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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,

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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

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