Your bar for "hypothetical" is in kind of a strange place.
Hypotheticals: The irony is that people like Sistani and Sadr would, if Saddam were in power, be in exile, under arrest, or dead.
If I were to bash a Ming vase with a ten-pound sledge, I predict it would break. Of course, I haven't actually proved this yet, so I suppose it's just "hypothetical."
Look up where Sistani and Sadr actually were during Saddam's regime, never mind the status of Islamic shrines and holy days, or the list of assassinations of religious figures, and explain to me your reasons for thinking anything would be different right now if we had never invaded Iraq.