[sglancy12]

As much as I love Frank Frey (and here's where I get to boast about having played Call of Cthulhu with him at GenCon last year), The RDF Sourcebook wasn't exactly prescient about the Persian Gulf. The three big snafus are:

1) His idea that the USSR could get rid of Saddam and Assad of Syria in a pair of coups in 1991 that would bring in more pro-Moscow leaders.

2) The idea that the Mullahs in Iran would get less bat-shit crazy.

3) No Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

However, I can't really give Frank any grief about not predicting the Invasion of Kuwait. Everyone missed that one.

So there are a couple of big questions to resolve in the Persian Gulf. The biggest is: Does Iraq invade Kuwait in 1990? Depending on what happens there, any number of things could change in the canon.

For my alt time-line, I have Iraq invading Kuwait right on schedule. Because Gorbachev was assassinated the previous year, on his way to visit Peking prior to the Tianamen Square Massacre, the guys running the Kremlin are a more reactionary bunch. This confrontation between the Soviet's premier client stat in the Middle East and the West might have lead to the Twilight War kicking off five years early. What stops it from happening is that the Kremiln is seriously occupied trying to get the toothpaste back in the tube in Eastern Europe. The 1989 pro-democracy revolutions that swept Eastern Europe are being put down with force, and the Kremlin doesn't think it can take on the West and clean up it's backyard at the same time.

In my alt time-line, the USSR bluffs the USA and the West, offering the West a free hand to deal with Iraq using a UN mandate (short of occupation, dissolution or regime change) so long as sanctions against the USSR's crackdown on pro-democracy in Eastern Europe are lifted. The USSR knows the US is going to eject Iraq one way or another, and would prefer if it was done under UN mandate rather than as unilateral US action. Why? Because the USSR wants to preserve the "authority" of the UN. The UN's authority is base on public opinion, something that can limit US policy choices, but has never affected the Kremlin.

Worried that a teetering and panicky Soviet Empire might go to war over a US intervention in the Persian Gulf, President George H.W. Bush makes that deal, thus throwing eastern Europe under the bus to protect US energy needs. That's twice in one century that Hungary and Poland get hung out to dry, but the gold medal for getting screwed by the West still goes to Czechoslovakia: THREE times in one century!

The US conducts the Gulf War as it does in our time-line, with the Soviet Military getting a preview of US capabilities. Perhaps this sneak peak helps them perform better against NATO during the later war in Europe?

In this time-line, it is Kuwait where US Forces are based, not Iran. The French Marine Division and air assets would just have to be shifted to Saudi Arabia and Basrah, where they already have forces in place.

In my time-line (IMTL?), the Iranians never calm down and stop with blaming everything that goes wrong in Iran on the Great Satan. So when the Soviets invade and the US intervenes, it's a three-way fight, with the Iranians fighting everyone... including each other as a kind of Civil War breaks out over the issue of whether to cooperate with the Americans or not. Nevertheless, the average Iranian is more hostile to US personnel than depicted in the RDF Sourcebook, which is why more US forces are stationed in Kuwait.

But back to Iraq.

In the RDF sourcebook, there is a Soviet counter-offensive that is launched in July 28, 1997 following a Spetsnaz strike at decapitates CENTCOM's command structure. It catches the US forces strung out, away from the coast. The new US CENTCOM commander, General McLean orders a fighting retreat to the coast, and the Soviets pursue.

IMTL Saddam sits out the war in Iran until the Soviets start that counter-offensive in 1997. On his own initiative, without consulting Lt. General Suryakin or the Kremlin, Saddam invades Iran and Kuwait to attack the retreating US forces in the hopes of getting revenge for the humiliating defeats of 1991.

There are two ways this could go... either it starts off pretty badly for US forces getting surprised on their flank and in their rear areas, but they quickly turn it around and maul the Iraqis... this could also cause Baghdad to catch some US nukes since according to canon, the US and USSR are exchanging tac-nukes in Iran at this time.

OR

US intelligence detects Saddam concentrating his forces and decide there's no point in waiting to get attacked. So they launch preemptive air attacks against logistical and air assets to blunt the attack. This leaves the retreating US forces in Iran without the air support they'd like for a few days or even a week, but otherwise things progress as canon. The attack still goes off, and Saddam gets a bit of a PR boost because the "Crusaders and Zionists" shot first, but his forces still get mauled.

Should we start another thread to discuss what changes occur if Iran doesn't go all warm and fuzzy on the west, as it does in the RDF sourcebook?

Would that 1997 US drive into Iran even happen if the government of Iran was hostile to the US intervention? I kind of doubt that even the bone heads in congress would pressure CENTCOM to pursue the Soviets if the Iranians weren't close allies. If the Iranians are actively hostile, it seems the height of folly for the US Forces to abandon their primary mission (keeping the oil fields out of the Soviet hands) just to score some hits on the Soviet Transcaucasus Front.

A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing