I have been playing around with the idea for a TL where the Iranian revolution plays out differently and the post-Shah government is an Islamic Socialist regime that is less immediately fanatical than Khomeini and more committed to pursuing long-term social change within in Iran. IOTL, Iraq sent out peace feelers after the 1982 Iranian offensive liberated almost all Iranian territory. The feelers were rejected in favor of jang ta piroozi - "war until victory" on behalf of Khomeini, which is to say, an attempt to invade Iraq with an army of volunteer light infantry and completely overthrow Saddam to install a sister Islamic republic. The war would continue for six more years and cost hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars for both countries. The failure to end the war then is a big What If for Middle Eastern politics.
So what if? For the purposes of this TL the following things are true:
-Iran is governed by a broad coalition of leftist and Islamic socialist political forces who want to, fundamentally, get Saddam off their backs so they can implement radical economic changes domestically and shake out a clear winner among the factions. There is not much of a base for the full overthrow of Saddam right now via conventional force of arms. Nobody is shouting "Karbala we are coming!" and although there is interest in fomenting revolutionary struggle against Saddam that is considered to be a long-term project.
-The USSR is salivating at the prospect of Iran becoming a full client state and is absolutely willing to throw historical ally Iraq under the bus to win Iranian favor. (OTL they were NOT happy with Saddam at this point)
-The Iranian revolutionary government is not attempting to replace the Iranian military with a new army of Revolutionary Guards, but is rather invested in reshaping the Shah's military into a workers and peasants army loyal to the new government. Ancien Regime officers are often still in place as military-technical experts under the watchful eye of commissars, and there is extensive folding of zealous revolutionary militias into the military, but the ATL Pasdaran consisting of ex-anti Shah guerillas and urban revolutionaries is operationally integrated into the regular army and has a professional leadership cadre of leftist militants. The ATL Iranian army performs much better than OTL, but still struggles with conventional military operations and maintaining US equipment.
-Iraq is broadly the same internally, although much more worried about leftists and scrambling to co-opt Shi'a identity against Iranian "atheist" revolutionaries. Saddam is still in charge although the speed of the Iranian offensives is causing open discontent among some Baath party officials.
-The war 1980-81 broadly goes the same as ATL with the Iranians taking 18+ months to get their act together. The 1982 offensives go better than OTL and when peace feelers by Iraq are extended the Iranians have expelled all Iraqi forces, sized the Al-Fao peninsula, and are threatening Basra with a northward encirclement to cut the Basra-Baghdad highway.
In this sort of general situation- I'm just sketching out the TL because that is how I've thought about it- what would Iranian peace terms even be? They've got Iraq on the back foot, Iraq wants out, but they don't want to conquer Iraq or overthrow the government. The war has still been bloody and long and will have a place in ATL revolutionary Islamic Socialist mythos (a Great Patriotic Jihad, if you will) so there will be a demand for something but....what were the maximalist Iranian terms about the Shatt Al-Arab, anyway?
Would war reparations in an ATL 1980's even seem plausible? Making this a plausible outcome really puzzles me when you get down to the details.
So what if? For the purposes of this TL the following things are true:
-Iran is governed by a broad coalition of leftist and Islamic socialist political forces who want to, fundamentally, get Saddam off their backs so they can implement radical economic changes domestically and shake out a clear winner among the factions. There is not much of a base for the full overthrow of Saddam right now via conventional force of arms. Nobody is shouting "Karbala we are coming!" and although there is interest in fomenting revolutionary struggle against Saddam that is considered to be a long-term project.
-The USSR is salivating at the prospect of Iran becoming a full client state and is absolutely willing to throw historical ally Iraq under the bus to win Iranian favor. (OTL they were NOT happy with Saddam at this point)
-The Iranian revolutionary government is not attempting to replace the Iranian military with a new army of Revolutionary Guards, but is rather invested in reshaping the Shah's military into a workers and peasants army loyal to the new government. Ancien Regime officers are often still in place as military-technical experts under the watchful eye of commissars, and there is extensive folding of zealous revolutionary militias into the military, but the ATL Pasdaran consisting of ex-anti Shah guerillas and urban revolutionaries is operationally integrated into the regular army and has a professional leadership cadre of leftist militants. The ATL Iranian army performs much better than OTL, but still struggles with conventional military operations and maintaining US equipment.
-Iraq is broadly the same internally, although much more worried about leftists and scrambling to co-opt Shi'a identity against Iranian "atheist" revolutionaries. Saddam is still in charge although the speed of the Iranian offensives is causing open discontent among some Baath party officials.
-The war 1980-81 broadly goes the same as ATL with the Iranians taking 18+ months to get their act together. The 1982 offensives go better than OTL and when peace feelers by Iraq are extended the Iranians have expelled all Iraqi forces, sized the Al-Fao peninsula, and are threatening Basra with a northward encirclement to cut the Basra-Baghdad highway.
In this sort of general situation- I'm just sketching out the TL because that is how I've thought about it- what would Iranian peace terms even be? They've got Iraq on the back foot, Iraq wants out, but they don't want to conquer Iraq or overthrow the government. The war has still been bloody and long and will have a place in ATL revolutionary Islamic Socialist mythos (a Great Patriotic Jihad, if you will) so there will be a demand for something but....what were the maximalist Iranian terms about the Shatt Al-Arab, anyway?
Would war reparations in an ATL 1980's even seem plausible? Making this a plausible outcome really puzzles me when you get down to the details.