What if Saddam had won the Iraq/Iran War??

Then he wouldn't have had any need for Kuwaits Oil. Would he??

Maybe he would have ended up classish with either Israel or Syria around 1990. Insteed of United States??
 
Then he wouldn't have had any need for Kuwaits Oil. Would he??

Maybe he would have ended up classish with either Israel or Syria around 1990. Insteed of United States??


I would not say he wouldn't need Kuwait's Oil. When you see yourself as the future leader of the Pan-Arab state you are always going to need more.


THing is if he wins, he will be occuping Iranian territory. I would think he would be in a bad position to fight Syria. Israel is always good. They cannot occupy his country.

But Kuwait is actually still a great bet. He now is stronger and richer. OTL he went into Kuwait without any response from Iran.

Kuwait is just such an attractive combination of wealth and weakness.
 

bard32

Banned
Iran was using the tactics of the Japanese from thirty-five years ago, (1980 time frame,) IOTL. The Iranians, like the Japanese in World War II, were using
human wave attacks. If Saddam Hussein had had half a brain, he could have
defeated the Iranians with superior firepower, and not chemical warfare.
 
If Michael Dukakis for whatever reason won in 1988 - as unlikely as that is - then Saddam might be able to invade Kuwait and get away with it. What would he do after that though? Even with a semi-pacifist USA the world would be watching him after gaining Iran's oil fields as well as Kuwait's. Any further aggression after this would probably cause a European intervention out of fear of him becoming a Middle Eastern Hitler of some sort.

Not that that would stop him from trying. He would probably next go after the northern Saudi Oil fields.
 

Archibald

Banned
How would he win the war? The forces againts him were vastly superior (I might be wrong...)


Well imagine that, for some reason, the Iranians are not too far from Bagdad. A desesperate Saddam ask Chirac another weapon (he had all the weapon he liked) : just one AN-52 nuclear bomb to repeal the Iranians.

At the time in 1986 the iranians made a series of deadly attacks in Paris killing many people.

As revenge Chirac agree and give Saddam a single AN-52 tactical nuke to be use from the Mirage F1EQ.

Iranians are nuked. Saddam win.
 
Well imagine that, for some reason, the Iranians are not too far from Bagdad. A desesperate Saddam ask Chirac another weapon (he had all the weapon he liked) : just one AN-52 nuclear bomb to repeal the Iranians.

At the time in 1986 the iranians made a series of deadly attacks in Paris killing many people.

As revenge Chirac agree and give Saddam a single AN-52 tactical nuke to be use from the Mirage F1EQ.

Iranians are nuked. Saddam win.

For some reason, I don't imagine the situation you're describing ending up in quite the same way.
 
Could we then imagine a joined Israeli/Egyption front against Saddam???

Very unlikely. Egypt was and still is a muslim state. No matter the enemy no muslim state would work with isreal. During desert storm saddam actualy tried to take advantage of this fact and tried to get isreal to join the war so that the coalition would break up due to isreals involvment.
 
How could he truly win? Perhaps force a ceasefire leaving him much of Khuzestan province but the vast bulk of Iran would still remain and surely be rearming for a war of vengeance.
 
Depends what you mean by win.

It may be possible for him to defeat the Iranians badly in a series of engagements so that the latter sue for peace. Any peace initiative from Tehran would presumably only happen if the regime was overthrown. This could only happen if there was a military revolt, not a coup but an armed mutiny by the soldiers. This is only possible if the military defeats were catastrophic and there was no apparent hope of prevailing in the war and this led to an acute drop in morale.

Iraq simply did not have the ability to occupy Iran. It did have the ability to occupy parts of Iran and extort reparations in the form of oil to try and ensure that Iran could not rearm and regroup sufficiently to be a threat. It is difficult to see where Iran could get arms from anyway although China may have been a possibility.

If this did happen then the US would be well pleased with its decision to encourage Saddam. Presumably there was some kind of tacit agreement between them that any Iranian oil production now under Saddam’s control would flow uninterrupted to the west. The US and other western powers would then undertake to rearm the Iraqis. However, any rearmament would be with non-long range weapons that could not be used against Israel.

As for Saddam getting carried away and then seizing the Saudi oil fields or attacking Israel, there would be no way this would be permitted. Even Iraqi’s annexation of their lost province of Kuwait was considered reason to go to war.

Attacking Egypt! This is ASB.
 
MarkA, except that Kuwait was never a lost province of Iraq, indeed, Kuwait existed well before the British cobbled Iraq together from several recently Ottoman provinces.
 
Very unlikely. Egypt was and still is a muslim state. No matter the enemy no muslim state would work with isreal. During desert storm saddam actualy tried to take advantage of this fact and tried to get isreal to join the war so that the coalition would break up due to isreals involvment.

True, with the reservation that Egypt actually gets along rather well with israel (suprising considering the old emnity). It's called realpolitick. Israel gains nothing from fighting the Egyptians over and over again, Egypt just loses time and time again. Peace is more beneficial to both then war. And remember, many muslims dislike each other as much as the israelis. Most Arab states fear Iran, Sunnis and Shi'ites have a centuries long emnity (during the '06 war in lebanon, many Sunnis were against Shi'ite hezbollah, for instance), Fatah and hamas were slugging it out in the west bank recently. Egypt fighting Iraq is by no means unlikely. It is only when Israel intervenes when things get complicated. And the Saudis, if they feel threatened (and wouldn't you if you were those princes when Saddam crushes Iran and Kuwait) will take all they help they can get. If that involves Israel, well, they let American troops defend the holy cities. Israeli troops doing the same job would do a good job of healing relations.
 
Well imagine that, for some reason, the Iranians are not too far from Bagdad. A desesperate Saddam ask Chirac another weapon (he had all the weapon he liked) : just one AN-52 nuclear bomb to repeal the Iranians.

At the time in 1986 the iranians made a series of deadly attacks in Paris killing many people.

As revenge Chirac agree and give Saddam a single AN-52 tactical nuke to be use from the Mirage F1EQ.

Iranians are nuked. Saddam win.

Why ask the mayor of Paris?

It is difficult to see where Iran could get arms from anyway although China may have been a possibility.

India, since Saddam's friendly with Pakistan (I think).

Israel, as they did historically.

Libya and Syria, who broke ranks with the Arab world by backing Iran.

The Soviet Union, if Saddam becomes too friendly with the West and/or in exchange for Iranian non-interference in Afghanistan. Wiki says they did provide some limited support.

Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, East and West Germany, North Korea, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Taiwan, and Yugoslavia, according to wiki.

Algeria, Greece, South Africa, South Korea, South Yemen, Switzerland, and Vietnam, according to this site (there's some disagreement with wiki).

Albania, Burma, Cyprus, Mexico, Sweden, Venezuela, Zaire, and Zimbabwe, as a sign of non-alignment (both superpowers support Iraq).

Note that there's nothing stopping a country from selling arms to both sides, and I'd be surprised if none of those mentioned did. There are many whose interests would not be damaged by selling to Iran, the only question being one of payment.
 
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