No Iran-Iraq War

What if Saddam had not invaded Iran in 1980? Besides butterflying away the Gulf War, what effects would this have on the Middle East?
 
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I suspekt that the new regiems grip on power would be shakier since there would be no rally around the flag effect
 
Iraq better off without the decades long wars and international isolation of the 1990s. Saddam or one of his sons would still be in power in Iraq to this day.
 
Iran would be very different, IIRC the war allowed the Islamist faction to outmanoeuvre the nationalist faction, so Iran is likely more moderate and its politics more open.
 
Iraq perhaps pursues an Arab Nationalist Dictatorship path for longer than in OTL, with the need for a cult of personality for Saddam less apparent. The economic policies are still going to be ruinously inflationary, true, but without the massive military expenditure, the need for a big inflow of resources, be it in stolen gold or in petroleum rights, is less apparent in 1990.

Then again, with no Iran War, perhaps they can invade Kuwait instead, and this time, get away with it. Doing so in 1990 was flipping off an empowered and confident western consensus, and it was unwise. In 1980, eh, not so sure about that. The British probably get mad, but what are they going to do alone?

The bigger butterflies though... What happens to Osirak? There are a lot of debates about how close it was to being up and running, and what it was really being used for. Apparently, captured documents after Saddam's ouster show that the Israelis might have been more spot on than they were thought to have been at the time about what Osirak meant long term.

If Iraq is not at war with Iran, such a strike might not be a one off, but lead to a sustained exchange of aerial warfare with Israel. And Saddam was hankering for war of some kind; perhaps he would send an expeditionary force to Lebanon, after dealing with Kuwait.
 

Khanzeer

Banned
Even if there was no invasion in 1980 there was bound to be some sort of conflict with Iran over shatt al arab
It might not be
1 so prolonged as all big actors would encourage swift resolution
2 a blatant invasion rather than that just series of border clashes.
 
Then again, with no Iran War, perhaps they can invade Kuwait instead, and this time, get away with it.
if this happens in 1980, then it will be the final kick in the teeth to Carter's administration... yet one more debacle in the ME on his watch.
No war would also have an affect on the US and the hostage crisis... IIRC, the war was one thing that prodded Iran into wanting to end the whole thing, with the idea that they didn't need to be distracted by a tiff with the USA while they were fighting a deadly struggle with Iraq.. of course, the Tanker War came on later, so that idea didn't pan out. Without the war... how is the hostage crisis going to end?
 
As other posters have pointed out: Iran would be less stable due to the rally effect the Iraqi invasion provided. Meanwhile, Iraq would grow financially more powerful to do less expenditures on support a war, and greater surpluses due to the increase in oil.

Saddam might be able to invade and integrate Kuwait if he can play the Soviet Union off against the West.
 
Iraq better off without the decades long wars and international isolation of the 1990s. Saddam or one of his sons would still be in power in Iraq to this day.
I don't buy it. The demographics that they'd be dealing with by the time of the Arab Spring would be pretty daunting, and yes, even by 1980, Saddam was clearly practicing ethnoreligious favoritism and discrimination.

Also keep in mind that if Uday was the one in power, there could be no real stability. That regime would trigger uprisings much quicker.

Now, if it was Qusay, maybe they survive a la Bashar al-Assad, in that the ruthlessness of the repression is effective enough to eke out a stalemate. The problem of course is the massive gorilla of a neighbor to the East that would be undermining him at every step. And Qusay might have been smart, but he too was ruthless and ambitious enough to make one too many enemies.

Without an Iran Iraq War, the centralization of power under the theocrats takes longer, but rest assured, it will happen. They had the numbers, the more inspiring and decisive leadership, and multiple regional bases, in comparison to the nationalists.
 
The demographics that they'd be dealing with by the time of the Arab Spring would be pretty daunting, and yes, even by 1980, Saddam was clearly practicing ethnoreligious favoritism and discrimination.
Without the conflicts of 1980s, the international isolation of the 1990s and early 2000s along with the still ongoing civil war. The country will be far more prosperous than otl less of a reason to revolt and different demographics. A close approximation might be that of Gaddafi which would have destroyed the rebels without NATO intervention. However in otl Iraqis did revolt against Saddam after two disastrous war which left Iraqi military gutted and still lost in within a month.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_Civil_War_(2011)#First_weeks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_uprisings_in_Iraq
 
If Iraq is not at war with Iran, such a strike might not be a one off, but lead to a sustained exchange of aerial warfare with Israel. And Saddam was hankering for war of some kind; perhaps he would send an expeditionary force to Lebanon, after dealing with Kuwait.

The Iraqi army could barely handle mobs of disorganized light infantry. The Israeli's would take any punch Saddam threw at them and slice it off at the wrist.

And I FEAR What would happen if Saddam decided to employ chemical weapons.
 
The Iraqi army could barely handle mobs of disorganized light infantry. The Israeli's would take any punch Saddam threw at them and slice it off at the wrist.

And I FEAR What would happen if Saddam decided to employ chemical weapons.
I don't doubt that Israel comes out ahead in any direct confrontation.

I was more referring to the potential for Saddam to attempt to open up a front against them in the Lebanon conflict to come soon and funnel in 'volunteers' and the like, which might have impacts geopolitically speaking beyond Lebanon. Complicity in the bombing on the Marine Barracks, for example, might get him the kind of attention he wouldn't want, just as what happened to Gaddafi after Lockerbie.
 
Without the conflicts of 1980s, the international isolation of the 1990s and early 2000s along with the still ongoing civil war. The country will be far more prosperous than otl less of a reason to revolt and different demographics. A close approximation might be that of Gaddafi which would have destroyed the rebels without NATO intervention. However in otl Iraqis did revolt against Saddam after two disastrous war which left Iraqi military gutted and still lost in within a month.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_Civil_War_(2011)#First_weeks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_uprisings_in_Iraq
If anything, the demographics would be worse. Saddam's hording of resources for the Tikrit region and to a lesser extent, the Northern and Western Iraqi Sunni population, that made up the backbone of his bureaucracy and the Republican Guard units had an expansionary impact on the share of the population of Iraqi Sunnis. I'm not just talking about things like actions like Dujail and Halabja, either. If you look at who had food and who didn't, it was obvious that there was a correlation with Saddam's perceived support base in an area. What this means, basically, is that in an Arab Spring Scenario, the Shiites aren't leaderless and are a lot less likely to be malnourished and declining as a share of the population. Now, does he still gas the Kurds? Yeah, probably. But the half cocked Shiite revolt of '91 that sent much of its leadership into exile or to death, is also precluded.

Gaddafi, by the way, was not on the verge of victory, either. The Libyan Air Force was almost out of fuel, and the situation for his one effective mechanized brigade wasn't much better. The fight was going okay on the coastal highway with the first sizable counteroffensive, but that offensive stalled out days before any NATO planes got involved (and the NATO missions took about a week to really start having any impact on the ground situation anyways), and there was no guarantee at all that even had Gaddafi taken Benghazi, that the rebellion would have been squashed, as the advance on the coastal highway was hard to maintain orderly logistics on because of the issue of rebel risings behind the lines in previously cleared cities. The rebellion had spread beyond that by that point, and Gaddafi's military policy of keeping a small, loyal force for regime control came back to bite him massively when he had to expand, as the conscription efforts were utterly ineffectual and really were just defections waiting to happen. Most worryingly, a lot of the technicians in the Libyan Army and Air Force, who dealt with spare part replacement, defected early on.

The collapse of Gaddafi was really more akin to that of Mobutu Sese Seko. A kleptocratic paper tiger of a regime, that with the slightest bit of foreign intervention fell apart like a house of cards. Gaddafi's regime could not withstand tomahawks being launched at their aerial defense system followed by ground support strikes (that didn't even have real proper forward observers(!)), and Mobutu could not deal with a puny country like Rwanda, who had within the last 3 years, literally had a genocide that deprived the new regime of a good number of its new potential supporters from the friendly Tutsi ethnic group, using proxy groups to depose him.
 
Then again, with no Iran War, perhaps they can invade Kuwait instead, and this time, get away with it. Doing so in 1990 was flipping off an empowered and confident western consensus, and it was unwise. In 1980, eh, not so sure about that. The British probably get mad, but what are they going to do alone?

I've blogged about Iraq building up its strength and invading Kuwait and KSA in 1985 when the USSR was still intact. It was unwise to attack anybody in 1980; as an Iraqi general said at the time, after a long struggle with the Kurds the army needed three years to get back in the pace of conventional operations.


What happens to Osirak? There are a lot of debates about how close it was to being up and running, and what it was really being used for. Apparently, captured documents after Saddam's ouster show that the Israelis might have been more spot on than they were thought to have been at the time about what Osirak meant long term.

Without the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq could've spared a lot more resources for protecting Osirak--and it was clearly in the IDF's crosshairs as Israel had threatened to destroy it months before it did.

If Iraq is not at war with Iran, such a strike might not be a one off, but lead to a sustained exchange of aerial warfare with Israel. And Saddam was hankering for war of some kind; perhaps he would send an expeditionary force to Lebanon, after dealing with Kuwait.

It's likely that, without war with Iran, Iraq would've sent a big force to Syria or Lebanon in 1982.
 
If anything, the demographics would be worse.
The more prosperous a society the lower the birthrate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility

that made up the backbone of his bureaucracy and the Republican Guard units had an expansionary impact on the share of the population of Iraqi Sunnis.
the Shiites aren't leaderless and are a lot less likely to be malnourished and declining as a share of the population.
Are you referring to the 1990s malnourishment because that was post 1991 and do you have a source declining share Arab Shia or higher Arab Sunni birthrate for the 1980s or 1970s because that period time would best metric.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq#Estimates_of_deaths_due_to_sanctions

Why would the Shia be better leaded when the other Arab spring revolts weren't or the 1991 uprising.

The Libyan Air Force was almost out of fuel, and the situation for his one effective mechanized brigade wasn't much better
Source ?

and there was no guarantee at all that even had Gaddafi taken Benghazi, that the rebellion would have been squashed,
He had the city surrounded and without no fly zone or the Nato intervention later his air force could pounded the city. It was just a matter of time.

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/libya-civil-war.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2011_Libyan_Civil_War#Gaddafi_counteroffensive
 
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