WI: Iraq wins the Iraq-Iran War

Cook

Banned
The only possibility Saddam had of winning the Iran-Iraq war was if his initial attack had been successful and Iraqi forces reach their stop points at Dezful, Ramhormoz and Behbehan, dig in and secure them. Iranian, perhaps due to the deeper purges of the armed forces following the revolution, finds itself too weak to challenge Iraq and accepts a ceasefire brokered by the UN.

Saddam would annex Khuzestan, renaming it Arabistan, and declare it to be the 19th province of Iraq. His actions would not be recognised outside of the Arab League nations, and probably not even within the Arab League, save for a few. Khuzestan would prove to be difficult for Iraq to swallow; the majority of the population are ethnic Persians, not Arabs and Saddam would be faced with resistance ranging from sabotage of the oil industry through to an active insurrection. The resulting crackdown would possibly see refugees in the hundreds of thousands flooding over the ceasefire line into Iran, undermining Saddam’s claim to have been acting as a liberator at the request of the Arabistanis.

Meanwhile the Iranians would throw everything they could into rebuilding their armed forces and the Revolutionary Guard and, as soon as they were confident, they’d resume the war, try to liberate their lost province and topple Saddam’s regime.

Rather than the single enormously long war that we saw, the result would be a short sharp war that ends in a ceasefire of about eighteen months to three years, followed by resumed high intensity fighting.
 
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