You dont get the point. You are in your state because it was inevitable. Try to understand, you allowed yourself to get destroyed, because you had no unity, and there was no one to unite you, as you had nothing to unite over. Understand better? You are in this state because you allowed it. Tanks rolled in your streets because you allowed it. You cant say "no tanks were rolling it its streets" and use that to argue we "Iran has not been through anything in comparison" Yes no tank rolled down our streets because we did not allow it. Its not like they didn't try. They have been trying for decades, but we didn't allow it. We handled US. You have oil just like us. You had access to the world market, we didn't. The war cost us vastly more than it cost you. But what happened after the war? You attacked Kuwait because you were bankrupt and needed cash fast. We handled it and rebuilt our country and economy.
I dont like the current government, I am not a Persian, and I am not a Shia. But if any foreign power tries to overthrow our government, if any ethnic group tries to separate from Iran, or if any group starts sectarian conflicts. I dont care who they are, I will join the government, against the people.
Saying there was nothing to unite over shows a lack of understanding of group identity, you can manufacture an Identity around the silliest of things given proper understanding of human behavior and a good foundation to start from.
For Iraq the foundation of a great identity is there, Iraq is majority arab with other minorities, Baghdad was the capital of the Abbasid empire, the Islamic nation with greatest number of scientific acheivements, made by people of all ethnicities, the Islamic golden age, pretty much all sunnah writers came from here, the mecca of Shia is here... we can write pages .
It would have been trivial for any ape to unite the people around this common heritage, but not Sadam... Sadam wanted to impose Baathism, which is Arabism with some things added, an ethnicity based ideology about arabs and only arabs.
Sadam made kurds into baathist, a kurd 'forced' to be Arab, he oppressed Shias not acknowledging their differences, entered 2 unpopular devastating wars of which absolutely nothing was gained.
Who would unite under such a ruler ?
In the end, the shia developed a grudge against Sadam and would not fight for him, the Kurds were already given autonomy and helped bring the country down.
Ofcourse neither would have been able to stop a US military compaign of that size, so wether they would allow it or not is of moderate consequence.
But the keypoint here is, Sadam attempted to impose an Ideology incompatible with the country's history, ethnic/religous composition and heritage, its not that there is nothing to unite over, we simply had one of the worse rulers in contemporary history.
