with a knife. The world breathed in and waited; there was no guarantee things would suddenly break, but there was nonetheless a sense that something was about to change, dramatically.
And change it did. Three events in June would dramatically reshape expectations in the Middle East and help bring about an end to the immediate Israeli-Ba'athist conflict, though the bleeding ulcer of Lebanon would bedevil Israeli administrations for years to come. The first was on June 8, 1982, when Iraq finally carried out the second-largest air and missile attack of the war. Having brought mobile short-range missile launchers forward to positions in Syria, Iraq expended a massive amount of ordnance in the early evening of June 8 combined with sending much of the air force they had gathered in Syria over Jordanian airspace - which King Hussein had famously declared "open" to the Ba'athists even as he assured the West that Jordanian troops would not attempt to strike into the West Bank. The result was a horrific rain of fire over Tel-Aviv, Haifa, and other Israeli towns and cities, with Jerusalem notably spared Saddam's wrath. Just over four hundred Israelis were killed in the worst civilian loss of life in any of the Arab-Israeli Wars, though Saddam did not exit bloodlessly, either, losing nineteen valuable MiGs, and having seen more than half of the rockets fired from Syrian soil intercepted by Israeli air-defense systems bought from the United States. As the dust settled, Soviet backchannels to Washington suddenly started to get noisy; Saddam, it seemed, was signalling through superpower and local intermediaries such as Sadat or Iran's Jahanbani alike that the June 8 air raids were a direct retaliation for the Osirak bombing, and that his bloodlust was now sated.
There were a number of factors in Saddam's decision to massively escalate against Israeli civilians and then pull back suddenly. One, it created a proportional attack from the air, in parallel to Israel's unprecedent preemptive bombing of his nuclear power plant; two, it signaled that he could in fact carry out such an attack; and three, he was quickly starting to realize how expensive the war was, with Soviet support being considerably more limited than he had anticipated, as Moscow's panic over its deteriorating position in Eastern Europe in spring and early summer of 1982 distracted it and the remarkable humiliation of Syria at the Golan persuaded Primakov that there was little more to be gained, and Primakov's word carried tremendous weight in Moscow. On top of that, Iraqi forces were far from home with improved but limited logistics, and oil prices, though rising sharply throughout May, had failed to spike to the point that Saddam would have liked to see in order to get some kind of windfall such as that of 1973-74 or 1978-80 out of it.
The second event came to be known as the Battle of the Camps, a series of events which came to badly damage Israel's standing in Western eyes. On June 10-15 in South Beirut, with Israeli logistical support including limited airstrikes beyond the Peres Line, the Lebanese Phalange militia launched a massive attack into PLO camps in the south of the city, killing hundreds if not thousands in the course of several days as they sought to dislodge fighters and refugees alike. News reporters from around the world on site in Lebanon photographed and recorded the terrifying scenes of women with babies clutched to their breasts running bloodied down the streets as Maronite mortars exploded around them; Bachir Gemayel's proud televised declaration on the 15th that "the camps have been liquidated" brought up uncomfortable parallels for leadership in Europe, even as it was blamed on a mistranslation. It was also a strategic failure, in that most PLO fighters were simply forced to retreat deeper into the city rather than be expelled into Lebanon's north, entirely, which the Israeli-Maronite alliance suffered an extremely poor public relations episode thereafter and the continued Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon grew increasingly unpopular globally. Gemayel would leverage his win into the Lebanese Presidency that August, which elated his staunchest followers but terrified Lebanon's Sunnis across the north and the Bekaa and further persuaded Syria that they needed to redouble their efforts in the country, as did Israel, which say Gemayel's triumph as proof its Lebanon policy was working. The small, diverse country's nightmare was far from over, even as it became clear as June wound down that further offensives from Israel, Syria or Iraq were highly unlikely and that the Fifth Arab-Israeli War was effectively over.
The third and final hingepoint for the Middle East in June 1982, however, had little to do with the war storm in the Levant, but rather the death of King Khalid in Riyadh on June 13 after seven years on the throne; with Saudi Arabia long increasingly unstable, especially in its center and west, the West and countries like Bangladesh which supplied so many of the Kingdom's remittance workers in its oil industry braced for what could - and did - come next...
Just makes me think of the battle of the same name from ASOIAF. Essentially pretty similar, soldiers in camps completely caught of guard leading to a slaughter
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"It is free real estate."~ Saddam the moment the shooting starts in Arabia (probably).
Pretty much. Like, there are a lot of various factions and such, and when you change power, well, things can be a bit testy. Especially in the middle of a war and with a lotta cash at stake.
I feel like this gonna cause chaos in Egypt and get Sadat killed. Saddam just gave Israel it’s biggest black eye it’s ever truly gotten and Egypt is on the sidelines doing nothing, Saddam and the Assad are gonna blame Sadat for more progress being made and I can’t see the Egyptian people not agreeing also the raid of the PLO camps is only gonna compound this when the Egyptians see the horrific pictures and news coming from Lebanon . Saddam is gonna be giving a lot of funding towards Egyptian rebels against Sadat.
Also Hafez Assad is completely at the mercy at Saddam now too cause another military embarassment is gonna really cause massive problems for Assad. Syria under him controlling the military has been the Arab weak link in the wars against Israel and this has to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back especially for a guy like Saddam who’s insanely petty. Could easily see a coup or massive protests in Syria over Syria’s military weakness.
Funny enough I could actually see the Saudi and Kuwaiti monarchy’s begging Saddam to send his military to Saudi Arabia to help contain rebels.
Also Hafez Assad is completely at the mercy at Saddam now too cause another military embarassment is gonna really cause massive problems for Assad. Syria under him controlling the military has been the Arab weak link in the wars against Israel and this has to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back especially for a guy like Saddam who’s insanely petty. Could easily see a coup or massive protests in Syria over Syria’s military weakness.
Funny enough I could actually see the Saudi and Kuwaiti monarchy’s begging Saddam to send his military to Saudi Arabia to help contain rebels.
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Once again I think this is a somewhat implausibly successful result for the Iraqi's. The Iraqi's do have Frog-7 SRBM's which will get through but they are very inaccurate and while the Iraqi Air Force was better than the Syrians they did not perform very well in OTL against Iran considering the problems that the Iranians had. Against the Israeli's they would have been slaughtered for little result and considering recent events there is no chance that they would catch the Israeli's off guard. I just can't see any attack like this ending in anything that Saddam can call a success.
It’s been a while since I read those, refresh me on what that is?
Landing the plane here is going to be a challenge
I’m well known for how much I hate writing combat material and my penchant for guesstimates/winging it, such as here, is case in point as to why
. Lol
Hafez is majorly weakened here, but his bloodthirsty brother Rifat is still around…
And, yes. I could, too. The East of Arabia is exactly where the Ikhwan would be least popular
Such a complete pain in the ass. I had two small combat scenes for "Honor and Profit" and they took forever to plot out and write. God bless you for pulling it off in all your TLs!
One-on-one fights I don’t mind as much, but that’s when I did novels rather than scrapbook TLs haha.
Thank you!