WI: Kingdom of Greater Syria

POD 1920: Sykes and Picot are less ambitious

Instead of backstabbing Faisal, the French and British more or less hold to the joint declaration put forth in November 1918. London gets naval bases in Haifa and Basra along with minor economic concesseions elsewhere. Paris, seeing the writing on the wall in Turkey and having the Maronite Patriarch in thier pocket, manages incorporate the old Ottoman Mutasarrifate of Lebanon as an Overseas Department after a peblicite and a massive payment to the Government in Damascus.

Needless to say the Balfour Declaration is quietly forgotten (Yafo has a Azkhenazic suburb and multiple communes sprout up in the area on the basis of Faisal's own understanding with Weizmann, but a Jewish State is considered a pipe dream).

Unfortunatly, In mid 1924 Faisal's viceroy in Baghdad Prince Zied made the critical mistake of appointing a Sunni to the head of the famous semanary in Najaf, then overreacted to the protests. When the smoke died down Lower Mesopotamia had declared it's own republic and the CHP regime in Turkey snatched up the old Ottoman Vilayet of Mosul leaving the area around Baghdad itself as a frontier provence of Damascus by 1930.

Now what?

HTG
 
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