Successful Baathist Syria-Iraq

ITTL the talks for a political merger of Syria and Iraq under the leadership of the respective wings of the Baathist party in the late 1970s are successful. Saddam Hussein soon outmaneuvers and marginalizes, purges, or co-opts all his rivals for the leadership of the new union of Syria-Iraq (or 'Syraq' for short). He spends the next few years consolidating both the new union and his absolute control of it. In the early 1980s, he exploits the post-revolutionary weakness of Islamist Iran, which is busy tearing itself apart with a violent power struggle between the dominant Islamists and their Communist, social-democratic, and Islamic socialist opponents and a purge of the old monarchist elites that wrecks the Iranian army.

Syraq invades Iran with the aim of seizing ethnically-Arab and oil-rich Khuzestan. The initial Syraqi offensive is a decisive success that overruns Khuzestan thanks to the grater resources granted by the union and a sensible strategy that concentrates Syraqi forces and air power. Iran's troubles are magnified by the poor choice of Iran's supreme guide Khomeini that distrusts and neglects the conventional army and instead focuses on poorly armed and trained if eager revolutionary militias for a counterattack. The Iranian forces bleed themselves with a series of human-wave attacks that accomplish few gains. The Iranians try to open a second front in Lebanon thanks to the support of Shiite militias. This worsens the chaotic situation of the Lebanese Civil War and eventually leads Syraq and Israel to a combined intervention in Lebanon that almost amounts to unspoken alliance of convenience. The conflict leads to a de facto partition of Lebanon between the southern and western portion controlled by Israel and its Maronite auxiliaries, and the northern and eastern portion controlled by Syraq and its Sunni auxiliaries. The Shiite militias are crushed, the Palestinians get split between a pro-Syraqi faction that is kept on a tight leash in northern Lebanon by Saddam, and an anti-Syraqi faction that is expelled from Lebanon.

The Iranians also attempt to stir up Kurd and Shiite opposition to the Baathist regime, but this actually accomplishes limited benefits for them. By the mid-late 1980s, Iran faces collapse because of demoralization from bloody defeats, economic collapse due to loss of oil revenues, and resurgent armed opposition to the Islamist regime. Khomeini is toppled by the Second Iranian Revolution and Iran is forced to sign a peace that concedes Khuzestan to Syraq. After a power struggle between the various revolutionary factions, a coalition between the social democratics, the Islamic socialists, and the resurgent monarchists defeats and purges the Communists and the Islamists. Iran remains plagued by Islamist terrorism for a few years, but eventually suppresses it. To rebuild its economy after the loss of most of its oil and gas revenue, Iran turns to exploitation of its mineral resources. Because of its hostility to Islamism, when the Taliban threaten to take over Afghanistan, the Iranians intervene to support the Northern Alliance, which takes over the country.

Saddam spends the next few years after the end of the Iran-Syraq war consolidating his gains and enacting a ruthless urge of Shiite and Kurd militant groups. In the early 1990s, a crisis develops in the Far East because of American opposition to the North Korean nuclear program. It escalates to US bombing of the NK nuclear sites, NK all-out attack against South Korea, Japan, and US bases in the region, and the Second Korean War. The American-South Korean-Japanese coalition stops the NK offensive and rolls them back all the way to the Yalu river, crushing all NK opposition and seizing its surviving leaders for war crimes trials. China is unhappy with the outcome but hesitant to intervene against superior American military power, especially after its recent domestic unrest and with Russia basically unable to provide help. It eventually gets pacified with an agreement that limits deployment of foreign forces in northern Korea above the 40th parallel. Korea is reunified under South Korean leadership and northern Korea gets gradually rebuilt and integrated into Western standards by a joint effort of America, Japan, and southern Korea.

Saddam exploits the opportunity of America being busy in East Asia to invade and annex Kuwait, picking its slant drilling into border oilfields as a pretext. The Americans are unhappy with the outcome but hesitant to undergo the effort of a two-theater war, and eventually negotiate their de facto acceptance of the new status quo in exchange for demilitarization of the Syraqi-Saudite border. Syraq spends a few years consolidating its new gains, then rising tensions with Israel in the early 2000s explode in a Syraqi-Israeli war. It plays out rather like the Kippur War w/o an Egyptian involvement, an intially successful Syraqi offensive drive in southern Lebanon and the Golan Heights is eventually stopped and pushed back by the Israeli that regain all the lost territory and drive forward to conquer more in Lebanon and western Syria. An armistice mediated by the USA, Europe, and Russia effectively restores the status quo ante. Both sides claim victory.

Because the Gulf War and US military deployment in Saudi Arabia did not occur, Osama Bin Laden and several of his associates got killed during the Iranian-Taliban conflict, secular Baathism looks like a more successful model than Islamism to many Muslims thanks to the successes of Syraq and the failure of Khomeinism, Islamist terrorism becomes a rather less serious problem for the world. It occasionally flares up across the Muslim world, especially due to Saudi Arabia sponsoring Sunni Islamist groups as proxies against Syraq and Iran, and more rarely spills over in the Western countries, but much less so than OTL.