Rukarl
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There's no official definition of when a country is 'real', as ultimately they're all artificial.
Iraq by language including dialect, historical region and people are neither part of Persia, Arabia, the Levant or Anatolia. Excluding the Kurds (whom are Iranians to start with), the population is united and identifies with the same identity and refuses separation. This is why despite all the religiously ignited civil wars of the past decade, the country did not separate. There is no such will among anyone.. except for the Kurds. It's not because of Iran's intervention as you like to pull it.
This makes Iraq as 'real' as any other regional entity, such as Egypt, Arabia, Persia etc. Kuwait, Qatar, UAE etc. are another thing to discuss however as they do not share that much differentiation between themselves and the rest of (Saudi) Arabia.
The only difference between an Iraqi from the South and from the Mid-North is the Islamic sect, and that was not relevant till Iran's 1979 revolution sparked a religious wave throughout the region.
The US (not UN) sanctions on Iran were not as heavy as the UN sanctions on Iraq 1991-2003.
And Iran has not been through worse at all, it was not bombarded by the US including all its allies. You didn't get a no-fly zone or cruise missiles throughout the 90's, did not get a ground invasion as last and you did not have your government overthrown.
As for the last, Iran is larger than Iraq with a much larger population. Had Egypt joined us you'd be doomed as well.
You couldn't do much to Saddam's Iraq of 1988 which was the largest at its time, the US and its allies destroyed that completely. Now apply the same level of force they used against Iran instead and consider what would've happened. Then you'd indeed be in a far worse state.
The point here however is something else.
I think what others are trying to tell you is that in the end Iraq has fault lines in which it can not function as a healthy central state. There are too many disunifying factors that does not let it remain a proper state. That being said, respect to the Iraqis. No human deserves to live in fear or misery.
To be honest, Iran survived and beat back a modern agressive invasion due to sheer will power and religious nationalism.The US did attack our navy and shot down our passenger plane over the Persian Gulf. Didn't they? And do you know why? Because we had destroyed the Iraqi naval power and planned to cut off your oil exports through the Persian Gulf. Other Arab countries helped you export your oil using their tankers, which eventually forced us to respond to that. That started the Oil Tanker war between Iran and the USA during the last year of the Iraq-Iran war.
The Iraqi army grew so fast because both the US and the Soviet Union were arming you against Iran. If it weren't for the Iraq-Iran war, your army would've never become as large as it was. I'm sure you know that better than me. The French gave you Mirage-F1s without you paying for them. We had Iraqi POWs who spoke different Arabic dialects. Egyptians, Somalians, Moroccans, Yemenis. You had help from all Arab countries. Both financially and militarily. Only Syria and Algeria supported Iran while Lebanon and Libya had a neutral policy.
Your country after the war had enormous debts and you couldn't pay back the money for the weapons they had given you. That's why Saddam attacked Kuwait. Saddam thought that Arabs had fooled him and he very well knew that he couldn't pay back for all the support he had received during the war.
We have been under worse sanctions than Iraq in 1990s since 2009. If I'm wrong, correct me. But what kind of sanctions did you get that haven't been imposed on us yet?