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An Arabian Revolution in 1979

Venocara

God Save the King.
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In November 1979, the 'al-Ikhwan' seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia as a precursor to an overthrow of the House of Saud’s regime. Now, obviously in OTL they failed, but what if they succeeded? What would need to happen for them to succeed? Is it even possible? And what would Arabia look like afterwards?

All helpful responses are welcome and I thank you for your time.
 
The first thing you need to do is to look around at what else was happening nearby, because there will be interactions.

The most obvious element here is the Iranian Revolution of the same year. You've also got the Ba'ath Party purge in Iraq, and the prelude to theIran Iraq war. A bit further afield, you've got the Lebanese Civil War going on, with Beirut not an entirely happy place to be.

I rather suspect that if Saudi Arabia is also in turmoil, the Middle East is going to be in something of a mess.

Assuming that the Iran-Iraq War had been butterflied away due to earlier events, what do you think would be the result?
 
In November 1979, the 'al-Ikhwan' seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia as a precursor to an overthrow of the House of Saud’s regime. Now, obviously in OTL they failed, but what if they succeeded? What would need to happen for them to succeed? Is it even possible? And what would Arabia look like afterwards?

All helpful responses are welcome and I thank you for your time.

I can't imagine them surviving for long. Even if they manage to overthrow the House of Saud there are still many in the Saudi government who will oppose them. Most likely you would see a brief civil war which would end in the establishment of an "Islamic Republic of Arabia", basically Saudi Arabia but without a monarchy.
 
It is unbelievable, how the dominoes fell in the 1979 Middle East.

February 1979 > Iran and Khomeini
July 1979 > Iraq, Saddam Hussein
November 1979 > The Grand Mosque crisis, Saudi Arabia
December 1979 > Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

And guess what ?

Exactly 50 years later, we are still paying for all this. Iran, Bin Laden, Iraq, Al Quaeda and ISIS... dang. :mad:o_O:cry:

Middle East at large is a slow fuse powder keg. Screw one country only once, pay the price for the next 100 years. o_Oo_Oo_Oo_Oo_O

Incidentally, the French GIGN elite police strike force was called to the rescue by the Saudis. They saturated the Grand Mosque underground with tear gas (some says more lethal gas, mustard or sarin but it is extremely doubtful) to get the rebels out so that the Saudi Forces could shoot them in the open.
The whole thing was kept secret but if the operation fails and leaks in the press (Le Canard enchainé, for a start) then President Giscard d'Estaing (France very own Jimmy Carter, really) is even more screwed than OTL. Mitterrand probably gets a larger victory in 1981.
As if "Les diamants de Bokassa" wasn't enough, Giscard is screwed up another time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamonds_Affair
 
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I'm no mathematician, but I make that 40 years, not 50.

Whatever the maths, my point still stands.

I hate maths, courtesy of three years of high school / secondary school (lycée, whatever the english word for that) spend with the worse math teacher in the entire universe. The aptly named M. Baisecourt - which exactly translates as "Mister Shortfuck." One can't invent such things, really. In your face, Roald Dahl.

"Hello children, I will be your math teacher for the next three years, in high school. Incidentally, my name is Brieffucker. Jack Brieffucker."

The affair was unveiled by the satiric newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné on October 10, 1979, towards the end of Giscard's presidency.

Ouch. Right at the same moment the Grand Mosque mayhem started. Well, Giscard is toast.
 
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It rather depends on what the butterflies were.

If the Communists came to power in Iran, backed by the Soviet Union, when the Shah was overthrown, that leads in one direction. If the Secularists and Khomeini worked together, that leads in another direction. If the military decided the Shah was the problem and launched a military coup to stamp out the endemic corruption of the Shah's regime, that goes in another direction. If the West decided to intervene to support the Shah and stamp out the growing protests, that heads off in another direction.

That's just looking at the Iranian revolution part of the equation. You've got similar contingencies within Iraq, and they could all run in many different directions.

The one certainty is that the outcome is going to be very messy. The Ba'ath Party in Iraq and the Shah in Iran were not in a happy place.

Let's assume that the Iranian and Iraqi regimes are the same as OTL, but that the Khomeini doesn't reject Hussein's friendly overtures so that they are closer diplomatically. What kind of regime do you think will emerge from a Saudi Revolution? And how would the Grand Mosque Seizure evolve into a successful revolution?
 
Is this the best place to bring up a) the insane military plans the Shah had for Iran, b) I knew someone who met/served said Shah and c) had a very low opinion of said Shah?

This is the place. Please, share.
 
This is the place. Please, share.

a) the Shah wanted F-18 Hornets for his Air Force, Invincible Class Aircraft Carriers for his Navy and what amounted to proto-Challenger 1s for his Army. And that's to name but three examples; this was an insane military build-up, and not just typical client state F-5 Freedom Fighters. Tomcats and Eagles and everything anyone was selling. Harriers from us, IRBMs with the Israelis, it was insane.
b) the chippie near my father's house was run by a former Engineer in the old Imperial Iranian Navy who got out in '79. He says the scuttlebutt was that one day he'd be working on nuclear powered submarines (this before the Revolution).
c) his view was that the Shah was like a teenager with way, way too much money and no oversight; like he was spending way to much on the military and not enough, (if anything) on say rural healthcare. And even the military was all front-line stuff. The Engineer (whose name I have sadly forgotten) said that American (and European) contractors were everywhere. This didn't help the Shah's reputation; it gave the impression that the Imperial Iranian Armed Forces didn't actually belong to Iran.
d) the Engineer said that Shah, when he inspected their base, never asked about them, only their equipment.
 
Incidentally, the French GIGN elite police strike force was called to the rescue by the Saudis. They saturated the Grand Mosque underground with tear gas (some says more lethal gas, mustard or sarin but it is extremely doubtful) to get the rebels out so that the Saudi Forces could shoot them in the open.
The whole thing was kept secret but if the operation fails and leaks in the press (Le Canard enchainé, for a start) then President Giscard d'Estaing (France very own Jimmy Carter, really) is even more screwed than OTL. Mitterrand probably gets a larger victory in 1981.
As if "Les diamants de Bokassa" wasn't enough, Giscard is screwed up another time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamonds_Affair

Let's say, for whatever reason, that Operation Barracuda fails or is uncovered before it is implemented, and the French never try to intervene in Saudi Arabia. How could the Grand Mosque Seizure evolve into a successful revolution?
 
a) the Shah wanted F-18 Hornets for his Air Force, Invincible Class Aircraft Carriers for his Navy and what amounted to proto-Challenger 1s for his Army. And that's to name but three examples; this was an insane military build-up, and not just typical client state F-5 Freedom Fighters. Tomcats and Eagles and everything anyone was selling. Harriers from us, IRBMs with the Israelis, it was insane.

What was he planning to do with all this, or did he just think it'd be cool?
 
What was he planning to do with all this, or did he just think it'd be cool?

Some kind of giant dick-showing contest, aparently.

In 1966 the Shah first bought F-5A and F-5E Tigers - three hundred of them, then he 1968 he got a boatload of F-4D and F-4E and RF-4 Phantoms (two hundreds or so), but those were older type from the 60's.
Then from 1971 he went indeed into a crazy buying spree. He asked for F-111s and was rebuked. He asked for A-12 OXCART (the CIA single seat SR-71, 12 were gathering dust in a Lockheed hangar in Palmdale, California) and was rebuked. No kidding: the Shah wanted SR-71s.
He finally got Tomcats, 79 of them, then he wanted two hundred F-16 AND two hundred F-18 (the only country bar the USA to get BOTH LWF ) Harriers, Invincible small carriers, thousands of tanks, he wanted E-3 AWACS, he had 747 tankers (yes, 747,NOT KC-135s). He also got C-130 Hercules and P-3 Orions by the dozens.
It was really a kind of military orgy. Unbelievable.

The Shah air force was playing a very dangerous game with the CIA - operation DARK GENE. Basically IRIAF RF-5 and RF-4 crossed the Soviet border at low level and full speed to drive the Soviet air defence crazy. Then behind the frontier CIA and IRIAF ELINT aircraft and five ground stations listened to the chaos and mayhem and searched for holes into the SAM cover where B-52s could penetrate in WWIII. No kidding. The Shah lost half a dozen of combat aircraft and crews to that craziness. In vengence the IRIAF F-14s scared the hell out of Soviet MiG-25R, painting it with their AWG-9 radars, the message being "if we fire a Phoenix, you are dead meat. Understood ?" The soviets backed down.

Project FLOWER, yes, with Israel. They wanted Shavit-1 technology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Flower

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Dark_Gene
 
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Is this the best place to bring up a) the insane military plans the Shah had for Iran, b) I knew someone who met/served said Shah and c) had a very low opinion of said Shah?

The tragedy of the Shah was that, on one side, he modernized Iran but on the other side, the SAVAK (or SHAVAK, can't remember the exact name) secret police would make Saddam or Bachar or Pol Pot pale in horror. Political opponents were butchered, really.
The military buying spree was a huge burden on the country budget. And the 1977 ceremonies for the 2000 years of Persia were dispendious to the extreme - Mobutu, Amin Dada or Bokassa style.

It is not really surprising the regime collapsed in one year or so, in 1978-79. The iranians had enough - and then they got the Mullahs. Yeah.

If you want to get an idea of how it was under the shah, watch this movie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_(film)
It is funny and a total heartbreak at the same time.
 
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What was he planning to do with all this, or did he just think it'd be cool?

The cool factor. Like this wasn't just client state material; I mean this was top of the line NATO level equipment. And beyond that even. I mean F-14s!?! F-4s I can understand every western ally who could afford them had them. But F-14s? Something insane about that!
 
Well a lot of countries (Japan Israel SK Saudi Arabia) got F-15s and the IRIAF tested both in 1973 but finally went for Tomcats. The Shah also pumped money into Grumman which was near bankruptcy because of the Tomcat, the program itself being on the brink of cancellation... the Shah saved both.
Israel and Iran had similar issues by 1972, Mach 3 MiG-25R outran their Phantoms and AIM-7 Sparrows. Israel went for F-15s, Iran prefered Tomcats. C'est la vie.
 
It's notable that the US has repeatedly failed to notice or do anything about the danger signs that a valued Middle East ally/ 'client' regime was showing serious cracks and heading for disaster. First Carter and co. fail to notice anything going wrong with the Shah's regime in the mid-1970s despite the rising inequalities of wealth, narrow social base of the governing elite, popular hostility of the mass of 'outsiders', and refusal of the govt to alter course even to secure its own stability. The regime is hailed by Carter as a bastion of stability less than two years before it collapses spectacularly. Then in the run-up to the rise of ISIS the Americans fail to nudge, or blackmail, the narrowly-based and sectarian Shi'a party-based 'democratic' post-2003 regime in Baghdad into co-opting more of the Sunni majority in the N and W of the country into the governing coalition and widening access to govt jobs etc. The desertion of many Sunnis and ex-Baathists to the rebels and collapse of the govt's control of W Iraq in 2013-14 takes them totally by surprise and leaves them with an avoidable mess to clear
up, at far greater cost than if they'd insisted on a broader-based regime in Baghdad when they had control over it in 2003 ff.

What if the US leadership had actually listened to State Dept and Intelligence experts on both occasions and been more forcible with their clients when the latter were in need of their help (1960s for the Shah and 2003-8 for the Baghdad govt), by making financial help and US commercial deals contingent on political reform? Or would this entail having a President who actually had some basic knowledge of Middle Eastern affairs or listened to someone who did, rather than being obsessed with (a) saving money in the short term (b) presenting a 'light touch' approach that would not put lives or money at risk and inflame voters or party donors in an election year? What if Carter or an alternative 1976 Democrat election victor had had more foreign policy experience or a locally-experienced Secretary of State who could see what was going wrong in Iran? Even if an Islamic nationalist capture of the post-Revolution coalition was unexpected and at the time the pro-USSR 'Tudeh' party was seen as a greater threat, this could have led to US fears of the fall of the Shah leading to a military/ Communist coup backed up by Moscow and a forceful action to widen the base of the Iranian regime in time, eg in 1977-8. Indeed, as the Shah's health was secretly going downhill by this point it was feasible if this was leaked to Washington for the US to fear what might happen in a forthcoming regency for his under-age son and take measures to avert this - by pressurising the regime to go back to proper multi-party rule as per the 1906 constitution and reach out to the moderate faction of the sidelined ex-Mossadegh govt nationalist politicians? Ibrahim Yazdi and Karim Sanjabi? Or Sharif-Emami at an earlier date than in OTL?
Would the Iraq situation have been better if George W Bush had listened more to Colin Powell and less to his father's old allies (or kept the latter like Rumsfeld out of govt roles connected to military affairs and foreign policy)? Or if Obama had been more on the 'front foot' in Iraq after 2009 and less concerned to close down the US involvement, eg if the US had been able to contain Afghanistan better by a degree of 'devolution' to/ bribery of local Pushtun tribal leaders in the SE after 2002 to keep the Taleban back there by force with only a limited US military presence ?
 
RE: Obama, it probably helps if Iraq is seen as less of a shitshow, so maybe we can do a tandem PoD where things go better in Iraq 2006-9, Obama still wins because two-term fatigue, but there's less pressure to get the fuck out?
 
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