Iraq (World of Peace)

Iraq, officially the Iraqi Arab Federation, is a regional superpower consisting of a union between Iraq, Jordan, and Syria.

Background
In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq was tremendously defeated and left in humiliation. The army had sustained large amounts of casualties compared to the multi-nation alliance that they fought against. After this, Saddam Hussein decided to adopt a stance of compliance and "trust" with the victors, but secretly hid behind a desire to expand and regain the glory that his nation once had. With the presence of the 1991 uprising, the country had the perfect opportunity to claim passage into neighboring countries with the goal of rooting out "insurgents", which in reality was anyone that Hussein felt threatened the government. Eventually, in 2006, Syria and Jordan were informally annexed under this reason, and Iraq entered an alliance with neighboring Saudi Arabia to declare itself the Iraqi Federation. By then, American intervention was out of the question; the U.S. Army had pulled out almost completely from the low-priority region, and the Iraqi-Saudi economic alliance had placed a significant amount of the world's oil supply under their combined control. Using high prices on this knowingly-essential resource, the newfound Iraqi Federation had access to more funds that were put into various areas of development, mostly weapons research, and the country continued this path to essentially become the new dominant power in the Middle Eastern region, almost enough to compete with the United States itself.

Difference From Our World

 * The real life Ba'athist Iraq was overthrown by a 2003 invasion before any sort of expansionist dreams could be realized, but like the Invasion of Afghanistan, this was also done in retaliation of the 9/11 attacks. Since this does not happen in-universe, the 2003 invasion also does not happen, allowing this Iraq to remain much longer than it should have (at least until the invasion finally comes due....)
 * While Saudi Arabia and Iraq never formed any sort of alliance/unification in our world, there have been several attempts to create Arab unification with other countries in the past, such as with Libya and Egypt. Iraq itself has even attempted this with Jordan and Syria, and both countries are included in the in-universe federation, albeit unwillingly

Inspiration

 * "I play a lot of Desert Combat. A LOT. Both singleplayer and multiplayer, and as Iraq and the Coalition. Though winning every time as the Iraqis is ahistorical (with the balance nerf on the Abrams armor to add), it definitely contributed to this mess of an idea. But to be fair, I can totally see my lead-up scenario happening with Saddam still in power....just....in a more realistic, less powerful stance" - TheCalcMan