WI: The Iran-Iraq War doesn't happen

The Iran-Iraq War set off a line of dominoes that would change the destiny of Iraq. When Saddam Hussein invaded Iraq, his neighbours gave him amenities such as oil, with the expectation that they would be paid off. After Iraq was defeated in the Iran-Iraq War, it's economy was in such a perilous state that it couldn't pay it's neighbours, so under the guise of protecting Iraqi oil from Kuwaiti slant-drilling, Saddam invaded Kuwait, which led to the Persian Gulf War. Iraq's defeat in said war further plunged Iraq into poverty, with the Iraqi military smashed to pieces.

One of the reasons why Saddam invaded Iran (aside from territorial disputes in regards to Khuzestan and the Shat-al-Arab waterways) was because the then-recent Islamic Revolution which put Ayatollah Khomeini into power.

So, in a timeline where the 1979 Islamic Revolution either never happens or a somewhat secular government comes to power as a result of it, what if the Iran-Iraq War never happened?
 
Even if the Islamic Revolution happens, you can still butterfly the Iran/Iraq War.

Simplest outcome - The revolutionary government is considerably weaker. Eventually the Mullahs lose their grip. Iraq leaps ahead economically, spending its money on its population and infrastructure, diversifying its economy, and eventually becoming the Arab world's first developed state. A million people live, who would have died.
 
Iraq was not losing at the end of the war, it had the clear upper hand by then.

Without the crazies taking power in Iran, the country would grow to become a regional juggernaught far more powerful than Iraq. Eventually they will support Shia supremacy in Iraq and when the Cold War ends the gloves will come off.
 
No Persian Gulf War, therefore no Iraq War in 2003. Hussein would be able to hold onto power until his natural death or his overthrow in the Arab Spring.
 

Cook

Banned
After Iraq was defeated in the Iran-Iraq War, it's economy was in such a perilous state that it couldn't pay it's neighbours, so under the guise of protecting Iraqi oil from Kuwaiti slant-drilling, Saddam invaded Kuwait, which led to the Persian Gulf War.
No Persian Gulf War, therefore no Iraq War in 2003.

The absence of the Iran-Iraq War alters the timing of an invasion of Kuwait, but it does not do away with it; Saddam saw himself as the natural heir of Gamal Nasser and was determined to unite the Arab Nation, by force where opportunity and necessity converged; conflict with one of his neighbours was all but inevitable because that was what Saddam sought in order to prove himself as a great military leader. (This isn't speculation, this is what we know from the extensive records captured following the fall of Baghdad - get hold of The Saddam Tapes by David Palkki)

The only way you avoid war at some stage is either Saddam is removed from power, or Iran and Iraq remain bitterly hostile but not actually at war, as they were throughout the 1970s, with Saddam desperately trying to match the much larger Iranian armed forces.
 
If there's no Iran-Iraq War and no invasion of Kuwait then quite possibly there's no 9/11. OBL swore a jihad on the US as a direct result of H. W. Bush stationing troops in Saudi Arabia for Desert Shield. Eliminate that and al-Qaeda may focus exclusively on terror abroad rather than provocative attacks on the US itself although US support for Israel will always be a terrorist grievance.
 
Other than averting the destruction caused by the war itself, and butterflies from the essential POD of a stronger Iran, I suspect not much changes. Once the Berlin Wall came down, the American establishment seemed pretty committed from removing regimes in the Middle East that had allied with the Soviet Union from power, and would still do so one way or another.
 
it would do away with the tanker war that the US got involved in... no 'both sides shooting at each others' tankers', no USN involvement and subsequent smackdown of what was left of the Iranian naval forces in the Gulf, no mining... and no US shootdown of an Iranian airliner...
 
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