WI: Iraq attacks Saudi Arabia in Autumn 1990

Ak-84

Banned
Lets say instead of waiting for the US and allies to build up their strenght, the Iraqis attack the coalition forces in Saudi Arabia.

David Hackworth was one man who thought they had a pretty good chance of success. What do you think?

Lets say the attack begins 1st October.
 
Only way this could have possibly worked is if they had made the Saudi oil fields their primary objective, and had blown right through Kuwait when they first attacked in early August. Saudi ground forces, plus whatever US airpower could be scrounged up at short notice, would have a real hard time keeping the Repub Guard divisions at bay. I'm not an expert at this, but I say that Saddam MIGHT have gotten away with it. In October? No way. By then, the US had plenty of planes, and there were at least some coalition forces on the ground.
 

Cook

Banned
I had a mate of mine in Saudi at the time teaching the Saudi Air Force pilots to fly PC-9s. When the Iraqi’s rolled into Kuwait he was in Riyadh and the place just went to pieces, the locals all expected Saddam to be there in a day or two.
So he and another Australian pilot sat down in their hotel and decided that if Saddam crossed the border then their contracts would no longer be valid.
They planned to “rescue” two PC-9s and fly to a highway ½ way to Egypt where they would land, siphon the remaining fuel out of one aircraft into the other and fly that the rest of the way to Egypt.
There was a real expectation that Iraq was going to sweep through The Gulf and the local military wouldn’t amount to more then a speed hump.
 
October might have been a bit too late, given that Desert Shield was commenced in August. The Saudi ground forces might still have been in a difficult position, but with significant air support the invader's command and control would probably have broken down.

Some things to consider:
- From memory Saudi Arabia's oil producing regions have significant Shi'ite populations. Could bring Iranian involvement, most likely arms shipments and IRGC trainers.
- Osama Bin Laden offered to bring it veteran Mujahedeen from the war in Afghanistan to defend Saudi Arabia, but was refused (he was after all opposed to much of the monarchy, a radical, and the US were seen a a better bet). If the US presence were not seen to be a strong enough guarantee in this timeline, you might expect to see Osama and co. in business against Saddam.
- IIRC Syria sided with the coalition against Saddam in 1990-1991. Where does the fall of Saudi Arabia leave them?
 
I think the main problem with making this work would be overcoming logistical issues for the Iraqis; not sexy but there were are and we all know the old adage about tactics and logistics.
AFAIK one of the reasons the Iraqi's did not move south was that they had effectively outrun their logistical tail. That needs to be sorted before any move south.
If its an attack beginning on 1st October then there is probably enough Allied air power in the region to tear the Iraqi's logistical tail to pieces.

I'm not sure I rate Hackworth opinions all that highly. He's quite a controversial figure he was very nearly court-martialed for some pretty dodgy actions and has been accused of having a limited intellect and a tendency to portray his personal impressions as fact.
I'd be interested to read what other analysts have said about Iraq's chances in an invasion of Saudi in this period.
 

burmafrd

Banned
Saddam had no chance by October. There was sufficient US forces in place to stop him. Now if he tried it by the end of August early september it gets a lot more interesting. The key to all of this is of course logistics. Saddam made no preparation for going into Saudi prior to taking Kuwait. He would have had to have piled up a lot of fuel and trucks and the like. And that would have attracted a lot more attention prior to the attack.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
There was a real expectation that Iraq was going to sweep through The Gulf and the local military wouldn’t amount to more then a speed hump.

Even when Western forces began getting there in massive numbers, the Arab Peninsular forces weren't acquitting themselves so hot. When the Iraqis blew across the border and hit Khafji, the (Qatari?) forces stationed with the USMC hightailed it with their AMX-30 tanks in tow.
 
Only way this could have possibly worked is if they had made the Saudi oil fields their primary objective, and had blown right through Kuwait when they first attacked in early August.

Pretty much this.

To put Iraq into Saudi, you'd need cause.

Iraq had, at least in their eyes, justification for attacking Kuwait - historical claims to Kuwait, debts owed to Kuwait, and Kuwait's exceeding it's OPEC quota. (The Iraqi claims about Kuwait slant drilling into the Iraqi side of the Rumaila oil field may have also been honest, but that's disputed.)

AFAIK, there're no shared oil fields, Saudi wasn't so egregiously violating the OPEC quotas, and there weren't historical claims. Saudi did hold some Iraqi debt, but IIRC it was less than Kuwait and the UAE.

Probabaly the easiest potential PoD would be moving a significant oil field to the Saudi-Iraqi neutral-zone, and providing evidence that Saudi was stealing Iraqi oil, while holding a larger Iraqi debt. That'd give Iraq cause to go after both Saudi and Kuwait (assuming Kuwait's behaving the same).

Another one might be Saudi having absorbed Kuwait, maybe under the Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1913?

As has been mentioned, there are logistics problems. A build up for taking on Saudi could reasonably delay the whole show til October. And, as also mentioned, such a build up would have attracted more attention, as would the diplomatic actions and threats made against Saudi as a prelude.
 
In the economic world there would be a harder downturn than OTL. The swedish stock market took a huge hit when Iraq invanded and the bottom went out of the economy that fall and we went from 0,5% unemployment to around 10 in 1992.

Could have been worse
 

Cook

Banned
In the economic world there would be a harder downturn than OTL. The swedish stock market took a huge hit when Iraq invanded and the bottom went out of the economy that fall and we went from 0,5% unemployment to around 10 in 1992.

Could have been worse

Iraq invaded Sweden?
:eek:
Damn, That’s a hell of a long supply line!
;)
 
Sadaam gains the Saudi oil fields. Where does he draws a defensive line? The more he stretces himself out, the easier it is going to be for the coalition to defeat Iraq.

Short term, yeah financial markets an oil prices go to hell.

Say Sadaam immediately captures Riyadh and the Persion gulf states in September.

Insead of making the other Arab states cower, they are more determined to eradicate Iraq. Both Jordan and Turkey allow US build up. US build up in Yemen, Oman, Wetern Saudi and Jordan, and Turkey

US air war begins on March 1st without any ultimatum to withdraw. Air war goes same as OTL. US targets Iraq, and military targets in Kuwait and Saudi. Immediate success as stealths, smrt bombs, and US technology kick but. Sadam launches Scuds at Israel, Jordan, and Turkey.

Before grund war, coalition resolves that Sadam must be removed. Ground war begins on April 1. Coalition forces are able to encircle and destroy Iraqi army units. Ruse of amphibious landings works even better in this scenerio to pin Iraqi units to the coast. Iraq destroys much of the oil pumping and refinery capacity of Saudi, Kuwait, and the Gulf States. Other OPEC and non-OPEC members increase volume to keep world oil supply as stable as possible. US dips into reserves.

Iraq iscomplely overtaken within three months.

Occupation of Iraq is divided between the coalition with major participation of Arab countries and Turkey in the north. USA controls both Basra and Baghdad.

Next focus is on getting former oil fields up an running. A gobal engineering effort is made. Oil fields are pumping again within a year. Refinery's take more time.

Long tem effects are:
1.) No long term US presence in Saudi. US presence is in Yemen, Oman, and Iraq. So US barricks at Bagram are not bombed.
2.) Terrorists find other reasons to blame the US such as the US actually encouraged Iraq to invade Kuwait and Saudi so that Arabs would feal indebted to US after liberation. Does 9/11 ocur? Does USS Cole still occur? Does African embassy bombings occur? There is some insurgency activity in Iraq against US posts in Baghdad butno where near the actvity of 2004-2007
3.) Obviously, no Operation Iraqi freedom in 2003
4.) Bush Sr. still loses next election due to US economy tanking
5.) Bush Jr. still wins in 2000. Takes heat for Katrina responce and economic downturn in 2008.
 
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Long tem effects are:
1.) No long term US presence in Saudi. US presence is in Yemen, Oman, and Iraq. So US barricks at Bagram are not bombed.
2.) Terrorists find other reasons to blame the US such as the US actually encouraged Iraq to invade Kuwait and Saudi so that Arabs would feal indebted to US after liberation. Does 9/11 ocur? Does USS Cole still occur? Does African embassy bombings occur? There is some insurgency activity in Iraq against US posts in Baghdad butno where near the actvity of 2004-2007
3.) Obviously, no Operation Iraqi freedom in 2003
4.) Bush Sr. still loses next election due to US economy tanking
5.) Bush Jr. still wins in 2000. Takes heat for Katrina responce and economic downturn in 2008.

So, who's occupying Karbala and the other Shia holy sites? I suspect this sets up a very good foundation for a Shia insurgency and quite possibly a war with Iran.
 
An expanded Desert Storm really does open a can of worms, especially in north Iraq. Turgut Özal was enthusiastically pro-coalition during his presidency of Turkey, and massed several hundred thousand troops on the Iraqi border. If the Gulf ports are overrun, however temporarily, there will be a buildup in other US-friendly regional states, and maybe even a limited land front in Syria, Jordan, or Turkey.

Jordan would be a likely site of some sort of coalition buildup, or at least somewhere the US would want to build up. This would be incredibly complicated in terms of Jordanian internal politics; the elephant in the room being the Palestinian, and pro-Saddam majority there.

Now, in the north, Turkey may be lured directly into the conflict because of the much larger provocation offered by an Iraqi invasion of Saudi. There are several problems with this:

1) the infrastructure in southeastern Turkey is terrible, and was found to be really inadequate even for the supply of the troops massed OTL

2) The OTL deployment revealed huge inefficiencies within the Turkish military. The deployment was slow, badly organized, and hampered by a bloated and ineffective officer corps. With the poor state of roads in the south east taken into account, any Turkish offensive into Iraq would be limited in scale and scope.

3) Last but most importantly, the political implications of the Turkish military entering into Kurdish north Iraq would be very, very messy. A desire to take part in the coalition or stop a more aggressive than OTL Saddam would likely wind up a fig leaf for crushing Kurdish militant groups of any kind once and for all.


Just some too-much-coffee observations about alternate fronts. My two jittery espresso fueled cents.
 
A lot is going to depend on how far Iraq goes and how much they grab.

Taking the whole peninsula strikes me as rather ASBish. It'd certainly upset a lot of apple carts if they got Mecca and Medina. Iran would be very threatened facing off across an Iraqi controled SW gulf coast. Egypt may also feel rather threatened.

If they just take the Saudi oil fields and then stop (the second most likely scenario), they'll have a tighter defensive perimeter, but it's a rather deep salient. US forces might could stage from Qatar and the UAE, if not the rest of Saudi Arabia.

If Iraq pushes into Qatar and the UAE, Oman and maybe Yemen might work as a southern staging area, but the Rub' al Khali is in the way.

Maybe the smartest thing strategically, if Iraq is going to do this, is to sweep in through NE Saudi and Kuwait and down into Qatar and the UAE, quickly ransom them in exchange for the debts they hold, and withdraw ASAP.

The most likely scenario would probabaly be NE Saudi, Qatar, and the UAE.
 

burmafrd

Banned
If Saddam invades Saudi Egypt will respond for various reasons. One of the chief ones being the financial support it gets from Saudi with cheap oil. The Egyptian army is a lot better then Iraqs army.
 
If Saddam invades Saudi Egypt will respond for various reasons. One of the chief ones being the financial support it gets from Saudi with cheap oil. The Egyptian army is a lot better then Iraqs army.

One problem is ports. If Iraq takes Jeddah, there's no land border for the Egyptian army to go through. Crossing through Israel and Jordan may be problematic politically.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
One problem is ports. If Iraq takes Jeddah, there's no land border for the Egyptian army to go through. Crossing through Israel and Jordan may be problematic politically.

I can't see a way they'd get to Jeddah. That's just too far. And besides: why would they? They'd get to King Khalid Military City and Riyadh before they get to Jeddah, which puts the port down on it's target list.

And if the Iraqi Army did try to drive to Jeddah, just getting there with their shoddy logistical tail would take so long it's really hard to believe that Western airborne and light armoured units wouldn't be in their way before they got there.
 
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