Background. Up until the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, Iran and Iraq had an uneasy peace; they were rivals but neither attempted to invade the other, and they had understandings (e.g. the 1975 Algiers Agreement) about what would otherwise be contested territory to the south. In particular, Iraq’s Shatt-al-Arab waterway was its sole access to the Persian Gulf. Iraq was also nervous about Iranian support for a growing Kurdish insurgency, especially since much of Iraq’s oil producing areas were in the Kurdish part of the country.
February 1979. Islamic hotheads took power in Iran – and took hostages from the US Embassy, which pissed us off and embarrassed Carter, doing much to ensure Reagan’s election in November 1980. In July 1979, Saddam Hussein took power in Iraq. Things started getting ugly, and both sides decided they really didn’t like each other.
September 23, 1980. Iraq invaded Iran and captured (from north to south along the border) Qasr-e-Shirin, Mehran, Musian, Susangerd, Khorramshahr, Aabadan, and Fao – and took full control of the Shatt-al-Arab. All this territory was right across the border and less than 100 miles into Iran. In December, Saddam Hussein announced that he would not advance further but simply keep the modest territory gained.
Late 1981, early 1982. Iranian offensives drove Iraqi forces off Iranian soil, liberating Bostan, Susangerd, and Korramshahr, and invaded Iraq. Iran now had the upper hand.
From 1983-86 Iran pursued several more offensives which captured modest amounts of Iraqi territory in the north (east of Kirkuk), center (west of Mehran), and south (near Basra). In 1985 Operation Badr succeeded at capturing part of the Baghdad-Basra highway. As with Saddam’s earlier achievements, Iran’s incursion into Iraqi territory was modest.
1988. Iraqi forces, now better supplied, drove Iranians from Iraqi territory. August – ceasefire.
Supplies. Iran inherited the Shah’s military, which had been US-supplied. Ironically, the Israelis (!!!) helped keep them stocked in spare parts (e.g. F-16 tires), part of which was the Iran-Contra deal. The Israelis considered Saddam Hussein to be the bigger threat than Iran and were happy to help the Iranians kill off Iraqis. They even went so far as to bomb an Iraqi nuclear reactor in June 1981. Libya, Syria, North Korea, China, Taiwan (they agreed on one thing!), Argentina, South Africa, Pakistan, and even Switzerland supplied Iran.
For its part, Iraq was mainly supplied with Warsaw Pact equipment. While the USSR had initially imposed an arms embargo on Iraq, after the Iranians started winning they changed their minds and opened the spigot: 200 T-55 and T-72 tanks, and SA-6 surface-to-air missiles, followed by T-72 tanks, Scud missiles (remember those?) and MiG-21, -23, and -29 fighters. The French also supplied Saddam heavily with its own arsenal of weapons – on credit, up to $5 billion by 1986; little wonder the French had a vested interest in seeing Saddam remain in power in 2003. Egypt, Spain, Italy, Britain, and Brazil also supplied Iraq with weapons.
Of course, few forget the US’ support for Saddam at this time, though this took the form of agricultural credits. For the US, the memories of the Iran hostage situation were firm in our memory, and while no one really liked Saddam, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, so our hatred for the Iranians fueled our support for Saddam.
Pasdaran. This was Iran’s paramilitary militia, mostly infantry with very little heavy weapons support and little or no armor. Iran subscribed to the “human wave of crazy fanatics” school of warfare which Iraq countered with the “Russian tanks and chemical weapons” school of warfare. Of the two, the latter proved to be much more effective in the long run. Iran’s military successes seemed to depend on the extent to which it relied on the Pasdaran or conventional armies to get its point across, generally more successful with the latter than the former.
Chemical Weapons. The Iraqis earned the dubious distinction of being the most prominent and infamous (though not exclusive) power to use poison gas since…World War I. Mustard gas and nerve gases were used against Iranians and Kurds, both groups which were ill-prepared to resist chemical attacks.
War of the Cities. Each side had air forces and a civilian population highly vulnerable to air attack. Baghdad and Tehran both suffered heavily in the war. Each side was also heavily dependent on oil revenue (“it’s the oil, stupid”) and targeted each other’s facilities as a means of inflicting economic damage on each other.
Persepolis. This is the only movie I’ve seen which addresses this war. It’s an animated film about a young Iranian girl, Marjane Satrap, who grew up in Iran during the war. She likes Iron Maiden and prefers Western culture, spent time in Europe during part of the war, but was back in Iran during some of the air raids on Tehran. She was not a big fan of the theocracy; the movie also describes some of the fanaticism which occurred in Iran.
I like the way you sum things up. I learn more history and politics here than I can absorb from other sources!
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