Changellege: Friendly Relations Between U.S and Islamic Republic of Iran

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Your challenge is to have this photo come true, with friendly relations between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran, with a POD between 1979 and 1990. Can you do it?
 
It would require multiple changes, but would be doable.

1. Get the Iranian hostage crisis resolved earlier and with less bad blood. Maybe the US agrees to hand over the Shah, or more likely an agreement is worked out where the Shah is permanently 'exiled'. Also have the new regime commit to anti-communism.

2. Jigger things a bit so that the Soviets are more openly supporting the Iraqi side of the Iran-Iraq War. This leads to more western support of the Iranians - and may actually lead to Iran and Israel becoming (or remaining) fast friends, especially if Khomeini and the main Iranian government can the "little Satan / great Satan" line. Israel and Iran actually had some under-the-table cooperation OTL, as they saw Saddam Hussein's Iraq as a common enemy. Israel and Iran both see Sunni arab nationalism as threats; if Iran were less committed to "destroying the infidels", and Israel handled the invasion of Lebanon better, they could naturally link up.
Being seen as very anti-communist would make the US right more friendly to the Iranians (they were anti-communist OTL of course - its not like a religious regime would find communism particularly attractive! but make them "our bastards", like the Saudis, Pinochet's Chile, or the Shah).

3. Maybe have an Iran that supports the coalition during Desert Storm. Probably not too openly, as that would freak the Saudis out...

4. Iran becoming an early base/support of the US and allies post-9/11 (or its equivalent in an alternate history) could have worked - even OTL, had both sides been more willing to look at it. Afghanistan and Iraq actually benefit Iran by overthrowing "Sunni Nationalist" and "Sunni Religious Crazy" regimes and replacing them with ones more likely to see Iran's way. Also, the Iranians could see the Sunnis as being greater enemies - the US could go along with this, Al-Qaeda being a Sunni organization and having a Saudi as its founder, after all. As allies? Crazy, yes.... but Saudi Arabia, an equally 'vile' state, has been a US "ally" for decades, and Bush has had similar "moments" with Saudi leaders. So having an "alliance" with Iran post-9/11 is not unreasonable - especially consider the greater cooperation western powers have had with Libya of late - and Libya was THE terrorist state back in the 1980s!

5. Character change in Ahmadjinad. Even by current Iranian standards, he's on the 'kooky' side. Either have his path in the 1980s/90s change somewhat, or dike him from the picture and use Khameini or an otherwise less "nutzo" person instead.
 
Easy.

Saddam has working Nukes and the US knows ( or at least believe ) this.

US treats Iraq like North Korea. And the ennemy of my ennemy....
 

ninebucks

Banned
Easy.

Saddam has working Nukes and the US knows ( or at least believe ) this.

US treats Iraq like North Korea. And the ennemy of my ennemy....

Enemy of my enemy won't work. Iran offered the USA assistance during the invasion of Afghanistan, and it was snubbed.
 
Enemy of my enemy won't work. Iran offered the USA assistance during the invasion of Afghanistan, and it was snubbed.

Talibans didn't have nukes.... and US didn't think they needed help to destroy the talibans and turn afganistan in a democracy ( something which wouldn't be helped my having revolution guards on the ground )
 

bard32

Banned
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Your challenge is to have this photo come true, with friendly relations between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran, with a POD between 1979 and 1990. Can you do it?

There's no way that could happen. The best way was to have the Shah of Iran
abdicate in favor of his son. The same way Reza Shah abdicated in favor of
Mohammed Reza Palahvi. Then the Ayatollah Khomeini would have remained in exile in suburban Paris, with his followers coopted, and Iran as a true constitutional monarchy.
 

ninebucks

Banned
Besides. Any POD significantly far back to make this possible would certainly butterfly away the Bush and Ahmadinejad presidencies.
 

Ibn Warraq

Banned
I actually don't think this is as absurd as others think.

Having said that, I think a few things have to happen. First, have the Iranian students NOT take the US Embassy hostage. Second, have Khomeini not have Khomeini threatening to spread Islamic radicalism throughout the ME. That doesn't mean make him non-radical which would be ASB, but have his philosophy undergo a few minor adjustments. With those two changes, Iran is really not that scary.

Third, have the US decide to back Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, which isn't too implausible. Saddam Hussein was a Soviet backed dictator sitting on top of a sizeable percentage of the world's oil population and, for very good reasons, lots of different countries, Israel, Saudia Arabia and most of the Gulf states saw him as a threat. If he successfully conquers Iran then he would have been sitting on close to half the world's oil supply.

With that in mind, I don't think it's too absurd to have the US intervene on Iran's side, particularly since in OTL, according to Trita Parsi, there were some, though obviously not all, neocons who saw Iraq as the greater threat than Iran.

After this, everything falls into place. I don't think the US could ever expect to have the kind of relations with Iran that it has with Israel, but it's relations could easily be similar to Saudi Arabia or Egypt, particularly if the US is seen as an ally in a war against Iran.
 
Well the current form of government wasn't the intended result of the Iranian Revolution for a lot of the people taking part in it. You had democrats, socialists, communists, Islamists and only one of these groups didn't get screwed eventually (I don't need to tell you which). So the Revolution could have resulted in a somewhat Islamic, somewhat socialist and somewhat democratic state. They probably would have had better relations with the Soviets in the '80s (not too good though, considering the invasion of Afghanistan) and would've reconciled with the US in the '90s - something plenty of other countries have done.
 
A bit ASB but what if the Shan strike down on the revoultionaries and then tries to take over the Gulf leading to a long blody war or just goes nuts in an anti american way (ie does a Chavez). Islamist revolutionaries make another revolution in 1983ish. They don't make unfriendly with the Us. President gore give his opponent the job as sec state to Bush who solvs the mid east issue and gets revarded by ADJ.
 
President Gore welcomes the genuine sympathy from the Iranian public for the US after the September atrocity. Iran cooperates in the overthrow of the Taliban.

Gore accepts the offers that Iran made in OTL in 2003
 
The obvious one is that before the Iran-Iraq war the Iraqis try to make an aggressive play at Kuwaiti or Saudi oil fields. The U.S. consequentially judges the Iraqis to be more of a threat to our interests than the Iranians and we support their regime.
 

boredatwork

Banned
the fellow who mentioned no hostages hit it on the head. No hostage crisis, and no reliance on terrorism as the foreign policy instrument of choice, means that the US has no reason to get any more worked up about Iran than we do with half a dozen other places. Heck, even today, if Tehran renounced the use of terrorism, and stopped threatening to wipe out the US and it's allies on a regular basis, we'ld probably work something out. But no-one in their right mind is going to talk to them before that happens, it's been tried before, and failed each time.

Their domestic arrangements are interesting - but not that big a deal. We're friendly with the Saudi's, and their 'system' of fundamentalist wahhabism with oligarchical monarchy as the lid on that boiling kettle is more alien to the US than Iran's, which at least theoretically has elements of republican government (elected representatives to a legislative body, separate and at least equal executive, independent (well, from the legislature or executive, anyway) judiciary).

As long as Iran doesn't become the former USSR's long sought warm water port, then with enough time, and Saddam being... Saddam, there will be opportunities and reasons for reproachment down the lines.

Combining all that with those two as simultaneous heads of state is a bit of a stretch, but maybe the butterflies decide to cut you some slack, who knows?
 
the US could not fully support either side in the Iran-Iraq war.... only enough to restore the status quo. The US supported Iraq only after the war had turned against it, and only enough to keep Iran from overrunning it. Basically, the US (and the rest of the West) cannot afford to have either side outright conquer the other... it'd put too much oil in the hands of an unfriendly nation. If the US had decided to support Iran in the war, it would only have been enough help to restore the original borders, and nothing beyond that....
 
THe US actually did have several opportunities to establish good relations with Iran following the 9/11 attacks. If anyone remembers, Iran actually condemned the terrorists of Al-Queda, as the Death to America chants were replaced by death of the terrorists.

Iran actually did cooperate with the US during the War in Afghanistan. Remember, during that time, Khatami and the reformists were in power, not Ahmadinejad and the hardliners.

However, US officials accused several hardliners in Iran of harboring terrorists who had crossed over from Afghanistan, and relations soured when Tehran responded that they did not know where they were and therefore could not turn them over to US forces. That led the United States government to believe that Iran was in fact helping the terrorists, as George Bush had described in his infamous 2002 ‘Axis of Evil’ speech.

In 2003, the REformists again tried to strike up a deal with the Americans, after they had successfully invaded Iraq and were at the apparent height of their power in the Middle East. Fearing invasion of the US, the Reformists used a Swiss diplomatic channel to outline what was called the Grand Bargain’, a document which stated that Iran was willing to work with the US in providing stability to Iraq, along cutting back on its ties with Iranian sponsored guerilla groups such as Hezbollah, its nuclear policy, and even moderating its rhetoric against Israel.


In exchange, they pushed for security guarantees, an end to economic sanctions and a promise never to push for regime change. However, the US never responded to this proposal, as the State Department believed that the reformists wouldn’t be able to come through on their promises, and since the situation in Iraq was going so well at the time, felt that they didn’t need to negotiate with Iran. Since the ‘Grand Bargain’ had fallen through, along with previous attempts to negotiate with Washington, the reformists in Iran lost all credibility, and soon afterwards, were replaced by a hardliners led by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

And I'm sure you know what happened from there.
 
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