WI: No July 14 Revolution in Iraq?

Wolfpaw

Banned
All on the tin.

What if General Qasim had not led the Iraqi Free Officers to overthrow the Iraqi monarchy in 1958?

When/would the monarchy collapse? What would continued Hashemite rule look like? Etc., etc.
 
Speaking as someone without any specialised knowledge of mid-20th century Iraq, it does seem to me that the Hashemite monarchy didn't really have much support in the country outside of the political and economic elites. Popular and nationalistic antipathy towards a dynasty which was seen as British puppets makes it difficult for the monarchy to survive in the longer term.

Their cousins in Jordan survived of course but, if I understand rightly, the monarchy's support there is based upon the Bedouin tribes, which aren't as much of a factor in Iraq.
 
Speaking as someone without any specialised knowledge of mid-20th century Iraq, it does seem to me that the Hashemite monarchy didn't really have much support in the country outside of the political and economic elites. Popular and nationalistic antipathy towards a dynasty which was seen as British puppets makes it difficult for the monarchy to survive in the longer term.

Their cousins in Jordan survived of course but, if I understand rightly, the monarchy's support there is based upon the Bedouin tribes, which aren't as much of a factor in Iraq.

Agreed. In all likeliood, another general would have done the same thing a few years later, possibly Al-Bakr or even Saddam himself. If no one did (say a monarchist purge of the officer class), I would expect Iraq itself to splinter into Shi'a and Sunni areas, as well as an independent Kurdish state in the north.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
I actually thought that an Iraqi civil war would not be out of the question.

Communists were a major force in Iraq at the time and largely drew their support from Shi'a communities, while Sunnis tended to favor pan-Arabism and Iraqi nationalism. The Kurds were pretty restive too and I could see the Soviets supporting both the Kurds and Iraqi Communists.

Perhaps Syria would intervene and try to absorb the Sunni areas of western Iraq? Iran is also going to be an important factor as--apart from the Brits--they are going to be the monarchy's major ally in the region, though how they go about supporting Faisal will be very interesting.
 
I actually thought that an Iraqi civil war would not be out of the question.

Communists were a major force in Iraq at the time and largely drew their support from Shi'a communities, while Sunnis tended to favor pan-Arabism and Iraqi nationalism. The Kurds were pretty restive too and I could see the Soviets supporting both the Kurds and Iraqi Communists.

Perhaps Syria would intervene and try to absorb the Sunni areas of western Iraq? Iran is also going to be an important factor as--apart from the Brits--they are going to be the monarchy's major ally in the region, though how they go about supporting Faisal will be very interesting.

I could easily see that. The other unknowns are what the Saudis and Egyptians will do. Both will likely support the Sunnis, but its possible that Saudi troops will end up invading the border areas. I could easily see them occupying Basra and other parts of the south, then annexing them if things got bad.

Israel is another unknown, although they might just fund everyone in order to keep the Arab World in chaos and focused on Iraq, as opposed to Israel.
 
I doubt Sunni chauvinist Saudi Arabia would want to rule a large number of additional of restive Shiites, some of them leftist/communist. I could see Iran intervening in an Iraqi civil war, ostensibly to protect the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala but in reality to set up a client state on its Western flank.
I'd imagine Sunni-dominated Central Iraq would seek to preserve the state, if only because most oil is in the Northern and Southern regions.
 
I almost guarantee that Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr would lead the way if there was to be a fight from the Ba'athists, Saddam was a Stalin type of figure, he built up power from behind the scenes and eventually set himself up to be the heir apparent to an aging and increasingly less energetic al-Bakr, who was sort of the Hindenberg character in all of this.

I think the civil war idea is both plausible and interesting. And it still invites the possibility of large-scale American involvement, the more the communists establish themselves as a challenger faction, the more likely the Ba'athists go to Syria and the US for help. OTL the two Ba'athist regimes, despite ideological kinship and the fact that Iraq's party was based off of Syria's did not get along well.

With this civil war the two may draw closer together than OTL, and the US may, consequently, draw closer with Syria as a sort of third bloc against communism, how this pans out with US alliances with Persia and Israel as well is another query.
 
And what about the iranians? what would they do?

Play nice with Iraqi Shiites and try and get them to revolt if they play it safe, invade and set up a Shia client-state in eastern Iraq if they feel ballsy enough, this almost assuredly requires at least complicity from the USA though.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
If anything I could see the Syrian Ba'athists supporting the Iraqi Communists against the Iraqi Ba'ath--they weren't all too different from the former and despised the latter by the early '60s.

Iran is going to be in a tough position. Any sort of action to "safeguard" Najaf or Karbala is going to look like an outright invasion given said cities' distance from the border. There is also the problem of the Communists having their main power base in the Iraqi Shi'a community.

Ba'ath is viscerally anti-Persian, Communists have no need for Shahs, and whatever's left of the Iraqi monarchy is probably about as popular as the neighborhood pedophile, so the only people left for Tehran to support is the Shi'a Islamist movement.

Of course, supporting Islamists and neofundamentalists abroad means that the mullahs and ayatollahs back home are going to start howling for more say in how things are run. Given the Shah's track record with dissent, this is not going to end well and probably just accelerates the collapse of his own regime. In a way it's almost akin to a US-France situation during and after the ARW.

Ultimately the Shah loses every way--he's still seen as more or less an imperial lackey who nobody at home nor abroad is happy with.
 
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