Early Iranian victory in the Iran-Iraq war

Say Iranian forces are properly supplied and overrun Iraq by 1983

What would be the impact of early Iranian victory in the Iran-Iraq war

Would this encourage an Islamist uprising in Syria and other neighboring countries

Would Iraq lose any territory
 
this was the nightmare scenario of both the Arab states of the ME and the west (particularly the US) in general... Iran conquering Iraq puts them in striking distance of the rest of the Gulf states and the oil lifeline of the first world. Not to mention the religious angle of Shia vs. Sunni. Before Iran gets so far, it's a good bet that the other Arab states are going to put their armies inside Iraq to fight alongside them... even Egypt might get into the act. The US and USSR (who won't want to lose a client state) will pour weapons and money into Iraq, as well as intelligence data. If Iran wins in spite of all this, it's very likely that their fanaticism is going to be stoked to even higher levels, and sooner or later, they are going to make a play for the rest of the Gulf...
 
If Iran is winning too much the Soviet Union and the USA will intervene maybe separately or jointly. Iran is going to have to either make peace or fight both.
 
Quoting an earlier post I made about an early Iranian victory

Iran would be jubilant. They would have succeeded in exporting their revolution to Iraq, and as the above poster said, that might just give them the idea to roll on into Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States. Bahrain is a particularly juicy target, as it's population is predominantly Shia. Same with Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, oil-rich and absolutely full of restive Shia Muslims. Meanwhile, they might just get their "Shiite Crescent" earlier than OTL - Syria was friendly to the Iranians and remained anti-Israel, and already helped Iran establish Hezbollah in Lebanon, then still in it's civil war. It's likely that Iran would use occupied Iraq and friendly Syria to continue to send weapons, supplies, and men into Lebanon to sway the civil war in their favor and threaten Israel.

I can't see either the U.S., Israel, or the Arabs accepting an Iranian threat of that magnitude, and as such I believe that they would do anything to undermine Iran's new position, up to and including military action (which they were already engaged in OTL, the U.S. Navy having taken several actions against Iran, including sinking half of the Iranian surface fleet in 1988 in response to Iranian mining). A full US-Gulf invasion to liberate Iraq, or even to topple the Ayatollah, doesn't even seem too far out of the question. However, the American public might not have the will to fight such a war - the horrors of Vietnam and Lebanon still weigh heavy on their minds.

The Soviet response could go one of two ways. The first way is that they will not be happy with the idea of an Islamic revolutionary state threatening to expand it's influence into Afghanistan and Soviet Central Asia (predominantly Muslim) and will do whatever they can to undermine the regime. They might use Tudeh guerillas to challenge the regime from within, or they might just decide to invade and eliminate the Iranian threat. This might end badly, as Carter Doctrine states that a Soviet attack on oil reserves in the Persian Gulf would be seen as an attack on the United States - and we all remember the plot of Threads.

The other option the Soviets have would be to begrudgingly accept the new Iran and try to make the best of the situation. Capitalizing on the inevitable hostile U.S. response, the Soviets could position themselves as military partners of Iran. Also taking into account that several of the Soviet's Middle Eastern allies favored Iran to Iraq, the increasing sales of Soviet and WarPac weaponry to Iran, and the increasing of Soviet-Iranian economic ties under Gorbachev, it's just as likely that the Soviets could use the Iranian victory as a chance to gain influence in the Middle East. They might even get some concessions from the Iranians in response, such as the cessation of aid to Afghan mujahideen.

One thing is for sure: an Iranian victory in the First Persian Gulf War would result in a wave of upheaval and instability across the Middle East.
 
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