Iran-Iraq War (1980-88)

Historical Background of the conflict

• From the overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad in 1958, up to the collapse of the Shah’s rule in 1979, relations between the two regimes had rarely been better than correct, and often much worse.
• This mutual antagonism was compounded by rival ambitions for political and economic hegemony in the region. The Iranians, even unprompted by Washington, saw themselves as the guardians of Gulf security following an announcement in 1968 of the British withdrawal in 1971. Iran considered this necessary to safeguard oil exports and offshore oil installations. By contrast, Iraq cast itself as the principal proponent of the concept of the ‘Arab’ Gulf.
• Territory was the major issue for dispute between Iraq and Iran from the early 1960s onwards. The important Shatt al-Arab waterway (from the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates to the Gulf) had been under Iraqi control since a treaty of 1937 placed the border on the Iranian eastern bank low watermark. In 1969 Iran defied Iraqi instructions by using warships to escort Iranian flagged vessels in the Shatt, asserting a claim, by dint of force majeure, to a right of navigation along the thalweg – the middle of the deepest shipping channel. Iran’s military superiority at the time forced a humiliated Iraq to accept de facto use of the waterway by Iranian ships.

• The 1975 Algiers Agreement between Iran and Iraq confirmed the border along the thalweg. However, although the treaty led to a suspension of hostilities and a lessening of tension, the Iraqis never really accepted the thalweg as a de jure frontier, and a return to control of the waterway as enshrined in the 1937 agreement remained a central Iraqi objective.
• The Iranian revolution of 1979 under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomenei started the countdown to conflict. The downfall of the Shah more or less coincided with the emergence of Saddam Hussein as President of Iraq and chairman of the ruling Ba’ath Party’s Revolutionary Command Council (RCC).
• Border incidents proliferated once again and Saddam Hussein probably calculated that revolutionary Iran was in such turmoil, and its army so weakened by purges, that it would not be able to resist a massive attack, albeit one confined to achieving limited territorial gains along Iraq’s south-eastern border. Thus he could reverse the humiliation of conceding to Iran over the Shatt and, using captured territory as a bargaining counter, make border adjustments in Iraq’s favour to other disputed areas, including winning concessions over Khuzestan, thereby demonstrating that Iraq, not Iran, was the power to be reckoned with in the Gulf.

How the war was started?

• The initial invasion was launched on 22 September 1980 on a 300-mile front. This had been preceded by a formal Iraqi abrogation of the Algiers Agreement on the pretext that Iran had failed to make a border readjustment as agreed in 1975.
• Despite considerable early territorial gains in the south-east, much fiercer than expected Iranian resistance ensured that the Iraqi advance soon halted. Indeed, in spring 1982 an Iranian counter- offensive regained most of the territory occupied by Iraqi troops.

External Involvements

• As the conflict dragged on the two superpowers were also inclined towards Iraq. The USA initially found both regimes repugnant and tended to remain aloof. But its attitude to Iran was particularily strongly coloured by the humiliation of the seizure of the US Embassy in 1979 and the subsequent failure of a military operation to rescue the staff held hostage.
• Despite strains in the relationship over Baghdad’s treatment of the ICP, the Soviets were instinctively inclined to support a long-standing client. Crucially, both superpowers had a common concern: the effect of an Iranian victory on the stability of the region.
• European states such as France and Britain also benefited from satisfying Iraqi arms demands, and the People’s Republic of China was another major weapons provider to both sides, but more so to Iraq.

Reconciliation Efforts

• The UN Security Council’s efforts took on a new urgency with the prospect of the USA being drawn into a direct military confrontation with Iran over its threats to attack US warships in the Gulf ‘if provoked’.
• Security Council Resolution (SCR) 598, adopted unanimously on 29 July 1987, called for an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal of forces to international borders, and sought Iranian and Iraqi cooperation in seeking a settlement.
• Iraqi acceptance (conditional on Iranian agreement) was negated by Iran’s condemnation of the resolution as unfair.
•  Iran continued to resist pressure from the international community to accept SCR 598 and agree to a ceasefire, presumably because the regime felt that the war could yet be won.

Impacts of the War

• While neither country had a nuclear capability, they both deployed sufficiently lethal chemical weapons to cause thousands of deaths and casualties. Estimates vary, but probably up to one million people were killed or injured in this decade-long conflict – with 60 per cent of those casualties sustained by Iran.
• The war also cost US$200 billion directly and another $1,000 billion indirectly, according to most estimates.
• By the end of the war each side had more than 1.3 million people under arms – half of all Iraqi men and a sixth of all Iranian men of military age.

What were the outcomes of the War?

• Iran had enjoyed some success in the land war in early 1987, penetrating Iraqi territory in several places along the 1,200-kilometre war front, but by early 1988 Iraqi counter-offensives had caused heavy casualties (the Iraqis, in particular, made effective use of chemical weapons, such as mustard gas), taking their toll on an increasingly war-weary Iranian military infrastructure.
• Volunteers were not coming forward as before and there was apparently disagreement over strategy and tactics in the higher echelons of the Iranian government.
•  A Kurdish offensive (the largest since 1974–5) hoping to exploit Iraq’s involvement on a broad front and in support of Iranian forces, although initially successful, came to a tragic end with an Iraqi chemical attack on Halabja in March 1988, killing 4,000 Kurdish civilians. Many more were allegedly killed by poison gas in a subsequent campaign after the Gulf conflict had apparently ended.
• With their forces in retreat on most fronts, and with Iraqis on Iranian soil for the first time for some years, the Iranians unexpectedly announced their unconditional acceptance of SCR 598 on 18 July 1988.
• Here again Saudi Arabian influence may have played some part, and it is believed that they may also have persuaded the Iraqis to agree to a ceasefire despite their recent military successes.
• The Iraqis declared themselves the victors in the contest. But in truth this wretched war, the greatest inter-state conflict in the second half of the twentieth century, ended as a draw. Most of the goals scored were ‘own’.
• Neither side had established a clear hegemony in the region.