The crucial element, however, was that the Iraqis under that Soviet leader were able to ultimately destroy the second Iranian attack in the 1990s, and while Iran adopted US doctrine a little *too* much (focusing on gadgets, a bit of weakness in terms of strategy, defective small-unit concepts) Iraq's leaders fixed their defects in using their own technology and won one of history's most lopsided wars to the degree that like with Israel after 1973 nobody's gone to war with it since. Of course it has the atomic bomb now and this has ensured that Iran has the Bomb, too, as well as Turkey but hell, Israel alone having the Bomb was never going to last and when the Soviets put their own advisors into building a nuclear weapons project after their invasion of Afghanistan the Israelis were unable to exploit the general distrust of Iraq again while the Iraqis having the Bomb enabled them to win that 1990s war as much as their own skill did.
Well, noone... including the Soviets... believed the Iraqis would actually use a nuke as they did against the Iranian 2nd Armored Division. Honestly though, that war was just scary for the whole world, thankfully it woke the big three up to the fact that, despite the profit and industry, selling first line military equipment to nations that aren't necessarily ideologically or diplomatically aligned on major issues isn't the greatest idea in the world.
Although we also learned just how far NATO has taken their tech considering the nasty surprise the Iraqis got when they saw that their ultimate weapon hadn't knocked out a single one of the 24 M2A1's and only 53 out of 315 other vehicles (all of which were jeeps or other lightly / unarmored vehicles) despite the near perfect targeting of the 10kt air burst over the heart of that formation.
It's certainly arguable that the Iraqis would have won considering the asskicking they gave to the Iranians on the ground around Basra and Amarah before Iran could bring the full weight of its heavy gear into play, but after 2nd armored got nuked the Iranians just turned around and went home, more out of enormous outside diplomatic pressure than because they were 'beaten'.
That's the big problem, imo, with NATO's 'weapons plan', if the M2A1 could survive a nuke the newest "Main Battle Tanks", the M2A3, the Challenger III and Leopard III can surely survive as well, which means the Soviets or Chinese couldn't hope to kill one aside from using BIGGER nukes, something that has prompted the military industrial complex to dig in even further for even better protection...
The brinksmanship is truly frightening at times ever since the Chinese jumped into the game and forced the Soviets to do a 180 degree spin in their ground combat doctrines and focuses while at the same time the technocrats in Washington, Bonn, Tokyo, London and Paris seem to think Keith Laumer's 'Bolo'* series is more a good mission statement than good fiction.
OOC: If you don't know what they are, the gist of a Bolo is this... if Teddy Roosevelt was a tank... he'd be a Bolo...
