The Middle East in an Axis Victory

Well i posted once: Map: German feared invasion of the Middle East (1941) but it talks about the routes the Germans might take, if the Germans succeed i can see both Iran and Iraq who where pro-Germans before they where invaded by the British in 1941 having their deposed monarchs reinstated.

Heard stories that king Farouk of Egypt was a Italian sympathizer but do not know if it is true, but doubt the Germans are going to let the Italians have sole control of the Suez Canal if they mange to successfully invade Egypt.

Would the Germans be willing to support an enlarged Iranian state though? Although in issues relating to the Arab states, due to their position on the map, I would have suspected the Germans to simply acquire naval bases in the event that they would have won. On the other hand, would the areas around Jersalem be conceded to the Palestinian Arabs or would the Germans want to take control of it for themselves for special reasons?

I cannot think of any scenario where the Axis are able to overrun the Middle East, sans a scenario where the Soviets do join the Axis in 1940 as was seriously considered.

Reflecting on it, maybe to an extent it could happen. The Italians could've taken Malta and overran Egypt in 1940 easily enough, shutting down the middle and eastern Med; I just don't think it's possible to bring Spain into the war to get Gibraltar, however. Med Strategy for 1941 instead of Barbarossa could see the Germans push into the Middle East via a Lehi-uprising in support in Palestine, Vichy Syria and the Pro-Axis coup in Iraq. Iran might be able to then align with the Axis, although I'd imagine the Soviets/British might be able to prevent that. The Axis can't move into Saudi Arabia though, as that would definitely provoke the United States too much.

Lehi repeatedly attempted to form an alliance with the Germans, offering to stage an Anti-British uprising and citing their similar political system as a ideological basis of the alliance.

As for the Italians, in general they performed rather well but their various failures at times tend to obscure their overall performance. The Greek campaign is a great example of this, in that by the time of the German intervention the Italians had, despite the initial Greek successes, said Greeks on the ropes; their forces were dangerously overextended both strategically and logistically, without fixed defenses, and they had a few weeks of munitions left. Concurrent to this, much is made of Operation Compass but what gets left out of that discussion is that the British offensive had reached the end of its logistical lines and was about to slam into well prepared Italian defenses, numerically superior and IIRC more than a match firepower wise.

You see this play out throughout the war as a whole as well. Rommel was notoriously dismissive of the Italians as a whole, especially their officer corps, but specifically noted the Italian soldiers were good fighters. This is backed up Western accounts, which note the tenacious, to the point of being suicidal, defense of Italian units in Tunisia; given the majority of Rommel's forces were Italians, this makes sense. On the Russian steppe, the 8th Army fought on even after being encircled, to the point the Russians in some cases were literally forced to overrun positions with their tanks. The Italians then burnt their unit standards as a fuck you to the Reds, and then staged a breakout on their own that saw some manage to escape which is a feat not many on the Axis side could claim in the Winter of 1942. When the RSI became a thing, their units developed a reputation as being the premier tank hunters of any side in the war and they used this to their advantage in December of 1944 to stage the last successful large scale offensive on the Axis side.