WI: Soviet Union sides with Iran during Iran/Iraq war

In reading about the history of the Tudeh party (the main Marxist party in Iran), and it seems that the Soviets encouraged Tudeh to get in the good graces of the new rulers of the Republic. That leads me to believe that it isn't impossible to see the Soviets make more of an attempt to woo the Islamic Republic. So what would have happened if the Soviets had offered Iran their support during the war with Iraq? Would Iran have accepted? Would it have led the west to give more support to Saddam than they did OTL? What effects would Soviet support have had on the Iranian side of things?

fasquardon
 
Iraq was a Soviet client state (though not a satellite). The Soviets weren't happy that Saddam invaded Iran, but they supported them because not doing so would mean the Soviets lose any leverage they had. They were Iraq's major arm supplier and had a Treaty of Friendship which supporting Iran would violate.

There was some advantage to supporting Iran, but only at the cost of shredding its credibility as an ally to obtain dubious influence in that country.

If the Soviets truly sold out Iraq and backed Iran, the obvious response was for Saddam to repudiate the Soviets and attempt to win support from Washington. Given the distaste of Saddam by the Americans, this would need to be substantial policy changes and reforms to make it palatable for any large degree of support. It's possible, but unlikely. IOTL, the only support the West gave Iraq was military intelligence and some trade deals. It was the Gulf Arabs who supported Iraq by cash infusion.

The soviets did not actually support the Iraq-Iran War. It put them in a bad position. They would have preferred peace so they could attempt to win over Iran without alienating Iraq.
 
Iraq was a Soviet client state (though not a satellite). The Soviets weren't happy that Saddam invaded Iran, but they supported them because not doing so would mean the Soviets lose any leverage they had. They were Iraq's major arm supplier and had a Treaty of Friendship which supporting Iran would violate.

Hmm. I didn't know they had an actual treaty of friendship. That would make it difficult to choose the Iranian side.

Reading up on the start of the war, it looks like it was reasonably unclear who started it early on (though now we know it was Iraq), which makes it difficult for the Soviets to condemn Iraqi aggression as well.

I guess that is another interesting idea floundering on the rocks of reality!

fasquardon
 
Have you ever heard of this wonderful thing called patience?:rolleyes:

In my experience, people very rarely reply to new threads once they fall off the first two pages. Particularly when the WIs have to do with countries mainly populated by people who don't speak English as their mother-tongue.

Hence, I bumped when this hit page 3.

fasquardon
 
In my experience, people very rarely reply to new threads once they fall off the first two pages. Particularly when the WIs have to do with countries mainly populated by people who don't speak English as their mother-tongue.

Hence, I bumped when this hit page 3.

fasquardon

This.

Regarding Iraq, the Soviets had a Treaty with Iraq. They can't just abrogate that.
 
Iran is a Shiite theocracy though, and the Soviet Union is officially atheist. Throw in the Iranian reaction to the Afghan invasion and I don't think its likely the Soviets would support them much.

If the two countries did get along though, there's no reason why the Soviets couldn't evict the Iraqis by force. They border Iran, and everyone knew the premise for Saddam's war was shaky. Its just that nobody important liked the new Iran. So long as the Russians don't march on Baghdad, there's little the Americans could do.
 
It's not as well known, but the Iranians had 'Death to the USSR' chants every Friday, right after the ones for the USA and UK
 
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