EFRAIM KARSH is Professor - · PDF fileEFRAIM KARSH is Professor ... in Islam dating back to Ali Ibn-Abi-Talib, ... the Shatt were to have Iraqi pilots and fly the Iraqi flag,

EFRAIM KARSH is Professorand Head of the MediterraneanStudies Programme at King'sCollege, University of London.He has held various academicposts at the Sorbonne, theLondon School of Economics,Columbia University, HelsinkiUniversity and Tel-AvivUniversity. Professor Karsh haspublished extensively on MiddleEastern affairs, Soviet foreignpolicy and European neutrality.

PROFESSOR ROBERT O'NEILL,AO D.Phil. (Oxon), Hon D.Litt.(ANU), FASSA, FR Hist S,is the Series Editor of theEssential Histories. His wealthof knowledge and expertiseshapes the series content andprovides up-to-the-minuteresearch and theory. Born in1936 an Australian citizen, heserved in the Australian army(1955-68) and has held anumber of eminent positionsin history circles, includingthe Chichele Professorshipof the History of War atAll Souls College, Universityof Oxford, 1987-2001, and theChairmanship of the Board ofthe Imperial War Museum andthe Council of the InternationalInstitute for Strategic Studies,London. He is the author ofmany books including workson the German Army and theNazi party, and the Korean andVietnam wars. Now based inAustralia on his retirement fromOxford, he is the Chairman ofthe Council of the AustralianStrategic Policy Institute.

Essential Histories

The Iran-Iraq War1980-1988

Efraim KarshOSPREYP U B L I S H I N G

First published in Great Britain in 2002 by Osprey Publishing,

Elms Court Chapel Way, Botley, Oxford OX2 9LP

Email: [email protected]

© 2002 Osprey Publishing Ltd.

All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose

of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under

the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. 1988, no part of this

publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical,

chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or

otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright

owner. Enquiries should be addressed to the Publishers.

Every attempt has been made by the Publishers to secure the

appropriate permissions for material reproduced in this book. If

there has been any oversight we will be happy to rectify the

situation and written submissions should be made to the

Publishers.

ISBN 1 84176 371 3

Editor: Rebecca Cullen

Design: Ken Vail Graphic Design. Cambridge, UK

Cartography by The Map Studio

Index by Susan Williams

Picture research by Image Select International

Origination by Grasmere Digital Imaging, Leeds, UK

Printed and bound in China by L Rex Printing Company Ltd

For a complete list of titles available from Osprey Publishing

please contact:

Osprey Direct UK, PO Box 140,

Wellingborough, Northants, NN8 4ZA.UK.


Osprey Direct USA.

c/o Motorbooks International. PO Box 1,

Osceola, Wl 54020-0001. USA.


www.ospreypublishing.com

02 03 04 05 06 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Introduction 7

Chronology 9

Background to war

The quest for the empire of God 12

Warring sides

Strengths and weaknesses of Iran and Iraq 16

Outbreak

Invasion and after 22

The fighting

The delicate balance of incompetence 30

Portrait of a soldier

Iran's boy soldiers 62

The world around war

Nations at war 66

Portrait of a civilian

Death of a village 76

How the war ended

The poisoned chalice 79

Conclusion and consequences

A costly exercise in futility 84

Further reading 93

Index 94

Introduction

In most discussions of the Iran-Iraq War, ithas become commonplace to view theconflict as the latest manifestation of themillenarian Arab-Persian struggle fordomination of the Gulf and the FertileCrescent. Some historians have traced itsorigins to the pre-Islamic rivalry between theAchaemenid and the Babylonian empires,others to the 7th-century Arab-Muslimdestruction of the Sassanid Empire and thesubsequent conversion of most Persians toIslam. Still others view the war as theextension of the historic struggle for powerand control between Sunni and Shi'ite Islam:while Arabs are predominantly Sunni, withtheir emphasis on the Koran and thereligious law, Iranians were converted in the16th century to Shi'ism, a minority factionin Islam dating back to Ali Ibn-Abi-Talib,Prophet Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law.

Yet while these general causes mayexplain why wars between Iran and Iraq arepossible, or even probable, they do notexplain the occurrence of a specific war, letalone the lengthy periods of tranquillitybetween the two countries. To understandwhy the Iran-Iraq War broke out inSeptember 1980, it is necessary to look formore proximate causes, namely the nature ofthe two leaderships at the time and theirpolitical and ideological objectives.

Iran and Iraq: the historicallegacy

This is all the more important given thefact that the periods of convergence andco-operation between 20th-century Iran andIraq far exceeded those of hostilities andantagonism. During the late 1920s and theearly 1930s, Iraq and Iran collaborated inquelling ethnic insurgencies in both

countries. In 1937 they resolved their disputeover the strategic Shatt al-Arab waterway,separating Iraq from Iran at the head of theGulf, and the same year established aregional security defence alliance ('theSaadabad Pact'), together with Turkey andAfghanistan. In 1955 the two, together withBritain, Turkey and Pakistan, established theWestern-orchestrated Baghdad Pact forregional defence, and, with the exception ofad hoc brief crises, maintained workingrelations well into the late 1960s.

This peaceful co-existence was temporarilyupset in the early 1970s. Because of a seriesof events - the announcement in 1968 ofBritain's intention to withdraw from itsmilitary bases east of Suez, the diminution ofa direct Soviet threat following thesignificant improvement in Iranian-Sovietrelations beginning in the early 1960s, andrising oil revenues - the Iranian Shah,Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, embarked on anambitious drive aimed at asserting Iran'sposition as the leading power in the PersianGulf. To justify this policy, the Shah arguedthat the responsibility for maintaining Gulfsecurity lay solely with the local states andthat no external powers were to be allowedto interfere in the affairs of the region. Asthe largest and most powerful Gulf country,he believed Iran had a moral, historical andgeopolitical obligation to ensure stability inthis region not only for regional benefits butalso for the good of the world.

The Shah's perception of Iran as the'guardian of the Gulf manifested itself in animpressive build-up of Iran's militarycapabilities, as well as a string of Iranianmoves intended to signal - both to the Gulfcountries and the great powers - exactly whohad the final say in the region. One suchmove was the unilateral abrogation, in April1969, of Iran's 1937 treaty with Iraq on the

8 Essential Histories • The Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988

navigation rules in the Shatt al-Arab.According to this agreement, the frontierbetween the two countries had been fixed atthe low-water mark on the eastern side of theriver. This had given Iraq control over theentire waterway, except for the area near theIranian towns of Abadan and Khorramshahrwhere the frontier had been designated at thethalweg (the median, deep-water line).Another benefit Iraq derived from the treatyhad been the stipulation that ships sailingthe Shatt were to have Iraqi pilots and fly theIraqi flag, except in the area where thefrontier was fixed at the thalweg.

Now that Iran no longer considered itselfbound in any way by the old treaty, it refusedto pay tolls to Iraq and to comply with therequirement that all vessels using the Shattfly the Iraqi flag. In response, Iraq declaredthat Iran's unilateral abrogation of the 1937treaty was a blatant violation of internationallaw. Emphasising that the entire Shatt al-Arabwas an integral part of Iraq, and the country'ssole access to the Gulf, Baghdad threatenedto prevent Iranian vessels from using thewaterway unless they abided by the flaggingregulations. In complete disregard of thewarning, on 24 April 1969 an Iranianmerchant ship escorted by the Iranian navypassed through the disputed waters of theShatt to Iranian ports and paid no toll to Iraqas required by the 1937 treaty. Iraq did notstop the Iranian ship, but before long the twocountries were deploying military forcesalong the Shatt.

No less disturbing for the Iraqi leadershipwas the extensive military support extendedby Iran to the Kurdish separatist struggle,perhaps the thorniest problem of 20th-centuryIraq. Not only did Kurdish separatism have thepotential to render the Iraqi state non-viable,given the fact that approximately two-thirds ofits oil production and oil reserves come from apredominantly Kurdish area, and Kurdistan'sfertile lands make it Iraq's main granary, but italso raised the fearful spectre of the possibledisintegration of the entire state into threeentities: Kurdish, Shi'ite and Sunni.

Because of these weighty considerationsthe central government in Baghdad had

always been adamant on keeping Kurdistanan integral part of Iraq. The Kurds, for theirpart, sheltered by the rugged mountainousterrain which made military operations in thearea extremely difficult, embarked on asustained struggle against the regime, whichhas continued with varied intensity to date.As Iran's support for the Kurdish insurgencywas growing by the day, a direct Iraqi-Iranianmilitary confrontation ensued in the winterof 1973-74, which brought the Iraqi armyand economy to the verge of collapse.

In these circumstances, the Iraqi regimesaw no alternative but to seek some kind ofunderstanding with Iran which would leadto the withdrawal of Iranian support for theKurds. This took the form of the AlgiersAgreement of March 1975 which, at onestroke, terminated the armed confrontationbetween the two countries, settled the Shattal-Arab dispute, and paved the way for thesuppression of the Kurdish rebellion.According to the agreement, the joint borderwas to be demarcated in a way that implied,inter alia, the renunciation of the Iraqi claimto the Iranian province of Khuzestan (or, asArabs had been persistent in calling it,'Arabistan'). No less important from theIranian point of view, the agreementstipulated the delimitation of the riverboundaries in the Shatt al-Arab along the oldmedian, deep-water line, thus acknowledgingIran's sovereignty over half of the waterway.

There is little doubt that Iraq made themost concessions in the Algiers Agreement. Itpaid a high territorial price to secure theinviolability of its frontier, a fundamental andself-evident attribute of statehood,while Iran made no practical concessions(unless non-interference in the domesticaffairs of another sovereign state can be soconsidered). The severity of these concessionsis evident in the light of the supremeimportance of the Shatt, Iraq's sole access tothe Gulf, for Iraqi politico-strategic andeconomic needs. While Iran has a long Golfcoastline of about 1250 m (2000 km) Iraq isvirtually land-locked, with a Gulf coastline ofonly 25 m (40 km). While Iran had five navalbases along the Gulf coast, some of

Introduction 9

them beyond Iraq's effective operationalreach, Iraq had to rely on two naval bases,Basra and Umm Qasr, both very vulnerableand well within the range of Iranian artillery.

Whatever the balance of concessions, theAlgiers Agreement restored a sense of calm toIraqi-Iranian relations. Having achieved histerritorial objectives, the Shah became a status

quo power advocating the preservation of Gulfstability. Iraq, for its part, was neither able norinclined to undermine the newly establishedstatus. Instead the regime preferred to turninwards, to concentrate on the defeat of theKurdish insurgency, the reconstruction of itsarmed forces and the stabilisation of its social,economic and political systems.

Chronology

1979 26 January Shah Mohammed RezaPahlavi flees IranFebruary Ayatollah Khomeini arrives inTehran after 15 years of exile.Revolutionary forces take over government1 April Islamic Republic of Iran declaredJune The revolutionary regime startsurging Iraqis to rise against their rulers16 July Saddam Hussein becomesPresident of Iraq

1980 3 February Bani Sadr takes office asIran's first president8 March Iran withdraws its ambassadorfrom Iraq1 April Iraq's Deputy Premier, Tariq Aziz,escapes an Iranian attempt on his life15 April Abortive attempt on the lifeof Iraq's Minister of Information, LatifNusseif al-JasimMay-August Clashes along the borderintensify4 September Iran shells Khanaqin andMandali10 September Iraq claims to have'liberated' some disputed territory17 September Iraq abrogates the 1975Algiers Agreement and declares it willexercise full sovereignty over the Shattal-Arab23 September Iraqi forces invade Iran28 September Iraq halts at the outskirtsof Ahvaz and Susangerd; ready toaccept a ceasefire

5 October Iraq seeks ceasefire; rejectedby Iran6 October Khorramshahr surrounded.Street fighting begins22 October Abadan besieged by theIraqis24 October Khorramshahr falls25-26 October Iraq fires missiles atDezful30 November Iranian aircraft attackIraq's nuclear research centre atTuwaitha7 December Saddam Hussein announcesthat Iraq will hold the occupiedterritories but not advance further, andwill resort to a defensive strategy24 December First Iraqi air raid onIran's main oil terminal at Kharg Island

1981 5-11 January Major Iraniancounteroffensive around Susangerd fails19-20 March Unsuccessful Iraqiattempt to take Susangerd31 May Iranian attack nearQasr-e-Shirin and Dehloran7 June Israel destroys Iraq's Osiraqnuclear reactor20 June President Bani Sadr removed28 June Iraqi offer of a Ramadanceasefire rejected27-29 September Operation Thaminal-Aimma: Iran breaks siege of Abadan5 November Iraq offers Muharramceasefire. Rejected


29 November - 7 December OperationJerusalem Way: Iran retakes Bostan,threatening to cut off Iraqi forces inSusangerd12-16 December Iranian offensive inthe Qasr-e-Shirin area

1982 22-30 March Operation UndeniableVictory: Iranian offensive in DezfulShush area. Iraqi forces driven back10 April Syria closes its oil pipeline toIraqi oil12 April Saddam Hussein announces Iraqwill withdraw from Iran if it receivesguarantees that this would end the war24 April - 25 May Operation Jerusalem:Iran occupies most of Khuzestan(22 May - Khorramshahr liberated)10 June Iraq announces a ceasefire;rejected by Iran12 June UN resolution calls for aceasefire20 June Saddam announces that Iraqitroops will be withdrawn from allIranian territories within ten days13 July - 2 August Operation Ramadan:five Iranian offensives to capture Basra.Very small gains but large losses9 August Separate ministry for theRevolutionary Guards Corps (Pasdaran)established1-10 October Operation Muslim IbnAqil: directed against Baghdad andMandali. Repulsed1-11 November Operation Muharram:four Iranian offensives in the Amaraarea. Made small gains but failed topenetrate deep into Iraq

1983 6-16 February Operation Before Dawn:Iranian offensive in the southern sectorin the Musian area. Tailed10-17 April Operation Dawn: Iranianoffensive in the southern sector nearAmara. Failed4 May Tudeh Party dissolved in Iran7 June Iraq proposes a ceasefire. Offerrejected27 July Tariq Aziz announces Iraq willescalate attacks on oil installations in Iran22-30 July Operation Dawn 2: Iranianoffensive in Kurdistan. Advanced nine

miles (14.5 km) inside Iraq andcaptured the garrison of Hajj Omran30 July - 9 August Operation Dawn 3:Iranian offensive in the central front inthe region of Mehran. Repulsed20 October - 21 November OperationDawn 4: Iranian offensive in thenorthern sector aimed at takingPenjwin. Pushed a few miles into Iraq2 November Iraq warns merchantvessels to avoid the 'war zone' at thenorthern end of the Gulf

1984 February 'Tanker war' begins7-22 February First 'war of the cities'15-24 February Operations Dawn 5and 6: largest Iranian offensive in thewar to date. A thrust along a 150-mile(240 km) front between Mehran andBostan24 February - 19 March OperationKhaibar: series of Iranian thrusts in thedirection of Basra. Failed but not beforecapturing Majnun Island18-25 October Operation Dawn 7:limited Iranian offensive on the centralfront (Mehran)

1985 28 January - early February First Iraqioffensive since 1980 on the centralfront (Qasr-e-Shirin). Failed11-23 March Operation Badr: Iranianoffensive in the direction of Basra. Failed22 March - 8 April Second war of thecitiesJune Fighting on Majnun IslandJuly Month-long Iranian operation inKurdistanMid-August-December Iraqi aerialcampaign against Kharg Island.Approximately 60 raids

1986 6-10 January Iraqi attack on MajnunIsland9-25 February Operation Dawn 8:Iranian offensive on the southernfront. Fao Peninsula captured.14 February - 3 March OperationDawn 9: Iranian offensive in Kurdistan..Drove a few miles from Suleimaniyathen pushed back25 February UN resolution on aceasefire

Chronology 11

12-14 May Iraq captures Mehran. Offerto trade it for Fao dismissed by Iran30 June - 9 July Operation Karbala 1:Iran recaptures Mehran3 August Saddam announces afour-point peace plan12 August Successful long-range air raid onIran's oil terminal on Sirri Island (150 miles[240 km| north of the Strait of Hormuz)31 August Operation Karbala 2: Iranianoffensive in Kurdistan1-23 September Operation Karbala 3:Iranian offensive around the FaoPeninsula and Majnun Island25 November Air raid on Iran's LarakIsland oil terminal24-26 December Operation Karbala 4:Iranian offensive in the direction of Basra

1987 9 January - 25 February OperationKarbala 5: a large Iranian offensive inthe direction of Basra. Failed withheavy casualties14-18 January Operation Karbala 6:Iranian offensive in the Sumar area17-25 January Third war of the citiesFebruary-April Fourth war of the cities12 February Iranian Operation Fatah 4begins in Kurdistan7 March Operation Karbala 7: Iranianoffensive in the Hajj Omran area inKurdistan23 March US offers to protect Kuwaititankers in the Gulf6 April Kuwait suggests re-registrationof some tankers to US ownership forprotection, and seeks transfer of othersto Soviet registry6-9 April Operation Karbala 8: Iranianoffensive in the direction of Basra9 April Operation Karbala 9: Iranianoffensive in the Qasr-e-Shirin area14 April USSR announces it will leasethree tankers to Kuwait so as to reduceIranian attacks on Kuwaiti shipping15 April Iran warns Kuwait againstleasing tankers to outside powers6 May US agrees in principle to re-register11 Kuwaiti tankers under US flag20 July UN Security Council passesResolution 598 calling for ceasefire and

withdrawal of Iranian and Iraqi forces tointernationally recognised boundaries.Welcomed by Iraq and rejected by Iranfor not naming Iraq as aggressor22 July US Navy starts convoyingKuwaiti tankers flying US flag4 September Iran fires missile at Kuwait;Kuwait expels 15 Iranian diplomats22 September US ship attacks andcaptures Iranian mine-laying vesselwith mines on board8-22 October US sinks three Iranianpatrol boats in the Gulf; Iran fires missilesat unprotected US-owned tankers; USdestroys disused Iranian oil platform;Iraq attacks Kuwaiti oil terminal withSilkworm sea-to-sea missile

1988 14-15 January Iran attacks threetankers in two days29 February - 30 April Fifth war of thecities15-16 March Iraqi forces gas theKurdish town of Halabja, killingthousands of civilians19 March First Iranian-Kuwaiti militaryencounter as Iran attacks Bubian Island18 April Iraq recaptures the Fao Peninsulaafter two days of heavy fighting;American warships sink six Iranian vessels25 May Iraq recaptures territory aroundSalamcheh, held by Iran sinceJanuary 198725 June Iraq drives Iranian forces fromMajnun Island3 July USS Vincennes shoots downIranian airliner in the Gulf, mistaking itfor a fighter13-17 July Iraq pushes into Iranianterritory for the first time since 1982,then withdraws its forces and offers peace17 July Iran implicitly accepts aceasefire by unconditionally acceptingUN Resolution 59820 July Ayatollah Khomeini'sacceptance of a ceasefire broadcast onTehran Radio. Iraq continues theoffensive along the border20 August Ceasefire begins24 August Iranian and Iraqi foreignministers open peace talks in Geneva

Background to war

The quest for the empire ofGod

Slide to war

The status quo achieved by the AlgiersAgreement was brought to an abrupt end bythe Iranian Revolution of January 1979. Itwas headed by the radical cleric AyatollahRuhollah Khomeini, who had been expelledfrom Iran by the Shah in 1964 for hisopposition to the regime. Khomeiniespoused a militant religious doctrinerejecting not only the Middle Easternpolitical order, but also the contemporaryinternational system since both perpetuatedan unjust order imposed on the 'oppressed'Muslims by the 'oppressive' great powers.It was bound to be replaced by an Islamicworld order in which the territorial nation-state would be transcended by the broaderentity of the umma (or the universal Muslimcommunity); and since Iran was the only

In January 1979 the Shah of Iran, Mohammed RezaPahlavi, fled the country in the face of a popularrevolution. (Gamma)

country where the 'Government of God' hadbeen established, it had the sacred obligationto serve as the core of the umma and aspringboard for the worldwide disseminationof Islam's holy message. As he put it: 'Wewill export our revolution throughout theworld ... until the calls "there is no god butGod and Muhammad is the messenger ofGod" are echoed all over the world.'

Khomeini made good his promise. InNovember 1979 and February 1980widespread riots erupted in the Shi'ite townsof the oil-rich Saudi province of Hasa, exactingdozens of casualties. Similar disturbancesoccurred in Bahrain during 1979-80, whileKuwait became the target of a sustainedterrorist and subversive campaign. Yet themain thrust of the subversive effort wasdirected against Iraq. This was for two main

In February 1979 the exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeinitriumphantly returned to Tehran, after 15 years of forcedexile, as founding father of the Islamic Republic of Iran.(Gamma)

Background to war 13

reasons. First, Shi'ites accounted forapproximately 60 per cent of Iraq's totalpopulation, and they deeply resented thelongstanding discrimination exercised againstthem by the Sunni minority, less thanone-third their size; the revolutionary regimein Tehran could, and certainly did, entertainhopes that this Shi'ite community wouldemulate the Iranian example and rise againsttheir Sunni 'oppressors'. Secondly, given Iraq'sposition as the largest and most powerful Arabstate in the Gulf, it was viewed by therevolutionary regime as the main obstacle toIran's quest for regional hegemony. In thewords of the influential member of the Iranianleadership, Hujjat al-Islam Sadeq Khalkhali:'We have taken the path of true Islam and ouraim in defeating Saddam Hussein lies in thefact that we consider him the main obstacle tothe advance of Islam in the region.'

From their early days in power the clerics in Tehranembarked on a subversive campaign against Iraq's rulingBa'ath regime and its leader Saddam Hussein. In April1980, the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz,narrowly escaped an attempt on his life. (Gamma)

In June 1979 the revolutionary regimebegan publicly urging the Iraqi populationto rise up and overthrow the secular Ba'thregime, which had governed Iraq since thesummer of 1968. A few months later Tehranescalated its campaign by resuming supportfor the Iraqi Kurds (which had beensuspended in 1975), providing aid tounderground Shi'ite movements in Iraq andinitiating terrorist attacks against prominentIraqi officials. These reached their peak on1 April 1980 with a failed attempt on thelife of the Iraqi Deputy Premier, Tariq Aziz,while he was making a public speech inBaghdad. Two weeks later, the Iraqi Ministerof Information, Latif Nusseif al-Jasim,narrowly escaped a similar attempt. In Aprilalone, at least 20 Iraqi officials were killed inbomb attacks by Shi'ite undergroundorganisations.

The militancy of the Iranians stood in sharpcontrast to Iraq's appeasing approach. Not onlydid the ruling Ba'th regime refuse to exploit therevolutionary strife in Iran for political orterritorial gains, but it extended a hand offriendship to the new rulers in Tehran: theIranian Prime Minister, Mehdi Bazargan, wasinvited to visit Baghdad, Iraq offered its goodoffices in case Iran decided to join thenon-aligned movement, and the revolutionaryregime was praised for reinforcing the 'deephistorical relations' between the two peoples.In a speech on 17 July 1979, shortly after hisascendancy to the presidency, Saddam Husseinreiterated Iraq's desire to establish relations offriendship and co-operation with Iran, basedon mutual non-interference in internal affairs.

By the end of 1979, however, little wasleft of the official optimism with which Iraqhad greeted the Iranian Revolution, and theBa'th leadership moved to contain theIranian subversive campaign. It suppressedthe underground organisations, expellingsome 100,000 Iraqi Shi'ites from the country,attempted to organise a united pan-Arabfront, and supported separatist Kurdish andArab elements within Iran. Thesecountermeasures, however, failed to impressthe ayatollahs. On 8 March 1980 Iranannounced that it was withdrawing its


ambassador from Iraq, and by 7 April itsremaining diplomatic staff had been orderedhome. The following month theIranian-Iraqi confrontation entered a newand more dangerous phase with clashesalong the common border. These escalated inAugust into heavy fighting, involving tankand artillery duels as well as air strikes.

Iran's subversive activities in general - andthe protracted and escalating border fightingin particular - put the Iraqi leadership in analmost impossible position. On the onehand, war at that particular juncture couldnot be more ill-timed. Due to the world oilboom in 1979 and 1980, the Iraqi economyenjoyed unprecedented prosperity. Oil exportrevenues rose from $1 billion in 1972 to$21 billion in 1979 and $26 billion in 1980.During the months preceding the war, theserevenues were running at an annual rate of$33 billion, enabling the regime to carry outambitious development programmes.Numerous construction projectsmushroomed throughout the country.Baghdad was grooming itself to host thesummit of the non-aligned movement in1982. The living conditions of many groupswithin Iraq were on the rise. War could onlyrisk these achievements and, in consequence,damage the domestic standing of the Ba'th.

Yet, in the face of the growing evidence ofIran's real agenda, the Iraqis becameincreasingly reluctant to live in the shadowof the Iranian threat. The revolutionaryregime in Tehran was nothing like anythingthey had met before. The Shah, for all hismilitary power and ambitious designs, wasviewed as unpleasant but rational. Certainlyhis goals were opposed to Iraqi nationalinterests, and their satisfaction camenecessarily at Iraq's expense. However, he didnot seek to remove the Ba'th regime, andwas amenable to peaceful co-existence oncehis objectives had been achieved. Therevolutionary regime, on the other hand,was a completely different type of rival - anirrational actor motivated byuncompromising ideology, and by thepursuance of goals that were whollyunacceptable to the Ba'th regime.

To the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein,this threat seemed particularly ominous.Ascending to power in July 1979, heperceived the world as a violent, hostileplace where the ultimate objective of stayingalive, and in power, justified all means. Thisbleak vision of humanity, memorablydescribed some 350 years previously byThomas Hobbes, drove Saddam to transformIraq into one of the world's most repressivepolice states. During his years in power -both as de facto leader under PresidentAhmad Hasan al-Bakr since the early 1970s,and as President - Saddam completelysubjected the ruling Ba'th Party to his will,sterilising its governing institutions andreducing the national decision-makingapparatus to one man, surrounded by adocile flock of close associates. Pre-emptingany and all dissent through systematicpurges (his ascent to the presidency, forexample, was accompanied by theelimination of hundreds of party officialsand military officers, some of whom wereclose friends and associates), he subordinatedall domestic and foreign policies to one, andonly one, goal: his political survival.

Now that the mullahs in Tehran wouldnot relent their sustained assault on hisregime, Saddam was gradually driven to theconclusion that the only way to deflect theIranian threat was to exploit Iran'stemporary weakness following the revolutionand to raise the stakes for both sides byresorting to overt, state-supported armedforce. On 7 September 1980 Iraq accusedIran of shelling Iraqi border towns fromterritories which, according to the AlgiersAgreement, belonged to Iraq, and demandedthe immediate evacuation of Iranian forcesfrom these areas. Soon afterwards Iraqmoved to 'liberate' these disputed territoriesand, on 10 September, announced that themission had been accomplished. For his part,the Iranian acting Chief-of-Staff announcedon 14 September that his country no longerabided by the 1975 Algiers Agreement on theland borders. Saddam responded three dayslater by abrogating the agreement. From herethe road to war was short.

Background to war 15

The frequent and blatant Iranian violations of Iraqi sovereignty haverendered the 1975 Algiers Agreement null and void.' Five days afterIraqi President Saddam Hussein unilaterally abrogated the agreement,Iraqi forces invaded Iran. (Gamma)

Warring sides

Strengths and weaknesses ofIran and Iraq

Since the creation of the modern MiddleEast in the wake of the First World War onthe ruins of the Ottoman Empire, Iran hasbeen the pre-eminent power in the PersianGulf, far superior to Iraq on everyquantitative index of power. Iran's territoryis three times the size of Iraq's, itspopulation is similarly larger (39 million in1980, compared with Iraq's 13 million),and its 2,000-kilometres-long coastline is50 times longer than that of Iraq.

Moreover, while neither of the twocountries is demographically homogeneous,Iraq's ethnic and religious divisions are fardeeper and more intractable than those ofIran. It is a country where the mainnon-Arab community, the Kurds, has beenconstantly suppressed, and where themajority of the population, the Shi'ites, hasbeen ruled as an underprivileged class by aminority group, the Sunnis, less thanone-third their number. In contrast, theShi'ites of Iran (about 95 per cent of thepopulation) are governed by fellow Shi'ites,while the proportion of Kurds in Iran'spopulation is less than half that of Iraq.

To this must be added Iraq's geopoliticaland topographical inferiority to Iran. Notonly is Iraq virtually landlocked andsurrounded by six neighbours, with at leasttwo - Turkey and Iran - larger and morepowerful, but its foremost strategic andeconomic assets are dangerously close tothese two states. The northern oil-richprovinces of Mosul and Kirkuk, accountingfor most of Iraq's oil production, lie nearthe Turkish and Iranian borders, whileBaghdad and Basra are only 120 and

Since the inception of the modern state of Iraq in 1921,its largest community, the Shi'ites, have been ruled as anunderprivileged class by their Sunni counterparts, lessthan one-third their number (Rex Features)

30 kilometres respectively from the Iranianborder. The Shatt al-Arab waterway, Iraq'sonly outlet to the Gulf, can easily becontrolled by Iran. This stands in stark

Warring sides 17

contrast to Iran's major strategic centres,which are located deep inside the country(Tehran is some 700 kilometres from thefrontier) and enjoy better topographicalprotection than their Iraqi counterparts.

Building on these intrinsic strengths,during the 1970s the Shah transformed theIranian military into a formidable forcearmed with the most advanced Westernmajor weapons systems. By early 1979, theIranian air force had 447 combat aircraft,

including 66 of the highly advanced F-14s,compared with Iraq's 339 less sophisticatedaircraft. Iran's naval superiority was evenmore pronounced. The Iranian navy hadseven guided-missile ships (destroyersand frigates), four gun corvettes, sixmissile-armed fast attack craft (FAC) and14 hovercraft. The Iraqi navy was a muchmore modest force of 12 FAC.

The balance of forces on the ground wassomewhat more even. While the Iranian


army was much larger (285,000 against190,000), the number of combat formationsand major weapons systems was about equal:ten (small Soviet-style) Iraqi divisions wereorganised under three corps headquarterscompared with six (larger US-style) Iraniandivisions grouped into three field armies.Tank holdings were similar (1,800 Iraqiagainst 1,735 Iranian) as were artillery pieces(800 Iraqi, 1,000 Iranian). Modelled largelyon the Soviet forces, the Iraqi army wasrelatively strong in all kinds of armouredfighting vehicles (AFV).

Yet this apparent equality is quitemisleading. The Iranian army's only realistic

Upon seizing power in Iran the revolutionary regimeembarked on a systematic purge of the Shah's militaryand security forces. Many were court-martialled andsummarily executed. (Gamma)

mission was the security of Iran's westernborder (since the Soviet military threat waslargely discounted, at least from the early1960s). Iraq's army, on the other hand, hadto defend three critical frontiers - theIranian, the Turkish, and the Syrian - andalso to contain the Kurds. In fact, given theimplacable hostility between Iraq's andSyria's ruling Ba'th parties, in the late 1970sthe Syrian border was more of a security

Warring sides 19

problem than the Iranian. In 1975-76 thetwo countries came close to war over thedistribution of water from the Euphratesand Syria's direct intervention in theLebanese conflict.

This strategic balance was profoundlyreversed by the Islamic Revolution. Viewingthe armed forces as the Shah's instrumentof oppression and as the most dangerouspotential source of counter-revolution, themullahs established their own militia, theRevolutionary Guards, or Pasdaran, whileembarking on a systematic purge of themilitary. Between February and September1979, some 85 senior officers wereexecuted and hundreds more (including allmajor-generals and most brigadier-generals)were imprisoned or forced to retire. BySeptember 1980, some 12,000 officers hadbeen purged.

The purges dealt a devastating blow tothe operational capabilities of the Iranianmilitary: the army lost over half its officersin the ranks of major to colonel, while theair force lost half of its pilots and 15-20 percent of its officers, NCOs and technicians.Over and above the purges, about half ofthe regular servicemen deserted and manymore were killed during and after therevolution; conscription was not enforcedand some fighting formations weredissolved, including the Imperial Guard, thearmy's foremost brigade; others fell apart orwere much reduced.

By the outbreak of the war, Iran founditself inferior to Iraq: the Iranian army wasdown from 285,000 to around 150,000,whereas the Iraqi army stood at 200,000.The operational implications of thisdecrease in Iranian manpower were evenmore far-reaching. While the Iraqi armyhad increased its divisions to 12 since thefall of the Shah (by adding two newmechanised divisions), the operationalstrength of the Iranian army shrank to sixunderstrength divisions, which wereprobably no more than the equivalent ofbrigades. Hence, while Iraq could deployalmost all its major weapons systems(2,750 tanks, 2,500 AFV and some

920 artillery pieces), Iran could hardlydeploy half of its 1,735 tanks, 1,735 AFVand 1,000 artillery pieces.

The balance of forces in the air was nomore favourable to Iran. Apart from thesuspension of the Shah's ambitiousprocurement programmes (particularly theplan to buy 160 F-16 fighters), which hadbeen expected to significantly enhance theair force's operational strength, therevolutionary air force suffered from acutemaintenance and logistical problems. Keyavionics were removed from most of Iran'sF-14s with the departure of the Americanadvisers and many of the sensor,maintenance and logistical systems of theF-4s and F-5s were beginning to break downdue to a lack of spare parts and propermaintenance. Consequently, by theoutbreak of the war, the understrengthIranian air force (70,000 compared to100,000 in 1979) was able to fly only halfits aircraft. The Iraqi air force, on the otherhand, had modernised its front line withthe introduction of some 140 Su-20 andMiG-23 fighter aircraft and maintained ahigh level of serviceability (about 80 percent at the start of the war).

Only at sea was Iran's pre-1979superiority maintained. Even though thenavy did not completely escape the purges,and although it suffered from maintenanceand logistical problems, Iran's navalsuperiority had been so pronounced thatit could be maintained, regardless of thedeterioration in the navy's operationalstrength.

But numbers do not tell the whole story.The quality of military leadership, combatexperience, training, and command andcontrol also count. And in this respect,both armed forces had little to show forthemselves. Both were commanded bypoliticised and tightly controlledleaderships, where loyalty to the regime wasa prerequisite for promotion, where criticalthinking was tantamount to subversion,and where religious and social affiliationswere far more important thanprofessionalism.


Never forgetting the involvement ofmilitary officers in the 1953 attempt toforce him from his throne, the Shah tookgreat pains to keep the three services wellapart so that they were incapable ofmounting a coup or undermining hisregime. There was no joint chiefs-of-stafforganisation, nor were the three serviceslinked in any way except through the Shah,who was the Commander-in-Chief. Everyofficer above the rank of colonel (orequivalent) was personally appointed by theShah, and all flying cadets were vetted byhim. Finally, he used four differentintelligence services to maintainsurveillance of the officer corps.

These precautionary measures weremirrored on the Iraqi side. Keenly awarethat in non-democratic societies forceconstituted the main agent of politicalchange, Saddam spared no effort to ensurethe loyalty of the military to his personalrule. Scores of party commissars had beendeployed within the armed forces down tothe battalion level. Organised politicalactivity had been banned; 'unreliable'elements had been forced to retire, or elsepurged and often executed; senior officershad constantly been reshuffled to preventthe creation of power bases. The socialcomposition of the Republican Guard, theregime's praetorian guard, had beenfundamentally transformed to draw heavilyon conscripts from Saddam's home town ofTikrit and the surrounding region.

Saddam also sought to counterbalancethe military through a significant expansionof the Ba'th's militia, the Popular Army.Within a year of his seizure of power in1979, the Popular Army was more thandoubled - from 100,000 to 250,000 men.During the Iran-Iraq War it was to becomean ominous force some one million strong,using heavy weaponry and participating insome of the war operations. And while thisby no means put the Popular Army on a parwith the professional military, by denyingthe latter a monopoly over the state'smeans of violence, it widened the regime'ssecurity margins against potential coups.

Thus, like the Shah, Saddam created adocile and highly politicised militaryleadership, vetted and promoted on theprinciple of personal loyalty and kinshiprather than professional excellence.

The rapid expansion and modernisationof the Iranian and the Iraqi armed forcesalso had a detrimental impact on theiroperational competence. Each found itextremely difficult to train, expand andmodernise simultaneously. The problemswere made worse by the poor quality ofconscripts in both countries, for whom therapid absorption of advanced weapons wasextraordinarily difficult. Consequently,despite the massive advisory assistanceprovided by the arms suppliers (mainlythe United States and the Soviet Union),both countries were more or less incapableof maintaining their advanced majorweapons systems.

Moreover, both Iranian and Iraqi forceshad poor combat experience. In the case ofIran this was limited to the participation ofsix brigades, along with elements of thenavy and the air force, in the suppression ofa Marxist rebellion in Oman between 1972and 1975. Even this was more of a show offorce than real combat since the rebels hadnever numbered more than 2,000, withperhaps no more than 1,000 inside Omanat any given time. Also, the Shah'sdetermination to give combat experience toas many of his units as possible led to theirrotation in Oman on a three-month basis,too short a tour of duty to be really useful.

On the face of it, the Iraqi armed forcesseemed to have had more combatexperience. Not only did they take part inthe October 1973 War against Israel, butthey had fought a counter-insurgencycampaign in Kurdistan for more than adecade. However, the tactics employedduring the Kurdish campaign were hardlyapplicable to a conventional war, andindeed the preoccupation with the Kurdishinsurgency affected regular trainingprogrammes and thus operationalcapabilities. Nor was Iraq's combatexperience in the October War any more

Warring sides 21

impressive: the armoured division thatarrived at the Golan front ten days after thewar began was ambushed by Israeli forcesand lost some 100 tanks within a few hours.

In the field of command and control, itdid seem that Iraq had an edge at theoutbreak of the war, as Saddam, in hiscapacity as Commander-in-Chief of thearmed forces, controlled the war from theRevolutionary Command Council (RCC),where each of the three services wasrepresented. Iran had no joint staff. AbolHassan Bani Sadr, the Iranian President andCommander-in-Chief, tried to strengthen thecentral command structure, but his effortswere frustrated to a great extent by thepower struggle between the Pasdaran and thearmed forces. Consequently, at the outbreakof war, Iran had no central command-and-control system which could co-ordinate theexecution of its war strategy.

In qualitative terms, therefore, botharmed forces could be judged to be more orless equal. They suffered from similarproblems of military leadership caused bythe process of selection and promotion;they were both poorly trained; and bothhad low technical ability to maintain anduse their modern weapons. Their combatexperience was very limited and they weresaddled with inefficient command-and-control systems. Against this background ofrough qualitative equality, Iraq'squantitative superiority became all themore significant. Recognising thetemporary nature of this superiority, owingto Iran's fundamental prowess, the Iraqileadership hurried to take advantage of thisunique window of opportunity to pre-emptand frustrate the recovery of the Iranianarmed forces from their post-revolutionarydebacle.

Outbreak

Invasion and after

On 17 September 1980 Saddam Husseinaddressed his newly re-instated parliament.'The frequent and blatant Iranian violationsof Iraqi sovereignty', he said, 'have renderedthe 1975 Algiers Agreement null and void.'Both legally and politically the treaty wasindivisible. Once its spirit had been violated,Iraq saw no alternative but to restore thelegal position of the Shatt al-Arab to thepre-1975 status. 'This river', he continued toenthusiastic applause, 'must have itsIraqi-Arab identity restored as it wasthroughout history in name and in realitywith all the disposal rights emanating fromfull sovereignty over the river.'

The implications of this speech were notlong in coming. On 22 September, emulatingthe brilliant Israeli gambit of the Six DayWar in 1967, Iraqi aircraft pounded tenairfields in Iran in an attempt to destroy theIranian air force on the ground. This failed,but the next day Iraqi forces crossed theborder in strength and advanced into Iran inthree simultaneous thrusts along a front ofsome 400 miles (644 km).

The main effort, involving four of the sixinvading divisions, was directed against thesouthern province of Khuzestan, and aimedat separating the Shatt al-Arab from the restof Iran and establishing a territorial securityzone along the southern frontier. Withinthis framework, two divisions (onearmoured and one mechanised) loopedsouthwards and laid siege to the strategictowns of Khorramshahr and Abadan,while another two armoured divisionsleft the Iraqi towns of Basra and Amaraand in an enveloping movement securedthe territory bounded by the lineKhorramshahr-Ahvaz-Susangerd-Musian.

An Iranian refugee with his personal belongings, fleeingthe Iraqi invasion. (Gamma)

The operations on the central and thenorthern fronts were essentially secondaryand supportive efforts, designed to secure

Outbreak 23

Iraq against an Iranian counterattack. On thecentral front, the invading forces occupiedthe town of Mehran and advanced furthereast to the foothills of the Zagros Mountainsto secure the important road network linkingDezful with northern Iran west of the Zagrosand simultaneously block access to Iraq fromthat direction. Another thrust, furthernorth, secured the critical terrain forward ofQasr-e-Shirin, thus blocking the traditional

Tehran-Baghdad invasion route. A subsidiaryattack in the far north, near Penjwin,attempted to establish strong defencepositions opposite Suleimaniya, to protectthe Kirkuk oil complex.

The invading forces encountered noco-ordinated resistance, as the Iranianmilitary and the Pasdaran conducted theirwar operations separately, reporting toseparate leaderships. Though not taken by


The destruction of Iran's oil refinery in Abadan dealt aheavy blow to its oil-exporting capabilities. (Gamma)

Outbreak 25

surprise, the army had been unable tocomplete its war preparations and, as a result,had only one armoured division in the wholeof Khuzestan, with the majority of its unitsdeployed in the hinterland and the north(along the Soviet border and in Kurdistan). Inretrospect, this deployment turned out to beinvaluable in that it spared the army heavycasualties and allowed it to preserve itsstrength and to move on to the offensive.

The Pasdaran, a revolutionary militia established by theIslamic regime as a counterbalance to the professionalmilitary, bore the main brunt of the Iraqi invasion. Here, arevolutionary guard using a motorcycle to locate anddestroy Iraqi tanks. (Rex Features)

But this would seem to be the wisdom ofhindsight; in the short term, Iran's total lackof co-ordination prevented it from puttingup an effective defence, leaving the Pasdaranto bear the brunt of the Iraqi assault. Though


Outbreak 27

poorly trained and ill-equipped (they werearmed with light infantry weapons andMolotov cocktails), the Pasdaran fought withthe great fervour and tenacity that were tobecome their trade mark, making theIraqis pay a heavy price in built-up areas.A particularly ferocious battle raged inKhorramshahr, attacked by the Iraqis in earlyOctober. Each side suffered about 7,000 deadand seriously wounded, while the Iraqis alsolost over 100 tanks and armoured vehicles.By the time the whole of Khorramshahr wasin Iraqi hands, on 24 October, it had cometo be referred to by both combatants as'Khunistan', meaning 'city of blood'.

Nevertheless, what saved Iran from acomprehensive defeat was not the ferocity ofits military resistance but rather the limitedobjectives of the Iraqi invasion. Saddam'sdecision to go to war was not taken easily orenthusiastically. He did not embark on war inpursuit of a premeditated 'grand design' butwas pushed into it by his increasing anxietyabout the threat to his own political survival.War was not his first choice but rather an actof last resort, adopted only after trying allother means for deflecting Iran's pressure.It was a pre-emptive move, designed toexploit a temporary window of opportunityin order to forestall the Iranian threat to hisregime. If Saddam entertained hopes oraspirations beyond the containment of theIranian danger - as he may have done - thesewere not the reasons for launching the warbut were incidental to it.

The reluctant nature of Saddam's decisionto invade Iran was clearly reflected in hiswar strategy. Instead of attempting to deal amortal blow to the Iranian army and tryingto topple the revolutionary regime inTehran, he sought to confine the war byrestricting his army's goals, means andtargets. The invasion was carried out by halfof the Iraqi army - six of 12 divisions.Saddam's initial strategy also avoided targetsof civilian and economic value in favour ofattacks almost exclusively on militarytargets. Only after the Iranians strucknon-military targets did the Iraqis respondin kind.

Nor did Saddam's territorial aims gobeyond the Shatt al-Arab and a small portionof the southern region of Khuzestan, where,he hoped, the substantial Arab minoritywould rise against their Iranian 'oppressors'.This did not happen. The undergroundArab organisation in Khuzestan proved to bea far cry from the mass movementanticipated by the Iraqis, and the Arabmasses remained conspicuously indifferentto their would-be liberators.

Saddam hoped that a quick, limited, yetdecisive, campaign would convince Iran'srevolutionary regime to desist from itsattempts to overthrow him. By exercisingself-restraint, he sought to signal his defensiveaims and an intent to avoid all-out war withthe hope that Tehran would respond in kind,and perhaps even be willing to reach asettlement. In the words of the Iraqi ForeignMinister, Tariq Aziz, 'Our military strategyreflects our political objectives. We wantneither to destroy Iran nor to occupy itpermanently because that country is aneighbour with which we will remain linkedby geographical and historical bonds andcommon interests. Therefore we aredetermined to avoid any irrevocable steps.'

Apart from these overriding politicalconsiderations, Saddam's strategy of limitedwar reflected a keen awareness of Iraq'sgeographical constraints. On the one hand,Iran's strategic depth and the distance of itsmajor centres from the border constituted aformidable operational and logisticalobstacle to a general war. On the other, Iran'shuge hinterland and the remoteness of thebulk of its forces from the frontier allowedSaddam to secure his limited objectivesbefore the Iranian army could concentrateagainst his forces, or before the onset of thewinter rains in November, which could makeoff-road traffic in most parts of Iranextremely difficult.

Moreover, the nature of the terrain alsomilitated in the direction of a swift andlimited campaign, in that it was morefavourable to the defender. The Shatt al-Arabwaterway and the broad expanses ofmarshland and waterways hampered vehicle


traffic and thus considerably increased thelogistical problems faced by the Iraqiinvasion forces. Indeed, Iraq's relative successin crossing the numerous water obstacles inKhuzestan in the initial stage of the warresulted mainly from the lack of anorganised Iranian defence. Yet once giventhe necessary breathing space, Iran quicklyexploited the advantages offered by theterrain by flooding certain areas to denytheir use to Iraqi forces.

This mixture of political and geographicalconsiderations compounded Saddam's failureto grasp the operational requirements ofsuch a campaign. Rather than allowing hisforces to advance until their momentum wasexhausted, he voluntarily halted theiradvance within a week of the onset ofhostilities and then announced hiswillingness to negotiate a settlement. Thisdecision not to capitalise on Iraq's earlymilitary successes by applying increased

pressure had a number of dire consequenceswhich, in turn, led to the reversal of thecourse of the war. It saved the Iranian armyfrom a decisive defeat and gave Tehranprecious time to re-organise and regroup;and it had a devastating impact on themorale of the Iraqi army and hence on itscombat performance. Above all, the limitedIraqi invasion did nothing to endanger therevolutionary regime, nor to drive AyatollahKhomeini towards moderation.

Outbreak 29

Most governments, of course, would reactstrongly to a foreign armed intervention, buta revolutionary regime under attack is all themore likely to respond with vehemencewhen it has not yet gained full legitimacyand still has many internal enemies. Like theFrench almost two centuries earlier, theIranians channelled national (and religious)fervour into resisting an external threat.Instead of seeking a quick accommodation,the clerics in Tehran capitalised on the Iraqiattack to consolidate their regime, diminishthe power struggle within their own ranksand suppress opposition to their rule. Asearly as 24 September, the Iranian navyattacked Basra and, on the way, destroyedtwo oil terminals near the port of Fao,thereby severely reducing Iraq's oil-exportingcapacity. The Iranian air force struck at avariety of strategic targets within Iraq,including oil facilities, dams, petrochemicalplants and the nuclear reactor near Baghdad.By 1 October, Baghdad itself had beensubjected to eight air raids. Iraq retaliatedwith a series of strikes against Iraniantargets, and the two sides quickly becameinterlocked in widespread strategic exchanges.

Perhaps in recognition of his mistake, inlate October to early November 1980,Saddam attempted to reverse the tide ofevents by striking in the direction of Dezfuland Ahvaz, only to discover that it was toolittle too late. Had the two cities beenattacked in September, Iranian resistancemight well have crumbled. By November,with these sites transformed into militarystrongholds, and in the face of heavy winterrains, Iraq found their occupationunattainable. As a result, Saddam had to paya far higher price for a limited invasion thanhe had anticipated.

The Iraqi invasion allowed Iran's revolutionary regimeto consolidate its power and rally the nation behind itswar effort. (Gamma)

The fighting

The delicate balance ofincompetence

With the fall of Khorramshahr on 24October 1980, the two combatants settledfor static warfare, which was to continue forsome eight months. Having swept aside thePasdaran and occupied the territoriesassigned as the objectives, Iraq seemedquite satisfied with its strategic position andshowed no appetite for further territorialgains. On 7 December Saddam announcedthat Iraq had reverted to a defensivestrategy and would attempt no furtheradvances. Iran, for its part, beset by

domestic instability and busy regrouping itsforces, was not yet prepared to move on tothe offensive. Fighting was consequentlyreduced to mutual artillery exchangesand air raids, especially against strategictargets, with ground operations limitedto sporadic sabotage raids by Iraqi andIranian forces.

With the halt of the Iraqi invasion in October 1980,fighting was reduced to artillery exchanges and air raidsagainst strategic targets. (Gamma)

The fighting 31

Abol Hassan Bani Sadr, Iraq's President and Commander-in-Chief at the start of the war, was sacked from his postin June 1981 due to unbridgeable differences with theclerics. (Gamma)

There were a number of deviations fromthis pattern. At the end of December Iraqi

forces advanced in the vicinity of Penjwin toprovide better protection for the Kirkuk oilfields, incapacitated by a string of Iranian airstrikes, and to support Kurdish guerrillasoperating in northern Iran at the time. Forits part Iran made one significant attempt tobreak the stalemate: on 5 January 1981 an


armoured division broke out of Susangerdand crossed the Karkheh River to the west inan attempt to breach the Iraqi lines. Thiscounteroffensive was initially successful andmanaged to penetrate deep into Iraqi lines.But success was shortlived: the Iraqi linestrained but held. Within a few days Iraqiforces managed to envelop the advancingIranian division and almost annihilate it inone of the largest tank battles of the war. TheIranian losses in the abortive offensive wereheavy: approximately 100 M-60 andChieftain tanks destroyed and 150 captured.Iraq lost some 50 T-62 tanks.

Both belligerents exploited the period ofstatic war to re-organise and rebuild theirforces. Drawing on its bitter experience inthe battle for Khorramshahr, Iraqconcentrated on establishing new infantryunits and tried also to provide its forcesencamped in Iran with an adequate long-stay logistical infrastructure. This includedthe construction of a paved highway fromBasra to the front lines near Ahvaz,necessary for keeping the forces there

resupplied during the winter, and of anetwork of earthen walls along the front toprotect against the flooding of the Karunand other rivers.

For its part, Iran used the lull in thefighting to improve its defensive system byflooding certain areas so as to deny their useto Iraqi troops. The purge of the army wasperemptorily stopped and reservists werecalled to duty; intensive trainingprogrammes (especially for tank crews andmaintenance personnel) were initiated, andthe army was regrouped and redeployed inthe theatre. Large numbers of Pasdaran weremobilised and a youth volunteer force, theBasij e-Mustazafin (Mobilisation of theDeprived), was established. By way ofovercoming the lack of operational

BELOW and RIGHT In the spring of 1981 Iran moved tothe offensive and in a series of large-scale operationsdrove the Iraqi forces from its territory. Here Iraniantroops on their way to battle during OperationJerusalem Way, and celebrating the capture of anIraqi position. (Gamma/Rex Features)

The fighting 33

co-ordination revealed in the early phase ofthe war, when the army and the Pasdaranhad adamantly refused to co-operate witheach other, a seven-man Supreme DefenceCouncil was established to run the war.Headed by President Bani Sadr, itcomprised three members of the professionalmilitary and three senior mullahs, one ofthem acting as Khomeini's personalrepresentative.

Iran counterattacks

The Iranian measures bore the desired fruit.By the spring of 1981 the army had managedto re-organise and regroup, to establish aworking relationship, however fragile, withthe Pasdaran, and to move on to theoffensive. In a prolonged and sustainedeffort, planned and carried out under theleadership of the army, and combining

conventional warfare with the revolutionaryzeal of the Pasdaran and the Basij, Iranmanaged to drive Iraqi forces from itsterritory.

In May the Iranians managed to dislodgeIraqi forces from the heights controllingSusangerd and to secure the approaches tothe city. This victory was followed in lateSeptember 1981 by yet another Iranianoffensive, this time in Abadan. Though Iraqhad expected the offensive for some time, itwas nevertheless taken by tactical surprise asa result of diversionary Iranian attacks invarious parts of Khuzestan, which led it toredeploy some forces away from Abadan.After three days of heavy fighting, from27 to 29 September, the Iranian forces (twoinfantry divisions and Pasdaran units witharmoured and artillery support) succeeded inpushing an Iraqi armoured division backacross the Karun River, thus lifting the siegeof Abadan.


Iranian women help the war effort. (Gamma)

These setbacks had a devastating impacton Iraqi morale. Finding themselvesentrenched for months in hastily prepareddefence positions, subjected to thehardships of the Iranian winter and the heatof the summer, the Iraqi troops began tolose all sense of purpose. This lack of will,which was reflected in reports of disciplineproblems and a growing number ofdesertions, was quickly exploited by Iranfor yet another major offensive. Lasting

from 29 November to 7 December,Operation Jerusalem Way involved fiercefighting amid mud and rain, with sevenPasdaran brigades and three regular brigadesagainst a defending Iraqi division. When thefighting was over, Iran had retaken the townof Bostan and forced the Iraqis to retreatand redeploy.

Operation Jerusalem Way had a numberof important operational implications.Straining Iran's planning, operational andcommand-and-control skills to their utmost,it reflected an improved capability to

The fighting 35

organise and control large-scale and complexmilitary operations. The counteroffensivealso witnessed the first successful use of the'human-wave' tactics that would come todominate the battlefield, as the ecstaticPasdaran stormed the heavily fortified Iraqipositions without any artillery or air support.Finally, the occupation of Bostan and itsenvirons increased Iraq's logistics problems.With the road between Amara and the frontnow under full Iranian control, Iraq wascompelled to resupply its forces in the Ahvazarea from the far south.

Anxious to stem the mounting tide ofIranian successes, Baghdad quickly sued forpeace. In February 1982 Taha YasinRamadan, Iraq's first Deputy Prime Ministerand one of Saddam's closest associates,declared that Iraq was prepared to withdrawfrom Iran in stages before the conclusion ofa peace agreement, once negotiations hadbegun 'directly or through other parties' andshowed satisfactory signs of progress. Acouple of months later Saddam in personfurther lowered Iraq's conditions for peace bystating his readiness to pull out of Iran,provided that Iraq was given sufficientassurances that such a move would lead to anegotiated settlement. The scornful Iranianresponse came in the form of a series oflarge-scale offensives which practically drovethe Iraqi forces out of Iran.

The first of these offensives, OperationUndeniable Victory, started on 22 March1982 in the Dezful Shush area and lastedapproximately a week. It was the largestcampaign in the war until then and involvedmore than 100,000 troops on each side. Iransent into battle the equivalent of four regulardivisions (some 40,000-50,000 troops), about40,000 Pasdaran, and some 30,000 Basij. TheIraqi forces were made up of the newlyformed Fourth Army Corps, consisting ofeight divisions, together with someindependent brigades and specialised units;of these, three divisions were holdingKhorramshahr, and at least another threewere defending the Khorramshahr-Ahvazrailway line. Both sides conductedcombined-arms operations which madeeffective use of infantry, artillery, armourand close air support. Because of itsdecreasing number of front-line aircraft(70-90 operational in mid-1982), Iran reliedon attack helicopters for most close airsupport missions, while Iraq employed strikeaircraft, flying more than 150 sorties per day.

Commanded by the young and energeticChief-of-Staff, General Sayed Shirazi, theIranian offensive began with a surprise nightattack by armoured units, followed up withsuicidal human-wave assaults by Pasdaranbrigades of some 1,000 fighters each.


Following each other in rapid succession,with a view to exhausting the enemy'sammunition, these brigades managed tokeep their momentum and to overwhelmthe Iraqi positions in the face of heavycasualties. Incited by fiery rhetoric frommullahs, who often led the assaults on theIraqi positions, second-echelon brigadeswere spoiling for a fight and could hardlywait to replace weakened or decimatedfront-line units.

In glaring contrast to these daring tactics,Saddam adopted a highly circumspectapproach, ordering his forces to hold on totheir positions and attempt neither to moveforward nor to withdraw; the most he wasprepared to authorise was a localcounterattack with an armoured division -which was readily repulsed by the Iranians.It was only after five or six days of fightingthat Saddam realised the full extent of thedanger to his forces and ordered a hastyretreat. But this was too little too late: bynow the Iranians had managed to encircleand destroy two Iraqi divisions, taking in theprocess 15,000-20,000 prisoners and seizinglarge quantities of weaponry, including some400 tanks.

The final nail in the coffin of the Iraqiinvasion was driven during April-May 1982by Operation Jerusalem and the recaptureof Khorramshahr, whose fall at thebeginning of the war had been the highpoint of the Iraqi invasion. Involving some70,000 troops, mostly Pasdaran, withinflexible battle plans which combinedclassical manoeuvres with guerrilla-typetactics, the operation consisted of twoconsecutive attacks on the Iraqi strongholdsin Khuzestan. The first, which lasted from24 April to 12 May, succeeded in drivingIraqi forces out of the Ahvaz-Susangerd areaand secured a bridgehead on the west bankof the Karun River. After two weeks of bitterfighting, and in the face of possibleencirclement, Iraqi troops withdrew fromthe Ahvaz-Susangerd area and redeployednear Khorramshahr, anticipating an Iranianattack on that city. This was not long incoming. Having consolidated their positions

and repulsed a large-scale Iraqicounteroffensive on 20 May, the Iraniansbegan an all-out assault on Khorramshahr.After two days of fighting, the panic-strickenIraqis fled in large numbers, leaving behinda substantial amount of military equipmentand some 12,000 of their own troops tobecome prisoners of war.

Into Iraq

In one of his wisest strategic moves duringthe war, Saddam decided to bow to theinevitable, to withdraw from Iranianterritory still under Iraqi control and todeploy for a static defence along theinternational border. He reckoned that hisdemoralised and afflicted army wasincapable of maintaining its position in Iran,and that the only conceivable way ofcontaining the Iranian threat was through aformidable line of defence on Iraqi territoryalong the border. Using the Israeli invasionof Lebanon on 6 June 1982 as a pretext, heoffered Iran the chance to stop fighting andto send their troops to the Palestinians' aid,and on 20 June he announced that histroops had started withdrawal from Iran andwould complete it within ten days. Thismove, however, failed to appease the clericsin Tehran. Flushed with their newly wonsuccesses, they dismissed the Iraqi initiativeout of hand and escalated their declared waraims to include not only the overthrow ofthe Iraqi leadership but also $US 150 billionin reparations and the repatriation of some100,000 Shi'ites expelled from Iraq beforethe outbreak of the war.

Since it is doubtful whether anybody inTehran seriously believed that Iraq wouldaccept these draconian conditions, thehardening of the Iranian line presaged a shiftof the war into Iraqi territory. On 21 June, aday after Saddam's peace proposal, Khomeiniindicated that an invasion of Iraq wasimminent, and the following day Chief-of-Staff Shirazi vowed to 'continue the waruntil Saddam Hussein is overthrown so thatwe can pray at [the holy Shi'ite town of]

The fighting 37

Karbala and Jerusalem'. On 13 July alarge-scale offensive was launched in thedirection of Basra, the second mostimportant city in Iraq.

This time, however, Iran was unpleasantlysurprised, as the offensive encountered asolid, well-entrenched Iraqi defence. Havingrecognised the precarious Iraqi position, asearly as the autumn of 1981 Saddam hadstarted to prepare his army for theeventuality of an Iranian invasion of Iraq.The size of the Iraqi army was more thandoubled - from 200,000 (12 divisions andthree independent brigades) in the summerof 1980 to some 500,000 (23 divisions andnine brigades) by 1985 - and an extensivedefence system was built along the frontier,behind which the bulk of the Iraqi army wasdeployed. Approximately eight divisions (theThird Army Corps) were deployed in thesouthern sector to defend Basra; theSecond Army Corps, comprising about100,000 troops in ten divisions, wasdeployed on the central front to forestallIranian attacks in the direction of Baghdad;

the northern front was the responsibility ofthe First Army Corps (two divisions). TheFourth Army Corps was used as a strategicreserve.

Iraq's preparations proved rewarding: fiveconsecutive human-wave assaults in thedirection of Basra in the summer of 1982,involving some 100,000 men, failed tobreach the Iraqi defence and were repulsedwith heavy losses. A particularly oneroushuman toll was paid by the Basij, who wereused as canon fodder, moving through theIraqi minefields without any minesweepingequipment so as to clear them for theadvancing Pasdaran brigades.

These offensives also saw the first useof gas by Iraq, albeit in an extremelycircumspect fashion: it did not go beyondthe employment of non-lethal tear gas in asmall segment of the battlefield, and Iraqresorted to this action only after warning theIranians in advance. Yet the success of thisexperiment (the gas reportedly frustrated the

Praying before battle. (Gamma)


operations of an entire Iranian division)served to encourage future Iraqi use ofchemical weapons.

The failure of the summer 1982 offensivekindled a heated debate within the Iranianleadership about the prudence of invadingIraq. Fearing that such a move woulddangerously overextend Iran's militarycapabilities, the army voiced its oppositionto the continued invasion, with Shirazireportedly threatening to resign if'unqualified people continue to meddle withthe conduct of the war'. The military wassupported by a number of prominentmoderate politicians, notably President AliKhameini, Prime Minister Mir HosseinMussavi, and Foreign Minister Ali AkbarVelayati, who opposed the invasion on thegrounds of its exorbitant human, materialand political costs. They were confronted bya powerful hardline group, including themullahs on the Supreme Defence Council,headed by the influential Speaker of theparliament, Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani,

Iran's liberation of Khorramshahr in May 1982 drovethe final nail in the coffin of the Iraqi invasion. Some12,000 Iraqis became prisoners of war (Gamma)

The fighting 39

who urged the acceleration of the militaryoperations at all costs, so as to prevent theArab world and the international communityfrom rallying behind Iraq.

Though the hardliners eventually won theupper hand, with two large-scale offensiveslaunched in the autumn of 1982 in thedirection of Baghdad, theirs was a Pyrrhicvictory. The Iranian forces proved unequal tothe task. Many experienced men who hadvolunteered 'to save the country' returned tocivilian life once Iraqi forces were driven out.More seriously, the decision to invade Iraqundermined the fragile basis of co-operationbetween the military and the Pasdaran.

Never satisfied with its subordination tothe army in the wake of the Iraqi invasion,the Pasdaran persistently strove to disinheritthe army from its pre-eminence in theconduct of the war. They were supported inthis goal by the mullahs, who wished to seethe Pasdaran transformed into Iran'sforemost military force that wouldeventually absorb the regular army. Animportant step in this direction was made inNovember 1982, when the Iranianparliament approved the formation of a newPasdaran ministry. Seizing responsibilityfrom the ministry of defence for the control,deployment and employment of Pasdaranunits, the new ministry quickly turned thisforce into the backbone of the Iranianthrusts into Iraq, with the regular armyreducing its participation to the lowestpossible level. As the ministry of defenceretained responsibility for the overallconduct of the war, the creation of thenew Pasdaran ministry effectivelyinstitutionalised a reality of two distinctarmies, whereby the Pasdaran and themilitary operated separately withoutco-ordination or co-operation.

This fragmentation was furtherexacerbated by the coming of age of the Basijand its development into a substantial force.On 20 March 1982, on the occasion of theIranian new year, Khomeini announced that'as a special favour' schoolboys between theages of 12 and 18 years would be allowed tojoin the Basij and to fight for their country.

Consequently scores of youths volunteeredfor action and were hastily recruited andprovided with 'Passports to Paradise', as theadmission forms were called. They were thengiven rudimentary military training, of aweek or so, by the Pasdaran, and sent to thefront where many of them 'martyred'themselves.

Instead of combined-arms operations,which stood at the root of its 1981operational successes, Iran thus came to relysolely on frontal assaults by large numbers of

40 Essential Histories • The Iran-Iraq War 1980—1988

poorly trained and ill-equipped militiatroops, without adequate armour, artillery,and aerial back-up. As a result, nearly all theIranian offensives into Iraq were repulsedwith heavy casualties.

By the autumn of 1982, then, the warstrategies of the two belligerents hadundergone a full circle. In the early days ofthe war, the Iranian Chief-of-Staff, GeneralValiollah Fallahi (killed in an aeroplane crashin September 1981), announced that Iranwas 'essentially fighting a stationary warfrom dug-in positions, to make it veryexpensive for the Iraqis to mount offensives'.Some 18 months later, Iran was attemptingto achieve a decisive victory through mobileoperations while Iraq stuck to static defence.Iran now sought to limit the fighting to thebattlefield while Iraq took advantage of thedeteriorating strength of the Iranian air forceto intensify its attacks on a wide range ofcivilian and economic targets, including

Having driven the Iraqi forces from their territory, inJuly 1982 the Iranians launched a series of incursionsinto Iraq. These increasingly became dominated byfrontal assaults of ill-equipped Pasdaran forces on theheavily fortified Iraqi positions, without adequateartillery or air support. (Gamma)

ports, industrial facilities, and oilinstallations.

During 1983, Iran launched fivelarge-scale offensives at different sectors ofthe front, all of which failed to breach theIraqi line and were repulsed with heavylosses. Though reflecting a measure ofreconstituted co-operation between the armyand the Pasdaran, the Iranian tacticsremained uninspired: massed frontal infantryattacks on the Iraqi lines, without properarmoured, artillery or air support. Iraq, onthe other hand, demonstrated more thanadequate defensive capabilities, carrying outits operations in an orderly way and takingfull advantage of artillery and air supremacy.Moreover, in its first real initiative for nearlya year, Iraq launched a number of localarmoured counterattacks to frustrate theIranian offensives, one of them even drivinginto Iran.

To Saddam's growing exasperation, therepeated Iranian setbacks failed to deflectthe regime's readiness to prosecute the war.Quite the reverse in fact. Rejecting severalIraqi calls for an end to hostilities, in early1984 the mullahs reiterated theirdetermination to overthrow the Ba'th

The fighting 41

Iranian president Ali Khameini was one of the mainopponents of Khomeini's decision to extend the waroperations into Iraqi territory. (Gamma)

regime. By way of forestalling the Iranianoffensives, Iraq augmented its forces alongthe frontier and designated 11 Iranian citiesto be attacked in the event of an Iranianaggression.

Iran remained unimpressed, and on7 February 1984, the day on which the Iraqiultimatum expired, launched a probingattack in the northern front. This left Iraq nochoice but to carry out the promised attackson Iranian cities. With the Iraniansresponding in kind, the two sides were soonengaged in what came to be known as the'first war of the cities' (there would be fivesuch wars before the end of the war).

As things were, not only did thisescalation go well beyond Iraq's original

intentions (as evidenced by the suspensionof air attacks on 22 February), but it failedto achieve its major goal, namely theprevention of the anticipated Iranianoffensive. On 15 February 1984, theIranian 'final blow' was launched in thecentral sector.

The offensive was the largest engagementin the war until then, with some500,000 men under arms pitted againsteach other along a 150-mile front. Thoughplanned and organised by the regular armystaff, it was carried out mainly by thePasdaran and the Basij, with the armyplaying a relatively minor role (four tofive divisions or approximately 60,000 menout of 250,000 engaged).

The offensive consisted of two stages. Thefirst, operations, Dawn 5 (15-22 February)and Dawn 6 (22-24 February), sought tocapture the key town of Kut al-Amara and to


Soldiers under fire. (Gamma)

cut the highway linking Baghdad and Basra.After a week of heavy fighting, Iranian forcesmanaged to seize some strategic highground, about 15 miles from theBaghdad-Basra road. Having advanced thatfar, on 24 February they moved to thesecond, and more important, stage of theoffensive, Operation Khaibar, a series ofthrusts in the direction of Basra, whichlasted until 19 March. For some time itseemed as if the Iranians were about tobreach Iraq's formidable line of defence, asthey managed to cross the vast expanse ofmarshland, considered impassable by theIraqis, and to capture Majnun Island,strategically situated on the southern front,some 40 miles north of Basra. They wereeventually contained with great effort andbrutality, and through the use of chemicalweapons (mustard gas and Sarin nerve gas),but managed to retain Majnun Island despitesuccessive Iraqi attempts to dislodge them.Many Iranians jumped into the water toescape the Iraqi firepower, only to be huntedby helicopter gunships and to beelectrocuted by electrodes, fitted in some

water channels. Over 3,000 Iranian dead,some very young, were bulldozed into amass grave, making a distinct ridge in themain sandbank.

External intervention

By now, the fear of an Iranian victory, withits attendant explosion of religious militancyacross the Middle East and the Islamic world,had rallied widespread international supportbehind Iraq, with the most unlikelybedfellows doing their utmost to ensure thatIraq did not lose this war.

The Soviet Union, Iraq's staunch thoughproblematic ally, which had responded tothe invasion of Iran by declaring itsneutrality and imposing an arms embargoon Baghdad, resumed arms shipments inmid-1981 once the pendulum had swung inIran's favour. By the end of the year,considerable quantities of Soviet arms hadarrived in Iraq including some 200 T-55and T-72 tanks and SA-6 surface-to-airmissiles. A year later, following the initiationof large-scale Iranian incursions into Iraq,the flow of Soviet arms turned into a flood,

The fighting 43

and Moscow also extended an offer of(albeit modest) economic support toBaghdad. In return, Saddam declared ageneral amnesty for the communists andreleased many of them from jail.

In January 1983 the Soviet Union andIraq signed an arms deal worth $2 billion,which provided for the supply of T-62 andT-72 tanks, MiG-23 and MiG-25 fighters andScud B and SS-21 surface-to-surface missiles.By 1987 the Soviet Union had supplied Iraqwith large quantities of advanced weaponry,including 800 T-72 tanks and scores ofjet fighters and bombers, notably theultra-modern MiG-29s fitted with the latestradar systems.

The main beneficiary from the temporarysetback in Soviet-Iraqi relations had beenFrance. While speaking softly to the Iranians,the French unequivocally nailed theircolours to the Iraqi mast from the beginningof the war, taking great pains toaccommodate Baghdad's growing need forcommercial credits and military hardware:during the first two years of the war Franceprovided Iraq with $5.6 billion worth ofweapons, including fighter aircraft,

helicopters, tanks, self-propelled guns,missiles and electronic equipment. Thisgenerosity was not difficult to understand.With the Iraqi debt to France more thandoubling, from 15 billion francs in 1981 to$5 billion in 1986, the survival of Saddam'spersonal rule was not only a matter ofcontaining fundamentalist Islam but hadalso become a prime economic interest.

Egypt, too, was happy to supply Iraq withspare parts and ammunition for its Sovietweapons systems, providing also some250 T-55 tanks and Tu-16 and 11-28 bombers.These arms were supplemented by light andheavy military vehicles from Spain,armoured personnel carriers from Brazil,naval supplies from Italy, and parts forBritish tanks (captured from the Iranians)from Britain.

Even the United States, whose diplomaticrelations with Iraq had been severed by thelatter following the 1967 Six Day War, did

Iraqi and Iranian air and missile attacks on each other'spopulation centres, known as the 'wars of the cities', hada devastating impact on national morale in the twocountries. (Eslami Rad/Gamma)


not shy away from supporting the Iraqi wareffort. In February 1982 Baghdad wasremoved from the US Government's list ofstates 'supporting international terrorism',thus paving the way for a significant boostin US-Iraqi trade relations. Three monthslater, as the mullahs in Tehran weredeliberating the invasion of Iraq, Secretary ofState Alexander Haig strongly warned Iranagainst expanding the war.

In December 1984, merely a month afterthe re-establishment of diplomatic relations,the newly opened US Embassy in Baghdadbegan supplying the Iraqi armed forces withmuch-needed military intelligence. At thesame time, Washington nearly doubled itscredits for food products and agriculturalequipment from $345 million in 1984 to$675 million in 1985; in late 1987 Iraq waspromised $1 billion credit for the fiscal year1988, the largest such credit given to anysingle country in the world.

In stark contrast to Iraq, Iran found itselfwith dire logistical problems. The completesuspension of US military support followingthe revolution (which included thewithdrawal of all American advisers andtechnicians from Iran and the disruption oftraining programmes in the United States)left Iran without a major source of modernweapons and dealt a heavy blow to thelogistical capabilities of the armed forces.Thus, for example, the data on thecomputer-based inventory control system forspares were erased by the US advisers whenthey left Iran, making it almost impossiblefor the Iranian military later to locate andidentify the mass of spares in depots.

In the initial stages of the war Iran couldrely on the substantial inventories ofweapons and ordnance built up by the Shah(more indeed, than could be manned ormaintained). As the war went on, thesestockpiles were impoverished through thecannibalisation of unserviceable equipment.

Operation Khaibar (February - March 1984) failed tobreach the Iraqi defences near Basra, but managed tocapture Majnun Island. Here Iranian naval fighters crossthe Iraqi marshland. (Gamma)

This was a direct result of the failure toobtain adequate spares or substitutes.

Fortunately for Iran, it managed toestablish a diverse network of arms suppliers,eager to see the prolongation of the war, orat least to derive the utmost benefit from it.Foremost among these were Libya, Syria andNorth Korea which together delivered atleast 500 tanks (T-55 and T-62), artillerypieces, anti-aircraft weapons and anti-tankmissiles. Britain sent spare parts for Chieftaintanks and other armoured vehicles by air in1985. China, Taiwan, Argentina, SouthAfrica, Pakistan and Switzerland also

The fighting 45

contributed arms, munitions or spares. EvenIsrael, second only to the United States inKhomeini's most hated nations, suppliedcritical items such as F-4 tyres and spareparts for Iran's M-48 and M-60 tanks.

These arms supplies, nevertheless, were farfrom sufficient. Diversification of weaponspresents complications even for advanced,modern armies operating in peacetimeconditions. Iran paid a very high price onlyto realise that a wartime diversificationprocess carried out without a primary sourceof supply and external advisory andtechnical support can be a futile experience.

Hence, while Iran barely succeeded inmaintaining its major weapons systemholdings, Iraq managed to increase andimprove its order of battle. Moreover, whilethe absorption of large quantities of armsenabled Iraq to substantially expand itsground forces, the doubling of Iran's order ofbattle (from six to 12 divisions) was merelycosmetic. The Iraqi build-up reflected a realgrowth in operational capabilities, while theIranian growth stemmed first and foremostfrom a restructuring of its combatformations, increasing the number ofinfantry divisions at the expense of the


The fighting 47

armoured divisions, which were in factdisbanded.

While the shortage of major weaponssystems clearly went a long way todetermine the direction of this restructuring,political considerations also played animportant role. Eager to enhance the statusof the Pasdaran and to relegate the army to asubordinate role, the Islamic regime gaveclear preference to the creation of newPasdaran units over the building orreconstruction of regular formations. By1985 the Pasdaran had been organised in tendivisions, though these had no fixed size orconventional military structure. They wereessentially infantry units armed with anunbalanced mix of armaments includingtanks, artillery and air defence weapons, butlacking professional sub-units to operatethese systems in an orderly way.

The predominance of the Pasdaran, andthe transformation of the Iranian armyvirtually into an infantry force, had adecisive impact on the course of the war.Iran not only failed to attain the overall 3to 1 superiority normally considered theminimum for a major breakthrough, butalso failed to achieve local superiority, owingto Iraq's better mobility. Against thisbackground it was hardly surprising thatIran's ill-equipped infantry, lacking adequatearmour, artillery and air support, failed foryears to do more than dent the Iraqi defencesystem.

Stalemate again

Iraq's increased confidence, a result of itsgrowing international support and materialsuperiority, led it to seize the initiative and,on 28 January 1985, to mount its firstmajor offensive since 1980. However, thisneither deterred nor frustrated Tehran'spreparations for another large offensive ofits own. That, duly launched on 11 March1985 in the direction of Basra, reflected animportant shift in Iran's strategy in that itabandoned frontal human-wave assaults infavour of more conventional warfare,

carried out under the leadership of thearmy.

The decision to revert to conventionalwarfare was apparently taken after thefailure of the February 1984 offensiveand underscored the revolutionaryregime's awareness of both the futility ofhuman-wave tactics and the growingwar-weariness in Iran. During 1984 Iranmade considerable efforts to transform thePasdaran into more conventional units andto re-establish a working relationshipbetween it and the army. These efforts boresubstantial fruit in the March 1985 offensive,code-named Operation Badr. Inflicting heavycasualties on the Iraqis (reportedly between10,000 and 12,000, compared with Iran's lossof some 15,000), Iran managed briefly tocapture part of the Baghdad-Basra highwaynearest the border, thus raising the spectre ofcutting Iraq into two. Saddam was shakenand responded by ordering the widest use ofchemical weapons to date (by this time theIraqis had already extended their use ofchemical agents beyond mustard gas toinclude such agents as tabun and cyanide) aswell as a massive air and missile campaignagainst some 30 Iranian towns and citiesincluding Tehran, Tabriz, Isfahan andBushehr. Iran immediately responded inkind, and within a fortnight the second warof the cities had been fought.

As the ground war settled into immobilitythe focus of operations shifted back to thestrategic sphere, with both states attackingcivilian shipping and strategic targets, suchas population centres and industrialcomplexes. In mid-August 1985 frustration atIran's stubborn prosecution of the war ledIraq to play what many considered to be itstrump card: between 15 August and lateDecember, nearly 60 air raids against themain Iranian oil complex at Kharg Islandwere recorded. This intense campaign metwith only limited success, but it seems tohave worried Iran. Recognising perhaps thatattacks on Kharg, to which it had noeffective response, could do more damage toits war effort than any major offensive, Irantried to deter Iraq by intensifying air raids on


Iraqi towns and cities, waylaying shipspassing through the Strait of Hormuz tocheck whether or not they were carrying wargoods bound for Iraq, declaring a partialmobilisation, and, above all, preparing foryet another big offensive.

The Fao turning point

When it eventually came on 9 February1986, Operation Dawn 8 turned out to beIran's greatest success since the expulsion ofIraqi forces from its territory. Iran managedto breach the Iraqi line at several points, tocapture the Fao Peninsula at the south-eastern tip of Iraq, and to retain it despiterepeated Iraqi attempts to dislodge theattackers.

Planned by the army's general staff, theIranian offensive consisted of a two-prongedattack, involving some 100,000 troops(five regular divisions and approximately50,000 Pasdaran and Basij fighters). Thenorthern effort - apparently a diversionaryattack - was directed against Basra and waseasily repulsed. Yet Iraq's preoccupation withthe defence of Basra was skilfully exploitedby Iran to achieve a large measure of tacticalsurprise and to capture Fao in less than24 hours of fighting. The Iraqis were furtherconstrained by an extraordinary all-nighttorrential rain storm which prevented themfrom bringing into effect their overwhelmingair and artillery superiority in order tointercept the Iranian men, vehicles, weaponsand equipment being ferried across the Shattal-Arab.

Once they realised the extent of theIranian success, the Iraqis mounted athree-pronged counterattack on 12 February,only to be contained by the Iranians aftera week of heavy fighting. Saddamperemptorily ordered Maher Abd al-Rashid,his kinsman and one of Iraq's bestperforming military commanders duringthe war, to take personal command ofthe offensive. Bringing with him freshformations of Republican Guards, Iraq's eliteforce, and assisted by some of Iraq's foremost

officers, notably generals Hisham Fakhri(Commander of the Seventh Army Corps)and Saad Tuma Abbas, al-Rashid resumed theoffensive on 24 February. Yet, despite theiroverwhelming superiority in firepower andtheir resort to chemical weapons, theIraqi forces failed to retake Fao, with some10,000 Iraqis (and 30,000 Iranians) killedin a fortnight.

Four years later, during his famousmeeting with the US Ambassador toBaghdad, April Glaspie, and shortly beforeIraq's invasion of Kuwait, Saddam wouldturn this humiliating defeat into a shiningachievement. 'Yours is a nation that cannotafford to lose 10,000 men in one battle', heboasted in front of the startled ambassador.Yet in February-March 1986 Saddam'ssituation looked very bleak indeed. Havingrebuffed the Iraqi counterattack, Iranianforces broke out of Fao and made their waytowards Umm Qasr. Had this follow-upattack succeeded, Iran would have severedIraq from the Gulf and would have becomeKuwait's immediate neighbour. As thingswere, the Iranian offensive was checked.Yet the fall of Fao sent shock-waves all overthe Gulf and the Arab world, with theSaudi and Kuwaiti foreign ministerspleading with Syria, Iran's closest Arab ally,to use its good offices in Tehran. Theanxiety of the Gulf states was furtherexacerbated by the launching of a largeIranian offensive in Kurdistan, whichmanaged to capture some ground and toadvance within a few miles of Suleimaniya.

Though this northern offensive waseventually bogged down, Iraq's inability todislodge Iran from Fao was an importantpsychological victory for Iran and a heavyblow to Saddam's prestige and the morale ofthe Iraqi armed forces. After four years ofpersistent thrusts into Iraq, Iran managedto gain a significant foothold on Iraqiterritory, and the revolutionary regime wasdetermined to exploit this success to thefull both for propaganda and formorale-boosting purposes.

In these circumstances, Saddam wasunderstandably desperate for some visible

The fighting 49

ABOVE and RIGHT The capture of the Fao Peninsula inFebruary 1986 marked the high point of Iran's repeatedincursions into Iraq. (Gamma)

successes. In mid-May 1986, in a massivelypublicised operation, Iraq took the Iraniantown of Mehran on the central front (againwith the use of gas) and offered to exchangeit for Fao. The offer was spurned and Iranianforces recaptured Mehran in early July. Thissuccess seems to have increased Tehran'sconfidence, with Iranian leaders reiteratingtheir determination to deal a 'final blow' tothe Iraqi regime.

Anxious to fend off yet another large-scaleoffensive, on 3 August 1986 Saddam made adesperate plea for peace in the form of an'open letter' to the Iranian leadership.Gone were his earlier pretensions to Gulf,let alone Arab, leadership. Apart from avague reference to future Iraqi-Iraniancollaboration over the stability of the Gulf,Saddam's conditions for peace centred onthe security of his regime, namely, aguarantee to respect each other's choice ofgovernment. When Tehran remained as

adamant as ever on his removal from power,Saddam concluded that his only hope ofpersuading the Iranian authorities to desistfrom their efforts to overthrow him was toappeal to them indirectly by making life stillmore unpleasant for their constituents.Accordingly, an unprecedentedly ferociousaerial campaign was launched againstIranian strategic targets, primarily the Kharg


Island oil complex, and major populationcentres - including Tehran, Isfahan andKermanshah. On 12 August 1986 Iraqiaircraft mounted the first successful raid onthe Iranian oil terminal of Sirri Island (some150 miles [240 km] north of the Strait ofHormuz), thereby signalling to Tehran thatno strategic targets were beyond Iraq'soperational reach.

The tanker war

Iraq also intensified its attacks on civilianshipping, particularly tankers, moving to andfrom Iran. The so-called 'tanker war' waslaunched by Saddam in early 1984 with aview to shifting the war from the stalemateof the battlefield to a new and potentiallymore rewarding arena. Both parties had, ofcourse, carried out attacks against eachother's merchant shipping since the earlystages of the war; between September 1980and February 1984, 23 Iraqi and 5 Iranianattacks were recorded. In 1984 alone,however, there were 37 Iraqi and 17 Iranianattacks.

The tanker war differed from the previouscampaign against shipping not only in itsscope but also in its strategic rationale.Unlike earlier Iraqi attacks on civilianshipping, which were directed solely againstIran and were aimed at convincing it of thefutility of continuing the war, the tanker warsought to draw other states - the westernpowers in particular - into the war, in thehope that they would support Iraq or help tobring about a peaceful settlement. The ideaseems to have been that intensifying theattacks would provoke Iran into extremeactions, such as attempts to close the Straitof Hormuz, at the southern tip of the Gulf,which would leave the Western oilconsumers (the United States in particular)with no alternative but to intervene.

These expectations were ostensibly basedon solid grounds. The mullahs hadrepeatedly warned that 'if Iran's oil shippingwere halted, then no country in the worldwill be able to use the Persian Gulf oil'. The

Western response to the Iranian threats alsoseemed to vindicate the Iraqi assumptions.The United States, for instance, warned Iranoff such a course of action and announcedits determination to keep the Gulf open tointernational shipping. It even took care todemonstrate its resolve by sending a taskforce (of three warships with some2,000 marines) to the Indian Ocean on13 October 1983.

It was against this backdrop that Iraqwarned in late November 1983 that allmerchant vessels should avoid the 'war zone'at the northern end of the Gulf, and, on29 January 1984, broadened this threat toinclude all shipping around Kharg Island,Iran's main oil refinery. Beginning inFebruary 1984, Iraqi attacks on tankerssailing to or from Kharg increased until theyreached an average of four a month.

Iran's response to these moves to escalatethe war did not live up to Saddam's

The fighting 51

expectations. Fully aware of the rationalebehind the Iraqi strategy, Iran not onlyavoided any attempt to block the Strait ofHormuz, but went out of its way to keep itsresponses at the lowest possible level; itrefrained from public acknowledgement ofits attacks on civilian shipping, andreiterated its disinclination to close the Straitsince 'the Islamic Republic of Iran would bethe first to suffer as a result of such a move'.Iranian naval attacks were essentially limitedto ships trading with Saudi Arabia andKuwait, in the hope that these two countries,Iraq's staunch economic supporters, wouldexert economic pressure on Iraq to end itsattacks. When Saudi Arabian F-15s shotdown an Iranian jet on 5 June, the Iranianprotest was extremely muted.

To Saddam's dismay, Iran's cautionsucceeded in keeping the Western powersrelatively aloof. Although the eruption ofthe tanker war increased American anxietyand reportedly led to a review of Gulfcontingency plans, it was not followed byany concrete action. It was only in late1986, after the intensification of the Iraqicampaign against Iranian economic targetsand commercial shipping, that Iraniancaution began to falter. Responding to theIraqi escalation by intensifying its ownattacks on Iraq-bound shipping, Tehranintimidated Kuwait to the point that itapproached both superpowers, requestingprotection for a number of its tankersagainst naval attacks. In March 1987 theUnited States informed the Kuwaitigovernment of its willingness to escortKuwait's 11 tankers through the Gulf,provided they would fly the US flag, and amonth later Kuwait chartered three tankersfrom the USSR which were put under theSoviet flag. By the end of 1987 Iran wasconfronted with a formidable multinationalarmada of nearly 50 warships.

The turning of the tide

Shielded by the West from Tehran's wrath,Iraq could intensify its attacks on Iran-bound

shipping and oil infrastructure with virtualimpunity. It did exactly that in the hope thatthe Iranians would sooner or later providethe West with a pretext to unleash its poweron them. Although this assessment provedmisconceived, as Tehran did its best to signalits interest in de-escalation, the Iraqi pressurefurther damaged the Iranian economy, whilethe multinational presence in the Gulfexacerbated the feeling of isolation andhopelessness within the Iranian leadership.

Meanwhile Iran was finding it impossibleto make any headway on the battlefield,as relations between the Pasdaran and thearmy deteriorated yet again. As the regime'spraetorian guard, with political, religious andcivil tasks on top of its military ones, by1986 the Pasdaran had become a substantialforce of some 350,000 troops, equal in size tothe army but enjoying preferential treatmentfrom the authorities. This includednumerous privileges, such as superior payand benefits to those enjoyed by themilitary, better access to the politicalleadership, and first call on arms, spare parts,and recruits. In September 1985,preparations for the establishment ofPasdaran air and naval forces began inearnest following a special directive fromKhomeini, and the following year thePasdaran started an 'advanced artillerytraining' and designated a special corps forthis. Needless to say, the professional armywas less than thrilled by these persistentencroachments on operational fields thathad hitherto been its exclusive preserve.

Increasingly frustrated by the renewedstalemate, in April 1986 Khomeini issued areligious ruling (fatwa) instructing his forcesto win the war by 21 March 1987, theIranian New Year. In compliance with theirspiritual leader's wish, on 24 December1986 a major offensive was launched in thedirection of Basra. Planned and executed byHashemi-Rafsanjani himself, against thewishes of the military leaders, OperationKarbala 4 sought to overwhelm thedefending Iraqi forces in a night attack bysheer weight of numbers. This was notto happen. Bringing to full effect their


superior firepower, the Iraqis held theirground, killing some 10,000 Iranians inthree days of ferocious fighting. Yet thisbloody failure did not dampen Iranianenthusiasm, and in January 1987 anotherattack was launched in the same sector ofthe front. Code-named Operation Karbala 5,the new offensive managed to cross theShatt al-Arab and to seize some territory,at the cost of several thousand casualties,but once again failed to breach the Iraqiline of defence.

By now, however, Iraqi combatperformance had significantly improved.Following the humiliating string of militarysetbacks in 1986, Saddam was confronted,for the first and only time in his career, bywhat nearly amounted to an open mutiny.With the Iranian army at the gates of Basra,the military leadership rose up in an attemptto force Saddam to win the war despitehimself. Fortunately for the Iraqi president,the generals did not demand political poweror try to overthrow him. All they wanted was

The fighting 53

the professional freedom to run the waraccording to their best judgement, withminimal interference from the politicalauthorities.

Perhaps the most vivid illustration of this'rebellious' state of mind is offered by theoft-repeated story about Saddam's clash inthe winter of 1986 with Maher Abdal-Rashid. According to the story, Rashidwas ordered to report back to Baghdadfollowing his failure to dislodge the Iranianforces from the Fao Peninsula, and his

In an attempt to curtail Iran's oil exports and to drawinternational intervention in the wan in 1984 SaddamHussein launched sustained attacks against Iranian andIranian-bound shipping. With Iran responding in kind thetwo sides found themselves locked for years in whatcame to be known as the 'tanker war'. (Gamma)

candid admission in an interview with theKuwaiti press of high casualties on the Iraqiside. Well aware of what the order meant,Rashid's officers transmitted a warning toSaddam, implying that they would refuse toprosecute the war should anything happento their commander. On arriving at thePresidential Palace, Rashid was decorated bya beaming Saddam, who deferred vengeanceuntil later.

The officers' exceptional determination tostand up to Saddam saved Iraq from disaster.Caught between the hammer and the anvil,Saddam gave in to his generals and the wargradually took a positive turn. In early 1987the army rebuffed Iran's last large offensiveduring the war, and the next year it movedon to the offensive.

In all these operations Iraq madeextensive use of chemical weapons which,apart from Saddam's determination to getthe Iranians off Iraqi territory at all costs,reflected the generals' lax attitude towardsthis operational mode. For all his lack ofmoral inhibitions and respect forinternational norms, Saddam'soverwhelming preoccupation with hispolitical survival injected a strong element ofrestraint into his behaviour, which hisgenerals lacked completely. For themchemical weapons were yet another categoryof armament whose use depended purely ontheir military value in the relevantcircumstances. As Abd al-Rashid put it, 'Ifyou gave me a pesticide to throw at theseswarms of insects to make them breathe andbecome exterminated, I would use it.'

No one knew this better than the IraqiKurds. In 1987 and 1988 they were subjectedto a brutal punitive campaign involving theextensive use of chemical weapons,including mustard gas, cyanide, and tabunnerve agent against an unprotected civilianpopulation. The first attacks of this kind

54 E

ssential Histories • The Iran-Iraq W

ar 1980-1988

The fighting 55

Following the intensification of the tanker war, theUnited States agreed to protect Kuwaiti tankers in theGulf. (Gamma)

were reported in May 1987, when some20 Kurdish villages were gassed in anattempt to deter the civilian population fromcollaborating with the advancing Iranianforces. A month later several Kurdish villagesin Iran were given the same 'medicine',killing some 100 people and injuring2,000. The most appalling attack took placein March 1988, when the spectre of anIranian breakthrough drove the Iraqi forcesto employ gas on an unprecedented scaleagainst the Kurdish town of Halabja. As thethick cloud of gas spread by the Iraqi planeson 16 March evaporated into the clear sky,television crews were rushed into the townby the Iranians and the world saw the fullextent of the massacre. Five thousand people- men, women, children and babies - werekilled that day. Nearly 10,000 sufferedinjuries.

The Iranians were little better equippedthan the Kurds to deal with Iraq's chemicalattacks. Their chemical arsenals were a farcry from those of Iraq, their stocks of

protective gear were meagre, and many ofthem would not even take the elementaryprecaution of shaving their beards beforewearing gas masks. Their strongest weaponagainst Iraqi chemical warfare was essentiallypolitical - namely, the propaganda valuederived from the Iraqi attacks. Yet, even inthis respect they did not fare too well. Atthat time Saddam was the favourite son ofthe West (and to a lesser extent the SovietUnion), the perceived barrier to the spread ofIslamic fundamentalism. Consequently, apartfrom occasional feeble remonstrations(notably after the Halabja attack), Westerngovernments were consciously willing toturn a blind eye to Iraq's chemical excesses.

This aloofness was further reinforced bythe fact that by the spring of 1988, for thefirst time in eight years, the end of the warwas in prospect and the Western powers (aswell as the Soviet Union) were not going todo anything that could delay such aneventuality. The Iranian campaign seemed tobe running out of steam. The sense ofpurpose among Iranians had graduallydeclined after mid-1982, when they were nolonger defending their own territory butwere engaged on Iraqi soil. Economic


The fighting 57

dislocations occasioned by fighting gave riseto great frustration as shortages of basiccommodities grew worse, and a black marketand corruption flourished. A mountinghuman toll caused a deep war-weariness.

Seeing the light at the end of the tunnelfor the first time since the early months ofthe war, in late February 1988 Saddamordered the fifth, and most ferocious, war of

LEFT and RIGHT Iran's last attempt to capture Basra inJanuary - February 1987 (code-named Karbala 5) wasrepelled with great effort and through the use ofchemical weapons. (Gamma)

the cities. During the next two months over200 surface-to-surface missiles and numerousair raids battered Iran's major populationcentres. The risks of this escalation for Iraqwere negligible. Iran was in no position tolaunch a ground offensive due to the lack ofvolunteers for the front, nor was it capableof extending the war to Iraq's hinterland,given its glaring strategic inferiority. AllTehran could do was intensify attacks againstIraq-bound shipping; but such a moveinvolved the risk of a direct confrontationwith the United States, which Iran was .anxious to avoid.

The fifth war of the cities thus turned outto be the straw that broke Iranian morale.With government employees joining othercitizens in fleeing Tehran en masse, theregime was paralysed and national moralewas shattered to the core. The road fromthere to the total collapse of the military'sfighting spirit was short. In mid-April 1988,after nearly six years in a defensive posture,Iraq moved to the offensive, and in 48 hoursof fierce fighting recaptured the FaoPeninsula, the loss of which in 1986 hadmarked Baghdad's lowest ebb during the war.A major psychological victory for Iraq, therecapture of Fao signalled the final shift infortunes during the war. It was soon followedby a string of military successes: at the endof May Iraq drove the Iranians out of theirpositions in Salamcheh (east of Basra), andthe following month dislodged them fromMajnun Island, held by Iran since 1985. On13 July, Iraq threatened that it would invadesouthern Iran unless Iran immediatelywithdrew its remaining forces fromKurdistan. And while Iran publicly compliedwith this demand on the following day, Iraqnevertheless captured a small strip of Iranianterritory in the central part of the front, forthe first time since 1982, then withdrewbehind its frontier.

These setbacks were compounded byIran's growing difficulties in the Gulf,primarily the intensification of the American(and other Western) naval presence there.For most of the war's duration, directAmerican involvement in the conflict had


Some 5, 000 people were killed and nearly 10, 000suffered injuries when Iraqi airplanes gassed the IraqiKurdish town of Halabja in March 1988. (Gamma)

been surprisingly meagre; it manifested itselfin diplomatic and limited military supportfor the Gulf Arab states and Iraq. From 1984onwards the US sought to compel Iran toaccept a ceasefire by severing it from anyweapons sources (Operation Staunch), but in1985-86 Washington deviated from its ownstrategy and secretly sold arms to Iran inreturn for the release of US hostages held inLebanon. The embarrassing exposure of thisaffair (quickly dubbed Irangate) drove theUS to more vigorous efforts to contain thewar. While the most visible manifestation ofthis change of tack was undoubtedly theUS Administration's agreement to reflag (andprotect) 11 Kuwaiti tankers, Washington'sefforts to terminate the war had a diplomaticcomponent as well, namely the engineeringof Security Council Resolution 598 of July1987 calling for an end to the conflict, andthe orchestration of the so-called 'secondresolution', which called for a UN-enforcedarms embargo on Iran for its failure to abideby Resolution 598.

The American arrival in the Gulf in thesummer of 1987 was viewed by Iran with theutmost alarm. It presented Tehran with an

The fighting 59

An Iraqi soldier celebrates the recapture of theFao Peninsula in front of a bullet-ridden portrait ofKhomeini. (Gamma)

omnipotent foe and threatened to tie itshands in the ongoing tanker war, whileleaving Iraq free to attack Iran-boundshipping. Hence, notwithstanding a measureof muscle-flexing, Iran sought to avoid adirect confrontation with the United Statesand to signal its interest in de-escalation.And indeed, with the exception of abrief American-Iranian exchange inSeptember-October 1987, a direct collisionbetween the two countries was avoided until18 April 1988. This clash, following theholing of a US frigate by an underwatermine, could not have come at a moreinopportune time for Iran as it coincidedwith the dislodging of Iranian forces fromFao. The result was an Iranian attempt atretaliation, and the subsequent loss of asignificant portion of Iran's naval force: sixvessels including two (out of three) frigates.

The ground was thus set for a radicalchange of policy. At the beginning ofJune, Iran's parliamentary Speaker,Hashemi-Rafsanjani, was appointed actingCommander-in-Chief of the armed forces,while Mohsen Rezai, the commander of thePasdaran, was forced publicly to own up forthe recent military defeats. These moveswere widely seen within Iran as a prelude to


Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the powerful Speaker of the Iranian Parliament and arelentless hawk for most of the war, was instrumental in convincing Khomeini to cease fire. (Gamma)

The fighting 61

the war's termination, and, indeed, werefollowed by desperate attempts by the clericsto convince Khomeini to sanctify thecessation of hostilities. Iraq was not the onlyenemy facing Iran, they reasoned in anattempt to convince the aged ayatollah toaccept the unthinkable. Rather, a worldwidecoalition of imperialist forces, headed by theGreat Satan (the United States), vied forIranian blood. Therefore, and in view of thesocial and economic conditions in Iran, anyprolongation of the war could but play intothe aggressors' hands and would endangerthe great achievements of the IslamicRevolution. What could provide a betterproof of imperialist ruthlessness, theyretorted, than the shooting down (on 3 July)of an Iranian civilian plane by the US navyand the killing of its 290 passengers?

Paradoxically, the airline tragedy turnedout to be the means for an Iranianclimbdown. It provided the moral cover of

martyrdom and suffering in the face of anunjust superior force that allowed the regimeto camouflage the comprehensive defeat ofits international vision. In mid-July ameeting of the Iranian leadership took place,presided over by Ahmed Khomeini, theayatollah's eldest son, who deputised for hisailing father. Reportedly marked by muchrecrimination, the meeting's finalrecommendation was an immediateceasefire. On 17 July 1988, after a year ofevasion and procrastination, PresidentKhameini sent a letter to the UN Secretary-General, Javier Perez de Cuellar, expressinghis country's acceptance of a ceasefire. 'Wehave decided to declare officially', read theletter, 'that the Islamic Republic of Iran -because of the importance it attaches tosaving the lives of human beings and theestablishment of justice and regional andinternational peace and security - acceptsUN Resolution 598.'

Portrait of a soldier

Iran's boy soldiers

Of the many battlefield spectacles of the Iran-Iraq War, none has struck and confoundedforeign observers more than the blinddevotion of the Basij and their relentless questfor martyrdom. Coming mainly from ruralareas or from the most devout Shi'ite families,these poorly trained and ill-equipped youths,some as young as 12, were little more thancanon fodder or human minesweepers sent inadvance of Iran's other military forces to clearthe fields, desert scrubland and marshes. Withtheir red and yellow headbands proclaimingAllah's or Khomeini's greatness, a piece ofwhite cloth pinned to their uniforms assymbol of a shroud, each one carrying hisdeath with him, and a plastic key around theirnecks, issued personally by Khomeini as asymbol of their assured entry into paradiseupon martyrdom, they charged towards theIraqi positions in total disregard of the danger

to their lives, and to the shocked disbelief oftheir enemies. 'They come on in theirhundreds, often walking straight across theminefields, triggering them with their feet asthey are supposed to do,' an Iraqi officerdescribed the effect of these assaults on himand his men:

They chant 'Allahu Akbar' and they keepcoming, and we keep shooting, sweeping our50 millimetre machine guns around likesickles. My men are eighteen, nineteen, justa few years older than these kids. I've seen .them crying, and at times the officers havehad to kick them back to their guns. Oncewe had Iranian kids on bikes cyclingtowards us, and my men all startedlaughing, and then these kids startedlobbing their hand grenades and we stoppedlaughing and started shooting.

Portrait of a soldier 63

What was the source of this unqualifiedreadiness for self-sacrifice? Were thesechild-warriors brainwashed by theauthorities? Were they coerced? Not

BELOW and LEFT Iran's fearless teenage soldiers. Someeven lied about their age to be accepted in the army.Their headlong attacks forced Iraqi soldiers to fire inself-defence, despite being aware that the attackerswere only children. (Rex Features/Gamma)

according to Ahmed, who was 14 when hevolunteered to defend his homelandagainst the Iraqi invasion. 'WhenKhorramshahr was recaptured by ourtroops in 1982, I made up my mind to goto the front,' he told a Westernhumanitarian aid worker who spent sometime trying to help captured Basij boys inIraqi prisoner camps. 'I wanted to defendmy country, that's all.'


What about the concept of martyrdom?Did he join the forces with the explicit desireto martyr himself?

I am not very religions so I don't know muchabout the subject. It's true that martyrdom isimportant to Shi'ites - we all learn about theImams and how they died - but I didn't goto war to die for Islam. I went to defend Iranand I think most of my friends went for thesame reason.

Was Ahmed, or anyone he knew, forced inany way to join up? The answer was anunequivocal no:

In my case, my father and mother neverwanted me to go to the front. Neither did myteacher. But I was determined to go. I've neverheard any stories of mothers forcing their sonsto join the basij. It was the opposite case withall my friends and I can't believe that amother went on television to say that abouther own child. My mother loves me andwrites to me here to say how much she missesme and that she wants to see me again.

I was so determined to go to war that I ranaway from home. The first time I was sentback home because the officer said I was tooyoung -I was thirteen at the time. Thesecond time I tried was a year later when Iwas fourteen. I went to the local HQ of the

basij. The officer told me that I had to befifteen to join up, so I told him I was. Hewanted to see my identity card, so I gave it tohim, and he saw I was only fourteen. Then heasked what my parents had said, because heneeded their permission if I joined before Iwas fifteen. I said they agreed and he allowedme to join up. There were hundreds of youngboys pushing to get into the office thatmorning. All were very young, so the officerhad no choice but to let us in.

Did he consider himself a victim of theregime? An innocent bystander lured intothe whirlpool of war by the sheer weight ofpropaganda? Absolutely not, protestedAhmed:

Of course there was a campaign to recruit meninto the army. Our country was threatened byinvasion. It's normal to want to defend it. Somullahs would come to the schools to talk to usand we watched military programmes on thetelevision which told us what was going on in thewar. But no one influenced my decision. Atfourteen I could decide things for myself and Iwanted to go to war, so I went. It was as simpleas that.

Not all Basij fighters had suchunquestioning patriotic zeal. Ahmed'sfellow prisoner of war, Samir, had a farmore disillusioned view of the Basijphenomenon and its motivation. 'It was agame for us', he said:

On the television they would show a youngboy dressed as a soldier, carrying a gun andwearing the red headband of the basij. Hewould say how wonderful it was to be asoldier for Islam, fighting for freedomagainst the Iraqis. Then he would curse theIraqis and all Arabs, saying they were notgood Muslims. Next he would tell us to joinhim and come to war. We didn't understandthe words 'patriotism' or 'martyrdom', or atleast I didn't. It was just an exciting gameand a chance to prove to your friends thatyou'd grown up and were no longer a child.But we were really only children.

At school there were always mullahs comingto speak to us and interrupting our lessons.The teacher didn't like them coming, but hewas too afraid to say anything in case helost his job. They talked about the gloriousIslamic Revolution and the Ayatollah whohad rescued us from the hands of theAmericans. Then we would chant, 'death toAmerica, death to Israel, death to Saddam'for a long time. The mullahs said it was anhonour to go and fight for Islam and to bemartyred for Islam, just like Imam Hussein[son of Ali, the Shia's patron imam]. Ididn't want to die for anyone, but wanted tostay at school. My mother and fatherwanted me to stay at school, too. When Ileft for the war, my mother was crying. My

Portrait of a soldier 65

father didn't say anything, but I could seehe was very sad. My mother begged me notto go, holding and kissing me on the head,screaming for me not to go. My father had topull her away to let me leave the house. Ishould have stayed, but all my friends wereleaving, too, and I was excited about going. Ihad already done some training in the campand I knew how to use a gun and throwhand grenades.

What did he think of the impact of theregime's wider propaganda effort, such as thescreening of mass demonstrations by Basijwarriors on television? Though not giving adefinite answer, Samir's own experiencewould seem to vindicate the powerful pull of'mob mentality' on the undecided individual:

I took part in those demonstrations. Theygave us red headbands to wear and we allstood in the square in the middle of Tehran... Twice there were TV cameras to film us.The mullahs were at the front, directing us.We would shout various slogans againstIsrael, America, France and, of course,Saddam, the President of Iraq. He wasworse than the rest put together. After theslogans, the mullahs would address thecrowds, telling us what an honour it wasfor us to be going to fight and die for Islam.I have no idea why I was shouting, since I

don't have any bad feelings againstAmerica. Many Iranians live in Americaand Europe, so it can't be all that bad.

Looking back at the whole experience, didSamir deem it worthwhile? And shouldyoung boys be recruited for front-linefighting in the first place?

I am not sure, but it was difficult to stopthem. And anyway, the boys who attackedthe Iraqis were a very important weapon forthe army, because they had no fear. Wecaptured many positions from the Iraqisbecause they became afraid when they sawyoung boys running towards them shoutingand screaming. Imagine how you wouldfeel. Lots of boys were killed, but by thatstage you were running and couldn't stop, soyou just carried on until you were shotyourself or reached the lines.

I'm glad I was captured, even though it'svery hard to live in the prisoner-of-warcamps. But anything is better than dying. IfI have a son I will never let him go to waruntil he is old enough to understand andmake up his own mind. I was too young tofight. I was a little boy who wanted to playwith guns. When they gave me a real oneI'd never been happier. But when I went tofight and shoot people, I was petrified.

The world around war

Nations at war

Ever since war was transformed in the late18th century from a contest betweenprofessional armies into a clash betweenpopulations, its prosecution has becomedecisively linked to the vicissitudes ofnational morale. No regime can sustain aprolonged war unless a significant portion ofthe nation endorses the effort and is willingto make sacrifices necessary to itsprosecution. History is littered with caseswhere the stronger belligerent, havingmisjudged its national morale, has failed totranslate a marked military superiority intopolitical gain (e.g. the United States inVietnam, Israel in Lebanon).

This reality has never been lost on SaddamHussein. He reckoned that the Iraqi peoplecould be rallied behind a cause of gravenational interest. Yet he had no illusionsregarding the people's willingness to makeheavy sacrifices for the maintenance of hispersonal rule. The war with Iran aroseprimarily from the hostility between theIslamic regime in Iran and Iraq's ruling Ba'thparty, or, more specifically, the personalanimosity between Saddam and Khomeini; inthese circumstances, the support of the Iraqipeople, especially of the majority Shi'itecommunity, could not be taken for granted.

The export of the Iranian Revolution did notthreaten Iraq as a nation state. Rather, it wasSaddam and the Ba'th leadership that weretargeted as 'public enemies' by the agedayatollah. Khomeini had no territorialdesigns on Iraq or enmity towards its people.On the contrary, he repeatedly emphasisedthat 'we do not wish the ordinary people, theinnocent people to be hurt'. All he wantedwas the substitution of a pious leadership forthe 'infidel' regime in Baghdad.

Shielding Iraqis from the war

By way of persuading his subjects that hisdecision to make war was theirs, Saddamcarried the extensive personality cult, whichhad already been under way before the war,to an extraordinary peak of propaganda andforced adulation even by the standards ofthe Middle East's highly personalisedpolitics. The Iraqi people were inescapablyexposed to the towering presence of the'Struggler President', from the moment they

By way of rallying the Iraqi people behind the war effortSaddam carried his extensive personality cult to newpeaks of propoganda and forced adulation. (Gamma)

The world around war 67

glanced at the morning paper, through theirjourney to work, to the family eveninggathering in front of the television or theradio. They saw him posing with a rocketlauncher on the front lines or paternallyembracing young children; as a statesmanmeeting heads of state and as a militaryleader discussing war plans; as an efficientbureaucrat in a trendy suit and as anordinary peasant, helping farmers with theirharvest, scythe in hand. His portraitspervaded the country to such an extent thata popular joke put Iraq's population at26 million: 13 million Iraqis and 13 millionpictures of Saddam.

This personality cult was accompanied bystrenuous efforts to insulate the general Iraqipopulation from the effects of the war.Instead of concentrating most of Iraq'sresources on the military effort and, likeIran, stressing the virtue of sacrifice, theIraqi president sought to prove to his peoplethat he could wage war and maintain abusiness-as-usual atmosphere at the sametime. Ambitious development plans whichhad commenced prior to the war wentahead, and public spending rose from$21 billion in 1980 to $29.5 billion in 1982.The lion's share of this expanded budget (upfrom only $13.9 billion in 1980) was spenton civilian imports to prevent commodityshortages.

The outcome of this guns-and-butterpolicy was that the ferocious war that ragedon the battlefield was hardly felt on the Iraqihome front. Instead, the country was buzzingwith economic activity, to the delight ofnumerous foreign contractors, Western inparticular, who leisurely carved lucrativeslices from the expanding Iraqi economy.Construction projects of all sorts, begun priorto the war, continued apace, and Baghdadwas being transformed at a feverish pacefrom a medieval into a modern city. Daily lifein the capital continued largely unaffected.Blackouts, imposed at the beginning of thewar, were quickly lifted once the seriouslydisabled and dwindling Iranian air force wasunable to extend the war to the Iraqihinterland. Most foodstuffs were readily

available, and the black colour of mourningwas not too visible in the streets of Baghdad.The most salient signs of war were thegrowing number of women in governmentoffices and the swelling numbers of Asianand Arab workers who poured into Baghdadto replace Iraqis who were fulfilling theirnational duty at the front.

To be sure, the effort to insulate the Iraqipopulation from the dislocations of the warcould not be fully successful. After all, anation of merely 13 million people canhardly remain impervious to manythousands of casualties (even theauthorities were forced to admit to some1,200 casualties per month). However, to alarge extent the protective shield built bySaddam cushioned the Iraqi public from thehazards of war, and those directly involvedin the fighting or personally affected by thewar were handsomely rewarded by theauthorities. The already high standard ofliving of the officer corps was furtherimproved, and members of the armed forceswere given priority for car and housepurchases. Bereaved families, for their part,earned a free car, a free plot of land and aninterest-free loan to build a house.

While eliminating potential publicdissatisfaction with the war through hisdomestic policy, Saddam paid close attentionto the only state organ that could effectivelyendanger his regime - the military. Forcinghis colleagues in the ruling Ba'th Party tofollow him in substituting the ubiquitousbattledress for their tailored suits, hetransformed the Revolutionary CommandCouncil into his personal headquarters, thusmaintaining tight control of war operations.This was clearly demonstrated by anapparent inflexibility and lack of initiativeon the part of Iraq's field commanders.Battalion and brigade commanders wereunwilling to make independent decisions inrapidly changing battlefield situations,instead referring back to division or corpsheadquarters, which in turn approached thehighest command in Baghdad.

Saddam also extended the logic of hisinconspicuous war to include the complete


subordination of war operations to politicalconsiderations. Aware of the complexcomposition of Iraq's population andreluctant to risk significant losses within anyof Iraq's sectarian groups, he instructed themilitary leadership to prepare and executethe invasion with the utmost caution, so asto minimise casualties. This instruction,which went against the view of Saddam'sprofessional advisers, had devastatingconsequences. Not only did it fail to reducecasualties, it actually increased them whenIraq, unable to exploit its initial successes,was forced to commit its troops in worseningoperational conditions as Iran strengthenedits defences.

Surviving the Iranian assault

By mid-1982, as Iran began its determineddrives into Iraq, the butter-and-guns policy,

perhaps the main buttress of Iraqi nationalmorale, had to be abandoned because of thewar's drain on the country's financialreserves and loss of oil revenues due to thewar with Iran and the world oil glut; thispredicament was compounded by Syria'sclosure of the Iraqi pipeline to Banias on theMediterranean (Damascus was then Iran'sclosest Arab ally), which slashed Iraq'sexpected oil revenues by $5 billion. WithIraqi foreign reserves plunging from$35 billion before the war to S3 billion at theend of 1983, the government had to cutback on much non-essential spending and toadopt austerity measures. Consequentlycivilian imports dropped from a peak of$21.5 billion in 1982 to $12.2 billion in

As the military situation deteriorated, the Iraqi regimewas increasingly forced to resort to mass publiccampaigns to service the declining Iraqi economy.(Gamma)


1983, and $10-11 billion per annumbetween 1984 and 1987.

As the situation on the front deterioratedin early 1986, Saddam embarked on asustained campaign to mobilise Iraqi societyto the war effort. All Iraqis were urged todonate money, blood and working hours,and some 100,000 men, women andchildren were enlisted to cut reeds in thesouthern marshes, with a view to facilitatingmilitary operations there. In an attempt tooffset Iran's overwhelming demographicsuperiority, Saddam personally launched anationwide campaign to encourageprocreation. 'Our motto must be that eachfamily produces five children and thatfamilies failing to produce at least fourchildren deserve to be harshly reprimanded,'he declared, advising female students tochoose child-bearing over studies.

Paradoxically, the reversal in Iraq'smilitary fortunes facilitated Saddam's effortsto rally the nation behind him. Once Iraqwas no longer operating on foreign soil butrather defending its own homeland, thearmed forces regained their fighting spiritand public morale became buoyant. Saddamwas seemingly able to avoid the taint ofdefeat and to portray the war as a heroicdefence of the nation, and by extension ofthe Arab world, against a bigoted andaggressive enemy who persistently sabotagedefforts for peace.

Well before the war Saddam hadassiduously been harnessing Arab,particularly Gulf, support for his cause. Thestruggle against Khomeini-ism, he argued,was neither a personal vendetta nor solely anIraqi venture. Rather, it was a defence of theeastern flank of the Arab world against aviolent and aggressive enemy. Should Iraqfail to contain the Iranians at the gates ofthe Arab world, it would not be the onlycasualty of the Iranian Revolution; the entireGulf would be devoured by thefundamentalist Persians.

These claims fell on receptive ears. Fromhis early days in power, Khomeini did notconceal his contempt for the Gulf dynastiesand his determination to uproot them. 'Islam

proclaims monarchy and hereditarysuccession wrong and invalid,' he declared,setting in train a huge wave of Shi'iterestiveness throughout the Gulf. In thesedistressing circumstances the Gulf monarchiesfound it increasingly difficult to decline the'protection' offered by their strong 'sister' tothe north, Iraq, who, only half a decadeearlier, had openly demanded their heads. Abrief and decisive military encounter, theyapparently reasoned, would be the least of allevils. However risky, it might debilitate thetwo most formidable powers in the Gulf andcurb Iran's messianic zeal.

Hence, in the summer of 1980 Kuwaitopenly sided with Baghdad, and duringSaddam's first state visit to Saudi Arabia inAugust 1980 he apparently received KingKhaled's blessing for the impendingcampaign against Iran. When war broke out,these two states quickly threw their supportbehind Iraq and their identification with theIraqi cause grew as the Iranian threat loomedlarger. By the end of 1981 Saudi Arabia hadalready extended some $10 billion worth offinancial support to Iraq while Kuwait hadcontributed an additional $5 billion. Duringthe war years this support reached some$50 billion, and it was evident that theseloans were given with the knowledge thatmost, if not all, of them might not be repaidin the future. In addition, Saudi Arabia andKuwait sold some oil on Iraq's behalf andallowed their ports to be used for theshipment of goods to and from Iraq, whoseaccess to the Gulf had been severed at thebeginning of the war. Saudi Arabia evenallowed the use of its territory for theconstruction of an Iraqi oil pipeline to theRed Sea, thereby enabling Baghdad to bypassIran's naval superiority and to exportconsiderable amounts of oil. AlthoughSaddam was never satisfied with the level ofSaudi and Kuwaiti support and tended toaccuse them (let alone the rest of the Gulfstates) of being 'free riders' on 'Iraq's heroicstruggle on behalf of the Arab nation', thesecontributions were undoubtedly critical toIraq's war effort. Without Saudi and Kuwaitifinancial aid and logistical support, Saddam's


ability to weather Iraq's growing economicplight would have been seriously impaired.

Repressing Iraq's domesticopposition

In order to survive the window of extremepersonal vulnerability to which he wasexposed following Iraq's 'voluntarywithdrawal' from Iran in June 1982,Saddam exploited to the full his resourcefulruthlessness. In an attempt to inexorablyimplicate the Iraqi leadership in his policy,he took the unprecedented step ofconvening an extraordinary joint meeting ofthe Revolutionary Command Council (RCC),the Ba'th leadership and the militarycommand in his absence, which pleadedwith Iran for a ceasefire. The predictablydismissive Iranian response provided a freshreminder, if such were needed, of the fateawaiting the entire Iraqi leadership in theevent of an Iranian victory. Yet Saddam didnot trust his associates, even under theseextreme circumstances. During a specialcongress of Iraq's Ba'th Party, convened inlate June 1982 after a lapse of eight years toreconfirm Hussein's absolute control overthe party and state, he reshuffled thecountry's major power centres. Eight of the16 members of the RCC were removed, aswere a similar number of ministers. Thearmy was more severely afflicted, with some300 high-ranking officers executed duringthe summer of 1982, and many otherspurged.

Saddam also clamped down on the lastremnants of Shi'ite opposition. In the springof 1983 he arrested some 90 members of theprominent al-Hakim family, relatives ofHojjat al-Islam Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim,head of the Supreme Council of the IslamicRevolution of Iraq (SCIRI), an exiled militarygroup trained and operated by Iran. Six ofthe detainees were executed, and the exiledleader received a personal message fromSaddam threatening him with furtherexecutions should he continue his subversiveactivities; the threat was carried out two

years later with the killing of ten othermembers of the al-Hakim family.

By that time, however, Shi'ite challengesto the regime had to all intents and purposesdisappeared. In effect, the Shi'ites' behaviourduring the war demonstrated that Saddam'sfears about the community's disloyalty hadbeen grossly exaggerated. Not only did theyfail to welcome their self-styled Iranianliberators, but they fought shoulder toshoulder with their Arab compatriots torebuff the Iranian threat. Hence, with theexception of isolated terrorist activitieswhich were easily contained, the Shi'itecommunity sealed its social contract withthe Iraqi state with the blood of its sons.They just would not fight alongside theIranians against their Arab brothers.

Had Saddam been aware of this Shi'itestate of mind in 1979 or 1980, the war mighthave been averted altogether. As thingsstood, he was able to accompany thesporadic repressive convulsions against theShi'ite community with regulardemonstrations of generosity. An importantsymbolic act of goodwill was the guarantee,both in the 1980 and 1984 elections to theIraqi parliament, that some 40 per cent ofthose elected would be Shi'ites and that thespeaker of the 250-member legislature wouldalso be a Shi'ite. On the material level,Saddam took much care to improve thestandard of living of the Shi'ites and torenovate their holy shrines. Particularattention was paid to the tomb of Ali Ibn-Abi-Talib, the Shi'a's patron Imam, whichwas paved with special marble tiles importedfrom Italy.

Saddam also found the Kurdish threatduring the early war years less ominousthan previously believed. The tribal andlinguistic fragmentation of the Kurdishcommunity and the longstanding enmitybetween its two main resistance groups,Mas'ud Barzani's KDP and Jalal Talabani'sPUK, precluded a joint Kurdish strategy andenabled the regime to pit them against oneanother. It was only after Iran had launchedits first major offensive into Kurdistan inthe summer of 1983 that the Kurdish


opposition became a real irritant to thecentral regime. Yet even then Saddammanaged to keep the two Kurdishorganisations apart. While the KDPwas brutally repressed, with some8,000 members of the Barzani clanimprisoned, the PUK was carefully courtedthrough substantial financial inducementsand ambiguous political pledges. In late1983 the talks between the government andthe PUK culminated in a truce agreement.In the agreement, the contents of whichhave never been made officially public, thegovernment reportedly agreed to hold 'freeand democratic elections' for legislative andexecutive councils of an autonomous regionin Kurdistan, as well as to allocate 30 percent of the state budget to repair wardamage. The PUK reciprocated byundertaking to form a 40,000-strongpopular army 'to protect Kurdistanagainst foreign enemies'.

Before long, however, Talabani discoveredthat he had been double-crossed by Saddam,who had no intention whatsoever ofrehabilitating Kurdistan or promotingKurdish autonomy at the expense of thecentral government. Frustrated and angry,Talabani broke off dialogue with theauthorities, buried his differences withBarzani and joined the KDP campaignagainst the regime. Thus, by early 1985,Saddam was confronted with a full-scaleinsurrection in Kurdistan. When his peaceoffer was spurned by the disillusioned Kurds,a ferocious campaign was launched againstthem. With the passage of time and thedeterioration of Iraq's military position, thiscampaign assumed genocidal proportions.Not only were the 8,000 'prisoners' capturedin 1983 executed, along with hundreds ofother members of the Kurdish opposition,but the government embarked once moreon a systematic effort to uproot therebellious population from its nativeenvironment. By the end of the Iran-IraqWar in the summer of 1988, more than halfof the villages and numerous towns inKurdistan had been razed and theirpopulations deported. Some half a million

Kurds were placed either in easilycontrollable settlements in the vicinity ofthe main towns in Kurdistan, or inconcentration camps in the south-westernIraqi desert.

The war and Iranian politics

Unlike the Iraqi regime, which did its utmostto shelter its people from the effects of war,the clerics in Tehran embraced the war withalacrity as an opportunity to rally the nationbehind the revolution, eliminate domesticopposition, and promote Khomeini's visionof the worldwide export of Iran's Islamicmessage. Epitomised in the slogan'revolution before victory', this instrumentalapproach made the war from the outset anextension of the domestic political struggle,to which all military and operationalconsiderations were subordinated. Thus,for example, Iran's abortive January 1981offensive in Susangerd constituted adesperate bid by Bani Sadr, then President ofthe Islamic Republic and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, to shore up hisfledgling position in relation to the mullahs.So intense was the enmity between themthat the president considered the rulingIslamic Republican Party 'a greater calamityfor the country than the war with Iraq',while the latter maintained that 'it ispreferable to lose half of Iraq than for BaniSadr to become the ruler'.

Similarly, Iran's persistent adherence tohuman-wave tactics, despite their obviousfutility and prohibitive cost, was motivatednot so much by operational considerationsas by the desire of the regime to strengthenthe Pasdaran at the expense of the far moreprofessional, albeit politically unreliable,military. Having entered the war without areliable military institution of their own,the mullahs were grudgingly forced to relyon the military to contain the Iraqi invasionand to turn the tide of events. Yet theywere not willing to grant it any trust or togive it much leeway in the conduct ofoperations, despite the devastating


consequences of such distrust for Iraniannational interests.

This of course was not how the war waspresented to the Iranian public. To them itwas described both as a trial of Iraniannational resolve and commitment and as aholy crusade, so to speak, to protect Islamfrom the heretic Ba'th regime and its leader,Saddam Hussein. It was a relentless anduncompromising struggle against a viciousenemy, stretching to its limits Iran's

readiness for suffering, self-sacrifice andmartyrdom. In Khomeini's words: 'Victory isnot achieved by swords, it can only beachieved by blood ... it is achieved bystrength of faith.'

Khomeini knew all too well what he wastalking about. While not unifying the nationovernight, the Iraqi invasion galvanised theunique combination of religious zeal anddeep-rooted nationalist sentiment generatedby the Islamic Revolution, and made Iranian


morale stronger and more stable than that ofIraq at both the operational and the nationallevel. The willingness of the Iranian troops,particularly the Pasdaran and Basij, to incurhigh casualties and to undertake suicidalactions stood in obvious contrast to the Iraqibehaviour and had a devastating effect onIraqi morale, at least until mid-1982. Evenafter Iran realised that highly motivatedand ill-equipped troops were not enoughto achieve a military victory against

well-entrenched forces with massive firesupport, it would still take years of sustainedhuman-wave assaults for this revolutionaryzeal to start fading away.

Yet the blind devotion of the Pasdaranand the Basij to the Islamic causeovershadowed the internal situation in Iranand portrayed Iranian society as much morecohesive and unified in its support of thewar effort than it actually was. In fact,during most of the war Iran wasconsiderably affected by internal divisionson different levels, which culminated attimes in eruptions of violence that forcedthe government to divert part of its energies.The Kurds waged a continuous campaignagainst the central regime from early 1979,tying up regular forces in the north. Otherdomestic opposition groups, especially theleft-wing Mujaheddin e-Khalq, challenged theauthority of the revolutionary regime andresorted to sabotage and assassination.During 1981, for instance, the Mujaheddinassassinated some 1,200 religious andpolitical leaders, many of whom were fromthe top echelons of the Islamic regime,while the government executed about5,000 Mujaheddin guerrillas. In the latermonths of 1982, following the failure ofsuccessive Iranian incursions into Iraq, theconfrontation between the Mujaheddin andthe government brought Iran to the verge ofcivil war. Though far inferior in size andarmament to the regime's various militias,notably the Pasdaran, the 20,000-strongMujaheddin drew the country into anescalating vicious circle of violence, as carbombs and street battles in Iran's majorcities claimed the lives of hundreds ofinnocent people. It was only in 1985, after abrutal campaign of repression, involvingpersecution, mass executions, imprisonmentand the disappearance of activists and theirfamily members, that the regime managed toget the Mujaheddin challenge under control.

The Iranian authorities took great pains to instill in theirsubjects the virtues of austerity and self-sacrifice. Hereyoung Iranian girls make their contribution to the wareffort (Gamma)


Apart from this organised opposition, thehigh human cost of the abortive Iranianthrusts into Iraq, coupled with thedeteriorating economic situation, generatedwidespread war-weariness and a decline inmorale. This manifested itself in discontent,including a drop in the number of armyvolunteers after late 1984 and anti-war andanti-government demonstrations, mostnotably in mid-1985. Morale plungedsharply in 1987 as the regime respondedinadequately to intensified Iraqi missileattacks on population centres. The decline involunteers for the front assumed alarmingproportions after the costly failure to captureBasra in the winter of 1987. Growingdiscontent among the poor, who constitutedthe mainstay of the regime's support, wasparticularly disconcerting for the clerics.

The regime tried to stem the mountingtide of public discontent by simultaneouslyappealing to national and religioussentiments and suppressing overt signs ofopposition. Faced with the decline of morale,Khomeini issued a series of rulings as early asthe autumn of 1982. In these he declaredthat parental permission was unnecessary forthose going to the front, that volunteeringfor service was a religious obligation, andthat serving in the forces took precedenceover all other forms of work or study. At thesame time, the regime mounted vigorouscampaigns to encourage specific sectors(such as civil servants) to increase their wareffort, inviting contributions, financial or inkind, from organisations and individuals.Many workers contributed one day's pay amonth, and a list of donations to the wareffort was published in the daily newspapers,with the value of gifts itemised againstdonors' names. The government alsoexploited the dispatch of Basij volunteers tothe battlefront as a propaganda ploy,employing every conceivable means, fromemotional and religious stimulation tofinancial inducements in order to increasethe numbers of volunteers and financialcontributions.

Those who would not contribute to thewar effort of their free will, were forced to

do so. In October 1985 provisions weredrawn up for sending governmentemployees to the battlefront, up to 10 percent of them on full pay. Several monthslater, in the spring of 1986, plans wereannounced to give nearly 2 million civilservants on-the-job military training, and bythe early summer emphasis had shifted tofull mobilisation of 'all the forces andresources of the country for the war'.

The war and the Iranianeconomy

An important role in this mobilisation wasplayed by economic factors. As the conflictwas being transformed into a prolonged warof attrition, the chances of an Iranianvictory had come to depend as much on thenation's relative tolerance of belt-tighteningand self-denial as on its capacity for massrecruitment of zealous fighters. Unlike Iraq,which was at the height of anunprecedented boom when it initiatedhostilities, Iran's economy was in the throesof rapid deterioration following therevolution. This deterioration wasconsiderably accelerated during the war, as asharp decline in oil revenues combined withthe correspondingly steep rise in militaryexpenditure to produce a large balance ofpayments deficit. Foreign exchange reserves,inherited from the previous regime,dropped from $14.6 billion in 1979 to amere $1 billion at the end of 1981.

By way of overcoming these difficulties,the regime took great pains to increase Iran'soil production. Oil revenues rose stronglyfrom $12 billion in 1981 to $19 billion inboth 1982 and 1983, allowing the authoritiesto liberalise import restrictions so as togenerate a revival in industrial andagricultural production. This success,however, proved short-lived. As Iraqintensified its economic warfare in 1984 withthe initiation of the tanker war, Iran'seconomy took a sharp downward turn.Oil revenues dropped from $19 billion to$12-13 billion in 1984-85, then to


$6.6 billion in 1986. By 1987, nearly one intwo Iranians had become unemployed.

The authorities fought this predicamentwith vigour and ingenuity. To service theagricultural sector at a time of total militarymobilisation, they established a massorganisation titled The ReconstructionCampaign, whose members were exemptedfrom military service and deployed in ruralareas. They also cut non-essential imports toa minimum, thus saving precious foreignexchange, and sought alternative routes(notably through Turkey) for exportingIranian oil. Foreign observers were greatlyimpressed by Iranian technicians, 'masters ofinvention and innovation' in repairingdamaged oil facilities, and by Iranianmilitary plants 'performing miracles' inmaking up for the severe shortages in Iran'smilitary equipment.

There was, however, an instrumental,indeed cynical, side to the regime's handlingof the economy. While doing its best tofoster a sense of public acceptance of strictausterity measures, it was busy placatingthose constituencies deemed crucial to itssurvival by tailoring its economic policies tomeet their needs. This applied not only tothe regime's hard-core revolutionaryfollowers and their families, who weregenerously remunerated for their service andsuffering, but also to such bourgeoissegments of Iranian society as the bazaar,whose economic resources wereindispensable to the regime in its fight tokeep austerity at bay. In 1984, for example,in a rare intervention in domestic policy

issues, Khomeini came out in favour of aneconomic policy that allowed the bazaar toretain control of trade, without excessivegovernment interference.

This leniency stood in sharp contrast tothe zeal with which the regime wassuppressing all manifestations of organiseddissent. Apart from the brutal repression ofthe Mujaheddin, the government clampeddown on the Tudeh communist party, as wellas on other political groups that posed, orseemed likely to pose, a threat to theauthority and policies of the ruling IslamicRepublican Party. The Kurdish rebellion hadsteadily ground down, and sporadicoutbursts of street discontent (such as the1985 incidents) were curbed with the aid ofmilitant activists.

These repressive measures were, admittedly,a far cry from their Iraqi counterparts. WhileSaddam would not tolerate the slightestmanifestation of dissent, the Iranian regimeallowed a degree of institutionalisedopposition, notably the Islamic LiberationMovement headed by the former PrimeMinister Mehdi Bazargan. In early 1985, whenthe costly Iranian failures to breach the Iraqilines combined with the war of the cities tostir public mutterings of discontent, Bazargancame out against the war, going so far (in atelegram to the United Nations Secretary-General) as to brand its continuation sincemid-1982 as un-Islamic and illegal. And whilethis criticism had little effect on the Iranianpublic, it was nevertheless deemed byKhomeini as significant enough to deserve apersonal rebuttal.

Portrait of a civilian

Death of a village

In the summer of 1988, fifteen-year-oldFakhir lived with his family in the smallIraqi Kurdish village of Koreme, some31 miles (50 km) south of the Turkish border.Prior to the war, the village population hadcomprised some 150 families, but as theconflict came to engulf Kurdistan, most ofthe villagers moved out of Koreme to therelative safety of ravines a few miles away.Still, despite the ravages of war, including anumber of attacks by the Iraqi army, Koremeremained very much intact as a village.Those inhabitants staying behind continuedto cultivate their lands, while many of theescapees would come out at night to farmthe fields nearest the ravines.

By this time, there were widespreadreports of attacks on Kurdish villages andtowns, on a different magnitude to anythingthat had taken place before. The Koremevillagers were not easily frightened, havingendured destruction and death on numerousoccasions. However, the horror stories theyheard from fleeing Kurds were sufficientlyalarming to convince them to undertake thedifficult and risky flight on foot to Turkey -itself a highly uncertain haven for the Kurds.Their instincts were based on solid grounds.As the end of the war seemed in the offing,Saddam embarked on a massive punitivecampaign in Kurdistan aimed at nothing lessthan the complete eradication of the IraqiKurds as a distinct socio-politicalcommunity. Named the Anfal Campaignafter a Koranic Sura, and commanded by AliHassan al-Majid, Saddam's paternal cousin,this operation reached heights of brutalitythat were exceptional even by the mercilessstandards of Saddam's Iraq. Like asteamroller crushing everything before it, theIraqi army advanced throughout Kurdistan,indiscriminately spreading death anddestruction. Villages were shelled or bombed,

at times with chemical weapons, beforebeing stormed by the army. The villagerswould then be rounded up. Women andchildren were separated from the men andsent to 'hamlets' in Kurdistan which lackedbasic humanitarian conditions. Men andboys were often summarily executed; otherswere dispatched to concentration camps inthe south-western Iraqi desert, never to beseen again. By the time this horrendouscampaign came to an end, in the autumn of1988, thousands of villages and towns inKurdistan had been demolished and theirpopulations deported. Some half a millionKurds had been relocated, while another250,000 had fled to Turkey and Iran.

In late August 1988, the Anfal Campaignreached Koreme in the form of aerialbombardments and constant shelling in thevicinity of the village. No chemical weaponswere used in the village, but they wereemployed extensively at neighbouring sites.On 25-26 August, the main body of Koremefamilies, some 300 people, decided that thetime had come for them to run for theirlives. This, however, was easier said thandone, as Iraqi artillery and helicopters weretargeting the columns of fleeing Kurds toprevent them from reaching Turkey. And so,in the afternoon hours of 28 August, theescapees were back in Koreme, only to beconfronted with Iraqi forces.

A massacre in broad daylight

At the first sight of the soldiers, just outsidethe village, the men and boys lifted theirhands to signal their surrender. To their greatrelief, they were not harmed but were insteadseparated into three groups - young andadult men, women and children, and oldmen - and taken into custody. The soldiers

Portrait of a civilian 77

disarmed those with arms and searched themand the other men for any other weapons.

A smaller group of villagers was thenseparated from the group of young andadult men. A lieutenant told them to sitdown, which they did. The other villagers,including those men not singled out, wereled away behind the hill near the partlyruined village schoolhouse. As they weretaken away, women and men screamed andcried out for their loved ones, and thesoldiers tried to quiet them down. 'We justwant to ask them some questions', a soldiertold the wife of one of the detained men.'Why do you think something is going tohappen?' One of the officers approached therow of men, pulling aside those heapparently deemed too young. An argumentdeveloped over whether one boy was 12 or13; he was eventually allowed to leave thegroup. One boy, who tried to stay with hisfather, was taken out of the line, as was ayoung teenager holding his baby sister in hisarms. By the time this selection process hadbeen finished, there were 33 men andteenage boys left in line.

Suspecting the bitter fate awaiting them,the men wept and pleaded for their lives,though the soldiers kept on insisting thatnothing would happen to them. One of theofficers even offered them cigarettes andwater. Meanwhile, a dozen soldiers took uppositions opposite the group. Some ofthem, too, were reassuring the men thatthey had no reason to worry. Thecommander, they said, was going to contactthe local headquarters for instructionsregarding their interrogation.

Shortly afterwards, one of the officers didprecisely this. Speaking on his walkie-talkie,he reported capturing 'armed subversives'and asked for instructions. The villagerscould not hear the reply, but as soon as theofficer put down the walkie-talkie, heturned around to the soldiers and orderedthem to shoot.

The soldiers opened fire with theirKalashnikov AK-47 rifles on the 33 mensquatting some few yards ahead of them.Some villagers were killed immediately, while

others were wounded and a few were missedaltogether. Having stopped shooting, severalsoldiers approached the line of slumpedbodies on orders from an officer and firedadditional individual rounds to ensure death.They then left the execution site withoutburying the bodies or touching them.

Surviving the firing squad

Surprisingly, despite the volume and closerange of the firing, six of the 33 villagersmanaged to survive. One of them, a34-year-old villager by the name of Aba,recalled being blown over backwards fromhis squatting position by the force of thebullet, which shattered bones in his leg,sending him rolling down a slope. Heeventually fell into a stony ravine, wherehe remained lying on his back for 24 hours,partly visible and partly hidden by grassand stones. Occasionally during the nightsoldiers up the hill would take shots athim, but none bothered to come down,presumably because they thought he wasdead.

Fakhir was even more fortunate thanAba. Finding himself in the executionline-up, together with two uncles (his fatherwas not in the village at the time), he wastaken out by a soldier, apparently becausehe looked younger than his age. This wasindeed a major asset, as some of his friendsperished at Koreme while othersdisappeared at a later stage. Even so, Fakhircame within a hairsbreadth of death duringthe forced relocation of the Koremesurvivors following the executions. Asthe refugees reached the town of Salamia,Fakhir was asked by an officer for anidentification card. His mother produced it,and upon seeing his date of birth - 1973 -the officer asked, 'Why are you here? Youare too old to be here.' He then took Fakhirby the arm and walked him to the post atthe main gate of Salamia security fort. Atthe main gate, Fakhir said, was an old manwho had not been taken directly to thecamps with the others. The old man said,


'Don't take this boy. Do him a good deed.Saddam didn't say you had to take thisone.' The officer hesitated, and the old mancontinued. 'Saddam won't see if you don'ttake him. Saddam is not watching. Do goodin the sight of Allah, the compassionate,the merciful.' The officer let go of Fakhir,shook him roughly, and said, 'Don't let mesee you again. I was kind to you this once,but I won't be kind the next time.'

Relocation of survivors

Although they did not see the execution,the rest of the villagers behind the hill heardthe shots and knew exactly what theymeant. Prevented by the soldiers fromrunning back to their loved ones, womenand men were weeping while the childrenscreamed for their fathers. This made littleimpression on the soldiers, who herded the150-300-strong group of mostly women,children and elderly out of the village. Thebodies of the massacred lay where they hadfallen, unburied, stiffened, and starting toswell in the summer heat. The soldiers thenrazed to the ground all of Koreme'sresidential homes, as well as its mosque andschool. Power lines were pulled down andpower poles knocked over. Orchards were

burned, vineyards uprooted. The villagesprings were cemented over, and cementwas poured into the wells.

Meanwhile the Koreme survivors weredriven by foot to the district capital ofMengish, where they were locked up in thelocal fort, already bursting with thousands ofKurdish refugees from neighbouring villages.Conditions at the site were appalling. Foodwas in short supply and many people wentwithout water for several days, despite thescorching heat. Nor did the lot of therefugees improve after being moved severaldays later to the provincial fort of Dohuk.Some food and water was distributed, but itrarely amounted to more than a piece ofbread every other day, handed outnegligently. Water supplies were limited to afew barrels of hot water, placed in courtyardsthat were unsanitary, and insufficient tomeet drinking needs. Some pregnant womenmiscarried and several boys died because ofthe dire conditions. A request by a pregnantwoman to see a doctor was refused by asoldier on the grounds that 'the Kurds havebeen brought here to die'. Indeed, in anumber of sweeps, the authorities removedall the remaining young and adult Korememen from their families. They were thenloaded on to army trucks which left Dohukfort, never to be seen again.

How the war ended

The poisoned chalice

Iran's acceptance of the UN ceasefireresolution made little impression on Iraq. Inhis letter to the UN Secretary-General, Perezde Cuellar, President Khamenei demandedthat Iraq be made to admit its responsibilityfor starting the war. While there was nothingnew in this standard Iranian demand, whichwas apparently reiterated as a face-savingreason for the regime's dramatic U-turn,Saddam was not prepared to allow Iran towin the moral high ground. For years he hadbeen pleading with the mullahs in Tehranfor an end to hostilities, only to becontemptuously rebuffed time and again.Now that Iran had sunk to its lowest ebb inthe war, Saddam was determined to makethe best of it. Iraq rejected Iran's acceptanceof the ceasefire as too ambiguous anddemanded that it be explicitly and publiclyendorsed by Khomeini in person.

By way of backing up this demand, on18 July Iraq launched a series of air raidsagainst strategic industrial plants in Ahvazand Bandar e-Khomeini, and attacked Iran'snuclear reactor in Bushehr. Iran retaliatedwith strikes against Iraqi targets in Fao andthe northern oil-rich area of Kirkuk, but itwas evident that its weakened air force andmissile stockpiles were no match for Iraq'sformidable strategic capabilities. Inrecognition of this stark reality, Khomeiniwas grudgingly being pressured to suffer theultimate humiliation and publicly announcehis acceptance of a ceasefire.

The aged ayatollah, though, could notbring himself to break the bad news to hispeople. That was simply too much for theprophet of the 'perpetual revolution' to bear.He was praying in his private mosque at hishome while an announcer read the text ofhis message on the Islamic Republic's officialradio station. It was 2 pm on 20 July, andeven though President Khameini had

announced Iran's acceptance of the ceasefireresolution three days earlier, Khomeini'smessage still came as a shock to the Iranianpeople. 'Happy are those who have departedthrough martyrdom', ran the ayatollah'sstatement. 'Unhappy am I that I still survive... Taking this decision is more deadly thandrinking from a poisoned chalice. Isubmitted myself to Allah's will and tookthis drink for His satisfaction.'

Yet Khomeini would not drink from thepoisoned chalice without a bitter protest. 'Tome it would have been more bearable toaccept death and martyrdom ... [but I wasforced to accept the advice of] all thehigh-ranking military experts.' He pointedan accusatory finger in the direction of thoseforces deemed responsible for this shamefuldevelopment, before concluding on athreatening note, 'Accepting the [UN]resolution does not mean that the questionof war has been solved. By declaring thisdecision, we have blunted the propagandaweapon of the world devourers against us.But one cannot forecast this course of eventsindefinitely.'

This was, of course, not quite whatSaddam had expected, and he raised thestakes still further. Although Resolution 598called for a ceasefire as a first step towards anegotiated settlement, Iraq now demandedthe immediate commencement ofIraqi-Iranian peace talks in advance. TariqAziz argued that Iraq considered that thewar was still going on so long as Iran failedto clarify its intentions with regard to otheraspects of the resolution, notably anexchange of prisoners-of-war. Iraq was eagerto see the immediate return of its 70,000 warprisoners (compared to Iran's 45,000), as itwould constitute proof of both the successfultermination of hostilities and the beginningof Iraq's return to normality.


After Iran's acceptance of a ceasefire, Iraq allowed theNational Liberation Army, an Iranian dissident forcebased in Iraqi territory, to mount an invasion of Iran.(Gamma)

Since Aziz was effectively asking theIranians to set out their terms for a peacesettlement before a ceasefire had even been

agreed, the two belligerents remained lockedin three weeks of tough haggling,punctuated by a string of military clashes.Openly suspicious about Iran's motives, Iraqcontinued to conduct limited offensiveoperations in order to take more prisoners,and, by occupying more Iranian territory,improve its own negotiating position. This

How the war ended 81

continued belligerence caused a briefresurgence of popular support in Iran for thewar. So did the attempt by the Baghdad-based Mujaheddin e-Khalq's 'NationalLiberation Army' to stage its own invasion ofIran, with armour and air and logisticalsupport from the regular Iraqi military. Thedeepest penetration of Iranian territory

during the war, this 90-mile (144 km)incursion was decisively defeated by thePasdaran by the end of July, with theinvading forces suffering heavy losses. Yetthe Iranian regime was sufficiently alarmedto unleash a massive campaign of repressionagainst the remnants of the Mujaheddinwithin Iran and their suspectedsympathisers, involving thousands ofarrests and executions.

Meanwhile, a large group of Iraq'sinternational backers, from the United Statesand Western Europe to the Gulf states, wereputting heavy pressure on Saddam to acceptthe ceasefire. At the same time, UN Secretary-General de Cuellar managed to convince theIranians that the ceasefire should beimmediately followed by face-to-face talksbetween the two countries. In an ironicreversal of roles, Iran, which for a year hadstalled the implementation of Resolution598, now became its vociferous proponent.Foreign Minister Velayati complained aboutIraq's delaying tactics and urged the SecurityCouncil to take active measures againstBaghdad. Hashemi-Rafsanjani argued thatIraq's continued aggression was proof, if anywere needed, that Iran had been victimisedby its neighbour.

These pressures brought the desired result,and on 6 August Saddam announced hisreadiness 'for a ceasefire on the conditionthat Iran announces clearly, unequivocallyand formally its acceptance to enter intodirect negotiations with Iraq immediatelyafter the ceasefire takes place'. The followingday, after some last-minute haggling, Iranaccepted these terms.

On 8 August 1988 the UN SecurityCouncil convened and declared a ceasefireeffective from dawn on 20 August, and itwas agreed that Iraqi and Iranianrepresentatives would meet on 24 August,under the auspices of the UN Secretary-General, to start their peace talks. A350-strong force - the United Nations Iran-Iraq Military Observer Group (UNIMOG) -was established to monitor theimplementation of the ceasefire, and theUS Secretary of Defense, Frank Carlucci,


How the war ended 83

Tehran: Pasdaran Revolutionary Guards (SIPA Press)

announced that his country would shortlyreduce its military presence in the Gulf.

Thus ended the Iran-Iraq War, one of thelongest, bloodiest and costliest Third Worldarmed conflicts in the 20th century. After eightyears of bitter fighting, untold casualties, andimmeasurable suffering and dislocation, thetwo combatants were forced, out of sheerexhaustion and debilitation, to settle for thestatus quo ante existing in September 1980. Yetthere was little doubt that neither of themviewed the ceasefire as the end of the conflict.Consequently, both sides concentrated onrebuilding their armed forces against theeventuality of a new military conflagration,and accelerated the reconstruction of theireconomies and national infrastructures, aprecondition for new military preparations.Both countries produced well over the2 million barrels of oil per day assigned tothem by OPEC. Iran re-opened its mainterminal in Kharg Island to oil shippers and

started rebuilding the devastated refinery atAbadan. Iraq embarked on a massiverehabilitation effort in Basra, resumed shippingfrom the port of Umm Qasr, and allowed aflow of consumer goods into the country.

The peace talks, although they beganas scheduled on 24 August 1988, quicklyran into a blind alley, but continuedinconclusively for the next two years. Eagerto show his subjects the fruits of victory,Saddam insisted on Iraq's full control of theShatt al-Arab waterway; he went so far as tothreaten to dig a canal between the ports ofBasra and Umm Qasr if this demand was notconceded. For its part, Iran insisted on Iraq'sfull compliance with the 1975 AlgiersAgreement. As a result, all other aspects ofthe peace talks, notably the prisoners issue,remained deadlocked. Even a humanitarianattempt to exchange 1,500 sick and disabledprisoners in November 1988 failed to makeany progress. The Iran-Iraq War may haveended, but a solution to Iranian-Iraqi enmitywas not in sight.

Conclusion and consequences

A costly exercise in futility

The Iran-Iraq War is unlikely to be studiedfor its strategic lessons or battlefieldaccomplishments, but will rather beremembered as a costly exercise in futilityresulting from the failure to apply mostof the classic principles of war, from theadoption of realistic war aims to theconduct of the war itself. However, sincemilitary failure, no less than success,contributes to the development ofmilitary knowledge, the lessons of thiswar, with their very broad implications,particularly for the Middle East, cannot beoverlooked.

Iraq's strategic miscalculation

One of the war's main ironies is that whatwas conceived as a limited campaignbecame the longest and bloodiest conflictbetween Third World states since theSecond World War. The critical strategicerror, and the one that caused the war'sextension, was Iraq's failure to strike abalance between its foreign policy goalsand its war strategy.

The most common explanation for thisfailure views the invasion of Iran asevidence of Saddam's unbridled regionalambitions, ranging from the occupation ofIranian territories (the Shatt al-Arab andKhuzestan), through the desire to inflict adecisive defeat on the Iranian Republic, tothe need to assert Iraq as the pre-eminentArab and Gulf state. By this line ofargument, Iraq's inability to bring the warto a swift conclusion reflected the wide gapbetween these ambitious goals and thelimitations of its military power. In otherwords, Iraq committed the commonmistake of trying to bite off more than itcould chew, having overestimated its own

power and underestimated that of itsopponent.

An alternative explanation maintainsthat failures in the implementation ofnational strategies do not necessarily stemfrom an underestimation of one'sopponents but can equally arise fromexcessive timidity. Iraq did not misjudge thebalance of power between itself and Iranprior to the war, for in the summer of 1980it had an undeniable military edge. Nor didit appear to set its sights higher than itsmeans permitted. Instead it assigned to itsmilitary forces tasks which were too limited.By failing to destroy a significant portion ofthe Iranian forces at a time when it wasperfectly capable of doing so, Iraq laid itselfopen to counterattack and was thus unableto hold on to its limited territorialobjectives. In other words, Iraq's grandstrategy failed not because its militarypower was insufficient to the attainment ofnational goals but because too little wasasked of it.

Be that as it may, the general conclusion,though obvious, is still worth restating.States should strive to keep the maximumdegree of mutuality between their foreign-policy goals and the instruments employedto achieve them. They should opt to keepthe widest possible security margins bypreferring a strategy of general war in thepursuit of limited political goals rather thana strategy of a limited war for theattainment of far-reaching political goals. Inhis attempts to contain the Iranian threatto his personal rule, Saddam should haveeither avoided war altogether and tried todeflect the Iranian pressure by othermeans, or followed a strategy of generalwar in pursuit of limited aims. Such astrategy, had it been adopted, might stillhave failed, given the nature of the Iranian

Conclusion and consequences 85

regime. But a strategy of limited war couldonly fail.

Operational lessons andimplications

Broadly speaking, the Iran-Iraq Wardemonstrated that even non-conventionalwars are won or lost by conventionalmeans; that is, the level of competence inthe application of the principles of war.Contrary to all appearances, Iran'soperational successes in 1981-82 stemmednot from the blind devotion of thePasdaran and the Basij but rather from theincorporation of these forces intocomprehensive combined-arms operations,planned and carried out under professionalmilitary direction. When the conventionalconduct of the war gave way to frontalhuman-wave assaults lacking any kind ofinter-service co-operation, Iran failed timeand again, and at an exorbitant cost, tobreach the Iraqi defences.

The war also underlined both thedecisive impact and the severe limitationsof air power in the modern battlefield. Onthe one hand, it afforded a convincingdemonstration that chronic inferiority inthis area is a strategic liability for which it isalmost impossible to compensate in regularconventional warfare. On the other hand,the war showed that air power can hardlywin wars on its own without theaccompaniment of a decisive landcampaign. On numerous occasions duringthe war Iraq used its vast air superiority tobreak the stalemate on the battlefield byextending the fighting to Iran's rear anddriving the revolutionary regime intoinstinctive and ill-conceived reactions in adesperate bid to reduce the pressure from itspopulation. Yet it was only when itmanaged to regroup its ground forces into astring of large offensives in 1988 that Iraqmanaged to bring the war to conclusion.

Finally, the Iran-Iraq War underminedseveral crucial thresholds and 'red lines' ininter-state wars. It was the first armed

conflict since the First World War to witnessthe extensive use of poison gas; it involvedthe most intensive campaign againstnon-belligerent shipping since the SecondWorld War, and, also, perhaps, the harshestattacks on population centres and economictargets. These escalations entailedfar-reaching adverse implications for MiddleEastern stability. With the breaking of somany taboos, and the exceptionally cavalierinternational response to Iraq's massive useof poison gas, every regional army facingthe possibility of war must now be awarethat the international accords barringthe use of chemical weapons and othernon-conventional weapons are apparentlyof little binding value, as are theinternational norms pertaining to militaryattacks on civilian targets. Indeed, theIran-Iraq War has significantly acceleratedthe already alarming regional arms race,with Syria and Libya (not to speak of Iranand Iraq) developing substantial chemicalweapons capabilities in addition to theircontinued interest in procuring moresurface-to-surface missiles. Even SaudiArabia has purchased long-range ballisticmissiles from China.

The tempering of Iran'srevolutionary zeal

The inconclusive termination of the war,with no clear victor, constituted a triumphfor the status quo powers over a formidableforce of revisionism. Not only did Iran failto topple the Ba'th regime and thus set intrain a wave of religious radicalismthroughout the Middle East, but its visionof an Islamic order was widely spurned bymost Sunni fundamentalists. Only inLebanon does Iran's version of Islamicfundamentalism appear to have left alasting impact, with the rise of militantShi'ite movements such as Amal andHizbullah, but even there it has beenconstrained by domestic and externalfactors, such as Syrian domination of thecountry. It would be no exaggeration to


argue that with the confinement of therevolution to Iran's boundaries the MiddleEastern state-system has withstood one ofthe gravest ideological challenges to itsexistence.

True, the status quo powers can hardlyrelax: religious radicalism is subdued butnot eradicated. Rooted in the region'smillenarian Islamic tradition, andreinforced by the wider Third Worldtrend to seek refuge in religion fromthe alienating forces of modernisation,Islamic fundamentalism did not originate inthe Iranian Revolution and neither do itsfortunes depend exclusively on domesticdevelopments within Iran. Yet, consideringthat Iran has been the foremost standardbearer of political Islam since the demise ofthe Ottoman Empire, its actions andinaction are likely to play an important rolein the vicissitudes of this phenomenon.And in this respect there is little doubt thatthe Iran-Iraq War exerted a profoundlysobering and moderating influence.

To the Islamic Republic of Iran, like theFirst French Republic and the newlyestablished Bolshevik state, war was themain means to gaining national legitimacyand rallying popular support behind theregime. The war was also a struggle forabsolute stakes. If the Iraqis had everentertained thoughts of undermining therevolutionary regime in Iran, by 1988 theyhad long since relinquished them. Incontrast, the Islamic Republic displayed anunshaken commitment to the concept of'war until victory' (which implied theoverthrow of the Ba'th regime) up to thevery last days of the fighting.

Iran's acceptance of Security CouncilResolution 598 was therefore no tacticalmatter but rather a decision of the higheststrategic order: the war was brought to anend in order to preserve the very revolutionthat had given birth to it. By the time Iranannounced its readiness to end the war andenter into peace negotiations with Iraq, itsregional worldview had come full circle:from the revisionist dream of shaping theGulf (and the wider Middle East) along

Islamic lines, to acquiescence in theregional status quo established by the Shahin 1975; from the vision of 'the permanentrevolution' to the notion of 'Islam in onecountry'. True, Khomeini's vision of anIslamic umma did not disappear from theIranian vocabulary, but the far-reachinggoal of subverting the regional order hadsuccumbed to eight years of futile conflict,giving way to the conventional 'rules of thegame' to which the Islamic Republic hadbeen so adamantly opposed.

Emerging from the war as a cripplednation, Iran faced the Sisyphean task ofreconstructing its devastated social,economic and military systems. Theceasefire was followed by a heated debateamong the clerics over whether to allowgreater room for the private sector in thereconstruction effort and to accept foreignaid to this end. By and large thepragmatists, who advocated a more openIranian economy, had the upper hand overthe more doctrinaire faction, though theirposition was to suffer occasional setbackswith the vicissitudes of Iran's domestic andexternal position.

Iran also embarked on a vigorous, andhighly successful campaign to end itsinternational isolation and return to themainstream of international politics,effectively discarding the ideologicalprecept of 'neither East nor West' that hadguided the revolution from its veryinception, in favour of a pragmatic policyof courting both East and West. Relationswith the Soviet Union, which had plungedto their lowest ebb in 1983 following thesuppression of the Tudeh Party, began towarm in 1986 with the revival of thebilateral Permanent Commission for JointEconomic Cooperation. This improvementgained considerable momentum frommid-1987 onwards as Iran saw in theUSSR a major counterbalance to thegrowing US naval presence in the Gulf.

The end of hostilities also enabled Iranto mend fences with the Western powersfollowing the severe setback of 1987:diplomatic relations with France were


restored in June 1988, with Canada amonth later, and with Britain in December.Relations with West Germany, alreadywarmer than with the rest of the WesternEuropean powers, grew closer with a visitby Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscherto Iran in November 1988. The renewedhoneymoon with the West was temporarilycurtailed in February 1989, following areligious ruling by Khomeini, calling for theexecution of the British author SalmanRushdie for writing allegedly blasphemouspassages in his novel The Satanic Verses.Yet even at that moment of mountingpassions Iran did not abandon caution, anddisplayed a measure of restraint. Thus, forexample, Khomeini's call for Rushdie'sexecution was paralleled by milder voicesindicating possible ways to avert crisis.

Regional reactions

With the threat of Islamic fund-amentalismapparently receding, the Arab monarchiesof the Gulf, Iraq's staunch supportersthroughout the war, began to distancethemselves from overt animosity towardsIran. In late September 1988 Kuwaitre-established diplomatic relations with -Tehran, and a fortnight later Bahrain andIran agreed to upgrade diplomatic relations.Even Saudi Arabia, which severeddiplomatic relations with Iran in April1988, reacted favourably to Iranianovertures: on 25 October 1988, in responseto a conciliatory statement by Speaker ofthe parliament Hashemi-Rafsanjani, KingFahd ordered the state-controlled media tohalt their propaganda attacks on Iran.

Yet not all Middle Eastern stateswelcomed the ending of the war. Turkey, forone, had very few reasons to rejoice overthe ceasefire, given its substantial gainsfrom the war. In the economic sphere, asignificant increase in Turkish trade withboth belligerents had immeasurablyimproved the outlook of the country'scrisis-ridden economy. Strategically, Turkey'simportance in the region, already boosted

after the Iranian Revolution and theconsequent loss of Western strategic assetsthere, was further enhanced by the war ingeneral, indeed by the very thought of anIranian victory. For Turkey, therefore, thepost-war era involved diminishing gainsand new challenges.

But the major loser from the ending ofthe war was undoubtedly Iraq's neighbourto the west, Syria. Animosity betweenthe Syrian and Iraqi ruling Ba'th parties pre-dated the outbreak of the war andmanifested itself in mutual subversiveand terrorist activities, as well as harshpropaganda campaigns; on severaloccasions in the mid- and late 1970s thetwo countries came close to war. During theIran-Iraq War Syria became Iran's staunchestally, curtailing Iraq's war effort to someextent, something that Saddam neitherforgot nor forgave. Once hostilities wereover he sought to settle the account withDamascus through interference in its ownbackyard: Lebanon. The closing months of1988 witnessed the development ofsubstantial Iraqi support, in the form ofmoney and arms, to the ChristianMaronites, who only a few years earlier hadbeen Israel's closest allies. Iraq was evenreported to have used the Israeli port ofHaifa for arms deliveries to the Maronites,with Saddam stating his readiness toco-operate with Israel for the 'liberation ofLebanon'.

No less anathema to the Syrians was theapparent moderation of Arab attitudestowards Israel produced by the war. Tehran'srelentless commitment to the substitutionof its militant brand of Islamic order for theexisting status quo, its reluctance to end thewar before the overthrow of the Ba'thregime in Baghdad, and its subversive andterrorist campaign against the Gulfmonarchies had convinced many Arabs thatthe Iranian threat exceeded by far the Israelidanger and that there was no adequatesubstitute for Egypt at the helm of the Arabworld. Hence, before 1980 was out, Saddam,who a year earlier had triumphantly hostedthe Baghdad Summit, which expelled Egypt

Essential Histories • The Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988


Syria's President Hafiz al-Asad, an erstwhile enemy ofSaddam Hussein, became Iran's foremost Arab supporterduring the war (Gamma)

from the Arab League for its peace withIsrael, was pleading with theexcommunicated Egyptian president AnwarSadat for military support. As Egyptdeveloped into an important military andeconomic provider, Saddam would tirelesslytoil to pave the way for its re-incorporationinto the Arab fold, regardless of its peacetreaty with Israel. By the end of the 1980s,Egypt had already regained its pivotal rolein the Arab world, with its moderate policybecoming the mainstream Arab line and itsformer detractors seeking its friendship andprotection. In May 1989 Egypt took part inthe all-Arab summit in Casablanca for thefirst time since its expulsion from the ArabLeague a decade earlier.

The road to Kuwait

Alongside its moderating consequences,the Iran-Iraq War exerted a profoundlydestabilising impact on regional, andindeed world, affairs in that it sowed theseeds of Iraq's occupation of Kuwait and theensuing 1991 Gulf War.

Though the Iraqi regime went out of itsway to portray the end of the war as ashining victory, the truth was that Iraq,no less than Iran, emerged from theeight-year conflict a crippled nation. Atleast 200,000 Iraqis had lost their lives,while about 400,000 had been woundedand some 70,000 taken prisoner: anexorbitant price for a nation of17 million people. In 1980 Iraq could boasta $35 billion foreign exchange reserve; eightyears later it had accumulated a foreigndebt of some $80 billion - roughly twicethe size of its Gross National Product. Thisdebt was extremely disturbing, sincerepayment arrears and the consequentreluctance of foreign companies andgovernments to extend further creditsmeant that the reconstruction of Iraq from

the destruction wrought by the war wouldhave to be shelved.

Economic estimates put the cost ofreconstruction at $230 billion. Even if oneadopted the most optimistic (and highlyunrealistic) assumption that every dollar ofoil revenues would be directed to thereconstruction effort, it would have takennearly two decades to repair the totaldamage. As things were a year after thetermination of hostilities, Iraq's oil revenuesof $13 billion did not suffice even to coverongoing expenditure: with civilian importsapproximating to $12 billion ($3 billionfor foodstuffs), military imports exceeding$5 billion, debt repayments totalling some$5 billion, and transfers by foreign workerstopping $1 billion, the regime needed anextra $10 billion per annum to balance itscurrent deficit, before it could even think ofreconstruction; and this withouttaking into account the substantialdomestic economic costs, such as the$2.5-$7.9-billion defence expenditure.

Nor could Saddam make even theslightest progress on the most importantforeign policy issue: a peace agreement withIran. The UN-orchestrated peace talks inGeneva quickly ran into a dead end;successive Iraqi initiatives using both thecarrot and the stick led nowhere. With thelack of progress Saddam was forced to lookto his guns. The formidable army remainedby and large mobilised, costing the destituteIraqi treasury a fortune. With the war over,conscripts began questioning the necessityfor their continued mobilisation. Saddam'sattempt to defuse this seething socialproblem by ordering partial demobilisationin 1989 backfired, as it proved beyond thecapacity of the shaky Iraqi economy toabsorb the huge numbers of young menpouring into the labour market.

By 1990, Saddam had realized that eventhough the war might have ended, thestruggle for his political survival hadentered a new, and equally dangerousphase. The nature of the threat to hisregime had, of course, fundamentallychanged. Tehran was no longer demanding


Iraqi forces invade Kuwait on 2 August 1990, making itthe latest casualty of the Iran-Iraq War (Rex Features)

his downfall, at least not for the foreseeablefuture. Instead, he faced the potential riskof the Iraqi people rising against him,should he fail to deliver the promised fruitsof the 'historic victory'. An immediateeconomic breakthrough had thus become,literally, a matter of life and death, and whowas better poised to provide thisbreakthrough than tiny and wealthyKuwait?

At a summit meeting in Amman inFebruary 1990, Saddam asked King Husseinof Jordan and President Mubarak of Egypt

to inform the Gulf states that Iraq was notonly adamant on a complete moratoriumon its wartime loans but urgently needed animmediate infusion of additional funds ofsome $30 billion. 'Let the Gulf regimesknow', he added, 'that if they will not givethis money to me, I will know how to getit.' The message was immediately passed toSaudi Arabia by the Jordanian monarch.

The same month, during a working visitto Kuwait, the Iraqi Oil Minister pressuredhis hosts to abide by the new oil quota setby OPEC earlier that year. He thenproceeded to Riyadh to deliver a personalmessage from Saddam to King Fahd: theSaudis must convince the rest of the Gulf


states not to exceed their oil quotas. Thishad little influence on Kuwait and theUnited Arab Emirates (UAE). Instead ofreducing their oil quota to make more roomfor increased Iraqi production theycontinued to exceed their quotas by far,putting a downward pressure on world oilprices.

By July 1990 Saddam's frustration withKuwait was intense. He was nowdetermined to extract substantial grantsplus a complete moratorium on war loanson top of adherence to OPEC quotas. TheKuwaiti indifference to his desperate needsamounted to 'stabbing Iraq in the back witha poisoned dagger'. He felt that he hadgone out of his way to plead the Iraqi caseand further begging would only cause him(and, by extension, Iraq) an unendurablepublic humiliation.

He began to put his strategy in place. On15 July a division of the elite RepublicanGuard began moving from central Iraq to thesouth-east of the country, just north ofKuwait. Within 24 hours some 10,000 menand 300 tanks were in place and a seconddivision was making its appearance. By19 July, 35,000 men from three divisions hadbeen deployed near the Kuwaiti border, andthe military build-up was continuing apace.

As the military build-up got under waythe diplomatic offensive began. On16 July the Iraqi Foreign Minister, TariqAziz, delivered a memorandum to theSecretary-General of the Arab League fordistribution to the League's members. Inthis he accused Kuwait both of deliberatelycausing a glut in the oil market (allegedlycosting Iraq some S89 billion between 1981and 1990), and of directly robbing Iraq by'setting up oil installations in the southernsection of the Iraqi al-Rumaila oil-field andextracting oil from it'. By way of redressingthese wrongs and helping Iraq recover fromthe dire economic plight that it now facedbecause of its defence of the Arab nationfrom the Iranian aggression, Aziz demandedthe raising of oil prices to over $25 a barrel;the cessation of Kuwaiti 'theft' of Iraqi oil; acomplete moratorium on Iraq's wartime

loans; and the formation of 'an Arab plansimilar to the Marshall Plan to compensateIraq for some of the losses during the war'.

The next day Saddam escalated furtherby publicly accusing Kuwait of conspiringwith 'world imperialism and Zionism' to'cut off the livelihood of the Arab nation',and threatening that Iraq would not be ableto put up with such behaviour for muchlonger. 'If words fail to afford usprotection', he warned, 'then we will haveno choice but to resort to effective action toput things right and ensure the restitutionof our rights.'

The Kuwaiti Cabinet met the day afterSaddam's speech. The prevailing view wasthat surrender to such extortionist demandswould only lead to unlimited demands inthe future that would make Kuwaitisovereignty merely nominal. Theysuspected that some concessions might benecessary, but were determined to reducethem to the barest minimum. If they weregoing to do a deal with Iraq they wanted inreturn abandonment of Iraq's claim overKuwait. However startled it may have beenby the harsh Iraqi rhetoric, the Kuwaitileadership remained complacent,interpreting the Iraqi demands as abargaining position rather than anultimatum. Thus, within less than24 hours from Saddam's speech, Kuwait hadalready dispatched to the Secretary-Generalof the Arab League a strongly-wordedmemorandum refuting the Iraqi accusationsand expressing strong indignation at Iraq'sbehaviour.

The defiant Kuwaiti response to histhreat confirmed Saddam's perception ofthe emirate as a parasitic state thriving onIraq's heavy sacrifices, that would nevermeet its fraternal responsibilities withoutphysical coercion. At a meeting on 25 July1990 with the US Ambassador to Baghdad,April Glaspie, he warned that Iraq could nothold back indefinitely.

We are not going to do anything untilwe meet [with the Kuwaitis]. If, when wemeet, we see that there is hope, nothing will


happen. But if we are unable to find a solution,then it will be natural that Iraq will notaccept death, even though wisdom is aboveeverything else.

Having misinterpreted Glaspie's mild

response to his threats as a 'green light' tosettle the scores with Kuwait, Saddamaccelerated the deployment of Iraqi forcesalong the border, and on 2 August invadedKuwait. The Iran-Iraq War had claimed itslatest casualty.

Further reading

Abdulghani, Jasim, Iraq and Iran: The Years ofCrisis, London, 1984

Bakhash, Shaul, The Reign of the Ayatollahs:Iran and the Islamic Revolution, NewYork, 1985

Brown, Ian, Khomeini's Forgotten Sons: TheStory of Iran's Boy Soldiers, London, 1990

Bullock, John, and Morris, Harvey, The GulfWar: Its Origins, History and Consequences,London, 1988

Chubin, Shahram, and Tripp, Charles, Iranand Iraq at War, London, 1990

Cordesman, Anthony, The Iran-Iraq War andWestern Security, London, 1987

, and Wagner, Abraham, The Lessons ofModern War, Vol. II: The Iran-Iraq War,Boulder, Colo., 1990

Grummon, S. R., The Iran-Iraq War: IslamEmbattled, New York, 1982

Helms, Christine M., Iraq: Eastern Flank of theArab World, Washington DC, 1984

Joyner, Christopher, ed., The Persian GulfWar, New York, 1990

Karsh, Efraim, The Iran-Iraq War: A MilitaryAnalysis, London, 1987

, ed., The Iran-Iraq War: Impact andImplications, London and New York, 1989

, and Rautsi, Inari, Saddam Hussein: APolitical Biography, New York and London,1991

King, Ralph, The Iran-Iraq War: The PoliticalImplications, London, 1988

Marr, Phebe, The History of Iraq, Boulder,Colo., 1985

O'Ballance, Edgar, The Gulf War, London,1988

Pelletierre, Stephen, The Iran-Iraq War: Chaosin a Vacuum, New York, 1992

Ramazani, Ruhollah, Revolutionary Iran:Challenge and Response in the Middle East,Baltimore, 1986

Tahir-Kheli, Shirin, and Ayubi, Shaheen, eds.,The Iran-Iraq War: New Weapons, OldConflicts, New York, 1983

Wright, Robin, In the Name of God: TheKhomeini Decade, London, 1990

Index

Figures in bold refer to illustrations

Abadan 8, 9, 22, 24, 33, 83Abbas, Saad Tuma, General 48Afghanistan 7Ahvaz 9, 22, 29, 32, 35, 36, 79Algiers Agreement (1975) 8-9, 12, 14, 22, 83Amal 86Amara 10, 22, 35Anfal Campaign 76Argentina 44-45arms supplies 42-45, 58Aziz, Tariq 9, 10, 13, 13, 27, 79-80, 91

Baghdad 29, 37, 42Baghdad Pact 7Bahrain 12Bandar e-Khomeini 79Bani Sadr, Abol Hassan 9, 21, 31, 33, 71Barzani, Mas'ud 70-71Basij e-Mustazafin (Mobilisation of the Deprived) 32,

33, 35, 37, 39, 41, 48, 62-65, 62, 63, 73, 85Basra 9, 10, 11, 22, 29, 32, 37, 42, 47, 48, 51, 56-57, 83Ba'th regime 13, 14, 18, 41, 66, 67, 70, 85, 87Bazargan, Mehdi 13, 75Bostan 10, 34-35boy soldiers see Basij e-Mustazafin (Mobilisation of

the Deprived)Brazil 43Britain 7, 43, 44, 87Bubian Island 11Bushehr 47

Carlucci, Frank 81casualties 25, 27, 30, 32, 35-36, 37, 38, 40, 42, 42,

48, 52, 53, 58, 67, 73, 89ceasefires 9, 10, 11, 35, 36, 40, 49, 58, 61, 70, 79-83chemical attacks 37-38, 42, 47, 48, 49, 53-54, 56-57,

76,85China 44-45Christian Maronites 87

Dawn offensives (1983-1986) 46see also operations, military

Dehloran 9Dezful 23, 29, 35

economic support, international 43-44, 69-70economy, domestic

Iran 72-73, 74-75Iraq 67, 68-69, 89

Egypt 43, 87-89, 90

Fakhri, Hisham, General 48Fallahi, Valiollah, General 40Fao Peninsula

capture by Iran 10, 48-49, 49, 50recapture by Iraq 11, 57, 59, 59

France 43, 86-87

gas see chemical attacksGenscher, Hans-Dietrich 87Germany 87Glaspie, April 48, 91Gulf War 89

al-Asad, Hafiz 88Haig, Alexander 44Hajj Omran 10, 11al-Hakim family 70Halabja 11,55Hasa 12Hashemi-Rafsanjani, Ali Akbar 38, 51, 59, 60, 81, 87Hizbullah 85Hormuz, Strait of 50, 51Hussein, Saddam 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 20, 21, 27,

28, 29, 30, 36, 47, 48-49, 52-53, 66-71, 72, 79, 81,83,87

international relations, post-war 85-87intervention 42-45, 50, 58Iraq

final offensives (1988) 59invasion of Iran (1980) 22-29, 26

Isfahan 47, 50Islamic fundamentalism 55, 85-86Islamic Liberation Movement 75Israel 22, 45

al-Jasim, Latif Nusseif 9, 13Jordan 90

KDP 70-71Kermanshah 50Khalkhali, Hujjat al-Islam Sadeq 13Khameini, Ali 38, 41, 61, 79Khanaqin 9Kharg Island 9, 10, 47, 49-50, 83Khomeini, Ahmed 61Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah 9, 11, 12, 12, 29, 36,

39, 51, 61, 66, 69, 71, 72, 74, 75, 79, 86, 87Khorramshahr 8, 9, 22, 27, 30, 35

recapture by Iran 10, 36, 38Khuzestan 8

Iraqi invasion 22-28recapture by Iran 10, 33, 36, 38

Kirkuk 16, 23, 31, 79Kurdistan 10, 11, 57Kurds 13, 16, 18

massacres 53-55, 76-78separatism 8, 9, 20, 31, 70-71, 73, 75

Kut al-Amara 41Kuwait 11, 12, 48, 51, 53, 69, 89-91, 90

Larak Island 11Lebanon 58, 85, 87

Index 95

Lybia 85, 44

al-Majid, Ali Hassan 77Majnun Island 10, 11, 42, 57, 59Mandali 9martyrdom 39Mehran 10, 11, 23, 49Middle East 1980 6military strength/distribution 17-18, 19-21, 35, 37,

39, 41, 42-45, 47, 48, 51, 91mines 11, 37, 59Mosul 16Mujaheddin e-Khalq 73, 75, 80-81, 81Musian 10, 22Mussavi, Mir Hossein 38mutiny 52-53

National Liberation Army 80-81, 81North Korea 44

October War (1973) 20-21oil industry 8, 68, 69, 74-75, 83, 91

attacks 9, 11, 14, 16, 24, 29, 47, 49-50see also 'tanker war'

operations, militaryBadr 10, 47Before Dawn 10Dawn 10Dawn 2 10Dawn 3 10Dawn 4 10Dawn 5 10, 41-42Dawn 6 10, 41-42Dawn 7 10Dawn 8 10, 48, 50Dawn 9 10Fatah 4 11Jerusalem 10, 36Jerusalem Way 10, 32, 33, 34-35Karbala 1 11Karbala 2 11Karbala 3 11Karbala 4 11, 51Karbala 5 11, 52, 56-57, 58Karbala 6 11Karbala 7 11Karbala 8 11Karbala 9 11Khaibar 10, 42, 44-45Muharram 10Muslim Ibn Aqil 10Ramadan 10Staunch 58Thamin al-Aimma 9Undeniable Victory 10, 35

Osiraq 9

Pahlavi, Mohammed Reza, Shah of Iran 7, 9, 12, 12,14, 17, 19, 20

Pakistan 7, 44Pasdaran 10, 19, 21, 25, 25-27, 30, 32-33, 34, 35, 36,

37, 39-40, 40, 41, 47, 48, 51, 59, 71, 73, 81, 82, 85peace proposals see ceasefiresPenjwin 10, 23, 31Perez de Cuellar, Javier 61, 79, 81Permanent Commission for Joint Economic

Cooperation 86

Popular Army 20prisoners of war 38, 79propaganda 55, 66-67, 66, 68, 75PUK 70-71purges 18

Qasr-e-Shirin 9, 10, 11, 23

Ramadan, Taha Yasin 35Abd al-Rashid, Maher 48, 53refugee, Iranian 22-23religion 37Resolution 598 11, 58, 61, 79, 81, 86Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) 21, 67, 70Revolutionary Guards Corps see PasdaranRezai, Mohsen 59Rushdie, Salman, The Satanic Verses 87

Saadabad Pact 7Salamcheh 11, 57, 59Saudi Arabia 12, 48, 51, 69, 85, 87, 91Shatt al-Arab waterway 7, 8, 9, 16, 22, 27-28, 52, 83Shi-ites 7, 8, 12, 13, 16, 16-17, 36, 66, 69, 70, 85Shirazi, Sayed, General 35, 36, 38Sirri Island 11, 50Six Day War 22, 43South Africa 44-45Soviet Union 7, 11, 18, 42-43, 51, 86Spain 43Suez 7Suleimaniya 10, 23, 48Sumar 11Sunni 7, 8, 13, 16Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq

(SCIRI) 70Supreme Defence Council 33, 38Susangerd 9, 10, 22, 32, 33, 36, 71Switzerland 44-45Syria 10, 18-19, 44, 48, 68, 85, 87

Tabriz 47Taiwan 44-45Talbani, Jalal 70-71'tanker war' 10, 50-53, 52-53, 54, 55Tehran 47, 50troops

Iranian 25, 32, 33, 38, 40, 44-45, 49Iraqi 59

Tudeh Party 10, 75, 86Turkey 7, 16, 87Tuwaitha 9

Umm Qasr 9, 48, 83United Nations (UN) resolutions 10, 11, 58, 61, 79,

81, 86United Nations Iran-Iraq Military Observer Group

(UNIMOG) 81United States 11, 43-44, 45, 50, 51, 57-59, 61, 86

Lebanon hostage deal 58USS Vincennes 11, 61

Velayati, Ali Akbar 38, 81

'wars of the cities' 10, 11, 41-42, 43, 47, 57women 34-35

Zagros Mountains 23

Documents

EFRAIM KARSH is Professor - · PDF fileEFRAIM KARSH is Professor ... in Islam dating back to Ali Ibn-Abi-Talib, ... the Shatt were to have Iraqi pilots and fly the Iraqi flag,