The Islamic Revolution in Iran is crushed by a combined efford of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi millitary and his secret police assinates Khomeini in Paris with the Help of the CIA.
Which efford would that have had on the Middle East? I guess a weaker Hezbollah?
/Fred
Hezbollah would be very weak, given their inexistence.
A left-wing revolution with islamic trimmings happens would definitely have happened in 1979 the Shah was one of the worst despots in modern middle-eastern history, which is quite an achievement.
The US would not be happy, but it is unlikely there would have been anything like the embassy crisis without Khomeni madness. Russia would open friendly relations with the new Iran, and would be less preoccupied with Afghanistan, maybe even leaving the government to sort its own affairs out. Perhaps the civil war in Afg would attract less western atttention because of this......
The new regime is anti-zionist and would support organisations like the Lebanese Communist party, PFLP and to a lesser extent Amal and the PLO.
This means that the focus of Muslim resistence to Zionism and imperialism would remain Neo-Nasserite Arab Socialism, rather than Islamism. A young Saudi man named Osama Bin Laden will become a Saudi TV Sheikh, giving conservative comment on the Koran and possessing a paricularly particularly scathing line of invective about "Persian Magian Zoroastrian Socialists". He will possess a huge quantity of Sado-masochistic pornography, often related to the act of defecation.
American destabilisation of the Iranian regime begins in late 1979, they (ironically) attempt to build up a Shia anti-communist movement, however, they are handicapped by their widely suspected conection to the death of Khomeni. They turn to their client Saddam Hussein of Iraq, and explain how it would be a really good thing if Iraq's national aspirations to control the Shatt-al-Arab canal, along with "Arabistan" in the South East of Iran were fulfilled. They arm Saddam with US tanks and Lockheed fighters at bargain basement prices. They aso decide to share some of their more "advanced" weapons technologies with the Iraqis....for self defence only, of course...
In January 1983 Saddam tests nerve gas on a Shia Marsh Arab village....