WeisSaul

Let's suppose that there is no Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. Khomeini fell down a flight of steps or whatever, the point is that it doesn't happen. A year later, when the Shah dies right on schedule, his son takes power and liberalizes the country with fair elections and a federal constitution.

What now?

AlpinLuke

Let's see. The Ayatollah remains in Paris with his coworkers without finding a way to organize a Revolution. This, anyway wouldn't mean that Ayatollahs weren't able to organize a religious Shiaa party in Iran.

So the new monarch liberalizes the country giving a constitution to it. The main trouble I see is that the popular mood was quite in opposition to Shah system and there was a wide support for extremist religious based ideologies.

The key factor for the result of the first free elections would have been the time between the end of the Shah power and the new democratic system. That time had to be used to reform the country and to change the popular perception of the central power.

I can use Egypt as a comparison: the negative feelings towards the former regime will influence the result of the elections. This week we will see if the extremists will have obtain a sufficient amount of votes to take part to the second ballot.

Back to Iran.

Let's image a result in which moderate forces will be able to form a coalition to sustain a government with a strong Shiaa religious based opposition. In such a case Iran would have become similar to Iraq with the difference that Iraq was a dictatorship.

Which would have been the behavior of Saddam with a big democratic neighbor?
And Teheran?

Usually Arab dictators tend to see democracies as weak systems, so it's not impossible that Saddam would have started the Iraq - Iran war anyway [with Russian support and without changing "sponsor" as he did moving to the American side in real history]. The US and the Western democracies would have supported the new Iranian democracy without doubt.

But the brutality of the conflict would have generated tremendous internal troubles for Teheran [a democracy, as we well know, has got a "level of sustainability" for a war: when the loss of soldiers becomes too high, the democracy tends to look for an "exit strategy"].

So a ceasefire was to be signed between the two countries.

But a great difference at geopolitical level would have been evident: Iran would haven't supported Hezbollah and Hamas in perspective. Preferring a more diplomatic way to face the "Palestinian matter". This would have changed a lot the situation.

Moreover, after the war, Saddam would have done almost the same and in occasion of the invasion of Kuwait Iran would have taken part to the international coalition and this probably would have allowed to "close the game" immediately with the fall of Saddam already in 1991-1992.

This would have been a key change: Iraq would have become a democracy in a more easy way [without Shiaa armed activities in the countries, for example].

Mike McClure

The difference is that if the Shah was in power during the Iran/Iraq War the United States would have been on the side of Iran.

WeisSaul

If Iran-Iraq happens on schedule, I suppose a fully US supported Iran, Iran could have annexed Iraqi Kurdistan (with all of its oil) in the name of protecting the rights of fellow Iranian peoples. It would have given the Shiite Islamists in Iran less power, and would make the Shiite community stronger in Iraq. Plus the Iranians could carve out a small Assyrian state.

YoungDonDraper

It seems to me that we haven't yet taken into account the massive influence that Western business interests and the intelligence agencies that serve them had in Iranian affairs throughout the 20th century. The Iranian Revolution was successful because it was supported by the CIA and MI6, the Shah was modernizing the country and if it took a few more steps forward it would have been very difficult for the Western countries to exploit the natural resources.

As often happens, the meddling of those agencies blew up in their faces and they couldn't control the final outcome, but it at least succeeded in creating conditions for major arms sales to Iran and Iraq, while the disgusting war set both nations back a decade or two.

When examining any historical events, especially after WWII, it's imperative to understand what side the intelligence agencies were on, and what their agenda was at the time, otherwise the understanding reached will be as shallow as the crap they print in our High School history textbooks.