Nazis in the Middle East, Mk. II

April 1st
- Rashid Ali takes power in Iraq via a coup. Arrests of Pro-British politicians and citizens begins

April 6th
- Air Vice-Marshall H.G. Smart's request for reinforcements to Iraq is denied.
- Winston Churchill: "Libya counts first, withdrawal of troops from Greece second. Tobruk shipping, unless indispensable to victory, must be fitted in as convenient. Iraq can be ignored and Crete worked up later."

April 8th
- Preparations for a British intervention in Iraq begin

April 12th
- Convoy BP7 departs towards Basra in southern Iraq

April 16th
- New British ambassador to Iraq, Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, killed in car accident (POD#1). (1)
- BP7 and accompanying warships arrive off Basra, at the entrance of the Shatt al-Arab

April 17th
- Baghdad embassy staff inform Rashid Ali of British intention to land troops at Basra "in order to transfer them to Palestine". Ali requests a delay. Embassy relays "refusal of Iraqi gov't to allow disembarkation at the moment" to the fleet.
- Following standing orders, British warships open fire on Iraqi shore installations
- Rashid Ali contacts Germany and requests support.
- 1st Battlion KORR no longer airlifted to Basra, aircraft forced to divert to airfields in the Persian Gulf region (2)

April 18th
- British forces begin landing in southern Iraq
- Iraqi forces begin advancing towards Habbaniya under the cover of darkness

April 19th
- siege of Habbaniya begins; British forces are outnumbered more than 3:1
- German forces blitzkrieg-ing through Greece obtain information pertaining to the abysmally low number of troops in Cyprus (POD#2) (3)

April 20th
- Iraqi forces occupy the plateau south of the airbase after fierce clashes with the British Assyrian Levies.(4)

April 21st
- Shelling puts the airbase out of action
- Basra fully secured by British forces

April 23th
- outnumbered British forces at Habbaniya finally surrender

April 24th
- German military mission arrives in Iraq, along with the first batch of Luftwaffe aircraft (5)
- Vichy French in Syria begin shipping equipment and supplies to Iraq via Turkey (6)

April 25th
- Planned airborne assault against Crete scaled back, with the eastern-most landing site, near the capital of Heraklion, being redirected towards Cyprus; due to extreme range, Ju-52s would not be able to carry a full load

early May
- British forces from Palestine begin pushing towards central Iraq,including the last all-horse operation in British military history. However, absent the troops from Habbaniya, their advance is much more cautios, and they get bogged down at Fallujah

May 20th
- German Fallschirmjäger land in Crete and Cyprus. Initial casualties are extreme, but in both instances they manage to barely secure an airfield, where reinforcements can be brought in.

May 21st
- British advance into western Iraq halted; "Irakforce" to be redeployed to Cyprus along with the Australian 7th Division Cavalry Regiment from Egypt

early June
- Crete and Cyprus abandoned by the Allies after German advance proves much too powerful to stop

mid June

- Fallschirmjäger, despite having suffered heavy casualties, begin to be deployed in small but increasing numbers to Iraq via Vichy Syria, along with multiple Brandenburger teams.
- Alongside them are several Luftwaffe squadrons, including a force of about 30 medium bombers to be based in Mosul, which will be used to strike Soviet oil installations at Baku at the start of Barbarossa.
- Axis also begins running small-scale fast convoys towards Vichy Syria under air cover from Cyprus, in the hopes of establishing a Panzer division in the Middle East
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(1) - OTL, Cornwallis appears to have smooth-talked Rashid into consenting
(2) - OTL, these did indeed land at Basra, and then airlifted further on to the British airbase at Habbaniya near Baghdad. ITTL, Habbaniya will be down to just 2200 defenders, including the air crew pressed into service
(3) - British forces garrisoning Cyprus numbered just 1500 men at the time. In May OTL, as a response to the attack on Crete, they were reinforced by the Australian 7th Division Cavalry Regiment, bringing the number to a still pitiful 4000. The situation was so desperate, that Australian P.M. Menzies commented, even after the deployment of the 7th, that
Cyprus must be abandoned or reinforced to the point at which it be held. Public opinion would be greatly strained by what would be regarded as a useless sacrifice of an adequate force.
Churchill however was not moved. (Source)
What did transpire though was a massive British effort to trick the Axis into believing Cyprus was heavily defended, called the "Cyprus Defense Plan" (Source)
(4) - the British do not have the element of suprise ITTL and the Iraqis are fully expecting a fight
(5) - the head of the mission, Major Axel von Blomberg, is not accidentally killed ITTL. Also, the earlier begin of hostilities moves most events up from OTL
(6) - as in OTL, only earlier
 
obviously, both PODs could have been designed to be butterflies of a single POD taking place sometime before, but lazyness and lack of time got in the way....
 
TL/DR of the whole thing:
Fighting in Iraq starts early, which leads to the Iraqis doing slightly better, which leads to the Germans deciding to take barely defended Cyprus in order to establish a secure line of supply towards Vichy Syria and Iraq (which they do)
 
I'm getting the feeling everyone who read this is too shy to comment on the feasibility of this.

Let's try and move the discussion forward - assuming this happened, how do events progress? How tenable is the new Axis position ?
 
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