History UsefulNotes / IranIraqWar

The ''original'' Gulf War,[[note]]Until the Kuwait conflict in 1990, of course, and still known as the "First Persian Gulf War", where the wars involving the United States were the Second and Third Gulf Wars.[[/note]] in spite of its fury and length, has largely been passed over by world media, and indeed works set in it are rare these days outside of UsefulNotes/{{Iran}}. (UsefulNotes/{{Iraq}}, for [[UsefulNotes/GulfWar understandable]] [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror reasons]], doesn't have much of a film industry.)

-> ``"There is not a single school or town that is excluded from the happiness of 'holy defence' of the nation, from drinking the exquisite elixir of martyrdom, or from the sweet death of the martyr, who dies in order to live forever in paradise."``

-> "There is not a single school or town that is excluded from the happiness of 'holy defence' of the nation, from drinking the exquisite elixir of martyrdom, or from the sweet death of the martyr, who dies in order to live forever in paradise."

For later installments of "Persian Gulf War", see the UsefulNotes/GulfWar and the UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror.

-> The land itself bleeds and so do we, but we fight on, this land is ours and ours alone.

Iran was in turmoil by 1980: its army was purged by the mullahs, the U.S. suspended the supply of spare parts and its air force was crippled. The new regime sidelined the traditional military in favor of new, ideologically motivated militias, such as the Pasdaran--"The Revolutionary Guards." Iraq was convinced that the Iranian population hated the new regime. When numerous Iranian officials from the Shah's regime fled to Iraq, Saddam believed that the supposedly weak Islamic regime would collapse easily. He believed that a military invasion would spark a new revolution which would overthrow Khomeini and install a government that would be subservient to Iraq's interests. Saddam also believed that the prestige he would gain from removing Iran's government would allow him to supplant Egypt's Anwar Sadat as the "leader of the Arab world" and gain hegemony over the Persian Gulf.

The human wave attacks, which are notoriously known in the west due to their resemblance to brutal UsefulNotes/WorldWarI and Korean-War tactics, were a last-ditch effort to compensate for the scarcity of military hardware available to the Iranian Army. Because of this, the majority of the fighters involved in these battles were paramilitary forces oftentimes sent to the frontlines with poor equipment and training. They typically consisted of the old and young (With teenagers as young as 14 due to the lack of ID-checking), and were religiously motivated through both Iranian propaganda and tradition. it is due to this significance of young soldiers during the war that it is not uncommon to see pictures of young men, and sometimes boys lined up on gravestones in Tehran, as a never-ending reminder of the horrors they faced.

Ideologically speaking, the Islamic revolution had grown ever more radicalized over the course of the war. Their leaders never forgot U.S. support of Saddam, blaming it for cheating them of victory. In the end, the war would signal a rise in Iranian Hegemony and the start of the Iran-Saudi proxy conflict, which has only gotten more tense with the War-On-Terror.

In 1979, the UsefulNotes/IranianRevolution occurred; the pro-Western monarchy was overthrown and replaced by a new theocratic state. In Iraq, UsefulNotes/SaddamHussein took over the office of President. Over the next two years, ties between the two countries deteriorated. An Arab insurgency in Khuzestan began and received support from Iraq. By 1980 Saddam was actively incorporating allusions of the Islamic conquest of Iran centuries ago. Iran denounced the Iraqi regime as a "Puppet of Satan" (please recall that the Islamic Republic called the United States the "Great Satan" and Israel the "Little Satan." Make of that what you will).

Iran was in turmoil by 1980: its army was purged by the mullahs, the U.S. suspended the supply of spare parts and its air force was crippled. The new regime sidelined the traditional military in favor of new, ideologically motivated militias, such as the Pasdaran--"The Revolutionary Guards." Iraq was convinced that the Iranian population hated the new regime. When numerous Iranian officials from the Shah's regime fled to Iraq, Saddam believed that the supposedly weak Islamic regime would collapse easily. He believed that a military invasion would spark a new revolution which would overthrow Khomeini and install a government that would be subservient to Iraq's interests.

The war began on September 22 when Iraqi jets began their strikes on Iranian air bases. This air offensive, however, turned out to be a failure, as Iraqi intelligence was out of date and their pilots lacked the training in air to ground operations. Many of the Iraqi attacks were highly inaccurate and only caused superficial damage to the Iranian Air Force. At the end of the day, no Iranian air base was put out of action and aircraft losses were negligible. To add insult to injury, the Iranians gained air superiority the next day.

After the ceasefire, an anti-Iranian group known as the MEK began an offensive into Iran [[note: The MEK was an Iraqi-aligned communist movement which was notorious for their sex scandals and torture, oftentimes giving them the moniker of a cult]] which was supported by the Iraqi Air Force. Despite their early advances into Iranian territory, they were annihilated by the now reformed Iranian Armed Forces thus bringing an end to the military arm of the MEK. Widespread censure and the threat of foreign intervention forced Saddam to relent and stop the war. The war was over.

Politically, it was inconclusive. Both sides claimed victory; Saddam had successfully held on to Basra throughout the war, while Iran had defeated the initial Iraqi invasion and would have reached Baghdad if they had won the Battle for Basra. Both sides failed to achieve their stated goals, with the Islamic Republic of Iran strengthening their hold on Iranian society by turning the Revolutionary Guard into an integrated armed fighting force capable of suppressing Internal and External threats. Analytically, the Iranians had shifted from a conventional army structure to a hybrid asymmetrical fighting force, with the IRGC training and funding armed movements in Lebanon to counter-attack the Israeli invasion of South Lebanon. This would later see full realization with the 2006 Lebanese War against Israel, where Iranian-trained Hezbollah fighters effectively humiliated the IDF for the first time since the Yom-Kippur war. Additionally, the war signaled the birth of heavier sanctions against Iran and the start of the Iranian arms industry, which while mostly lackluster in terms of military hardware has led to the development of indigenous drones, ballistic missiles, and firearms.

After the ceasefire, an anti-government group inside Iran began an armed uprising against the government, supported by Iraqi fighter bombers. Iraq also launched a surprise offensive into Iran. However, widespread censure and the threat of foreign intervention forced Saddam to relent and the uprising was crushed. The war was over.

! Aftermath

Politically, it was inconclusive. Both sides claimed victory; Saddam had successfully held on to Basra throughout the war, while Iran had defeated the initial Iraqi invasion and would have reached Baghdad if they had won the Battle for Basra. Both sides failed to achieve their stated goals, however.

In Iran, the Islamic revolution had grown ever more radicalized over the course of the war. Their leaders never forgot U.S. support of Saddam, blaming it for cheating them of victory. In the end, the war would signal a rise in Iranian Hegemony (with their continued interests in the Lebanon War) and the decline of Iraqi military superiority.

In 1979, the Islamic revolution occurred in Iran. The pro-U.S. monarchy was overthrown and replaced by a new theocratic state. In Iraq, UsefulNotes/SaddamHussein took over the office of President. Over the next two years, ties between the two countries deteriorated. By 1980 Saddam was actively incorporating allusions of the Islamic conquest of Iran centuries ago. Iran denounced the Iraqi regime as a "Puppet of Satan" (please recall that the Islamic Republic called the United States the "Great Satan" and Israel the "Little Satan." Make of that what you will).

Iran was in turmoil by 1980: its army was purged by the mullahs, the U.S. suspended the supply of spare parts and its air force was crippled. The new regime sidelined the traditional military in favor of new, ideologically motivated militias, such as the Pasdaran--"The Revolutionary Guards." Iraq was convinced that the Iranian population hated the new regime. When numerous Iranian officials from the Shah's regime fled to Iraq, Saddam believed that the weak Islamic regime would collapse easily. He believed that a military invasion would spark a new revolution which would overthrow Khomeini and install a government that would be subservient to Iraq's interests.

The Iranian embassy in London was attacked by Iraqi-sponsored terrorists. A series of terrorist incidents in Iraq culminated with the failed assassination attempt of its foreign minister. In September 1980, Iraq invaded.

On the ground, Iraq deployed nine well-armed divisions against the three understrength Iranian divisions along the border (at the time, one quarter of the Iranian Army was fighting the Kurds and the Revolutionary Guards were mere rabble). In spite of Iraq's advantages in ground forces, the invasion moved at a snail's pace because the Iraqis preferred to halt and use [[MoreDakka massive amounts of firepower]] whenever any resistance was encountered. Iraqi mechanized forces never used their mobility to outflank or encircle the enemy. The only city the Iraqis captured in the invasion was Khorramshahr, but it did so over the course of four weeks and after suffering heavy losses.

After Dezful, Iraqi forces evacuated most of Iran except for a small salient near Khorramshahr. This salient was eliminated after an Iranian counterattack launched at the end of April; Khorramshahr itself fell in late May, when Iranian forces recaptured the city in twenty four hours. The counteroffensive was over and Iran regained all the territory it lost since 1980.

The Human wave attacks, which are notoriously known in the west due to their resemblance to brutal UsefulNotes/WorldWarI and Korean-War tactics, were a last-ditch effort to compensate for the scarcity of military hardware available to the Iranian Army. Because of this, The majority of the fighters involved in these battles were paramilitary forces oftentimes sent to the frontlines with poor equipment and training. They typically consisted of the old and young (With teenagers as young as 14 due to the lack of ID-checking), and were religiously motivated through both Iranian propaganda and tradition. it is due to this significance of young soldiers during the war that it is not uncommon to see pictures of young men, and sometimes boys lined up on gravestones in Tehran, as a never-ending reminder of the horrors they faced.

On February 1986 Iranian forces commenced Operation "Dawn-8"; they crossed the Shatt al-Arab river and captured the al-Faw Peninsula--a tip of Iraqi land that jutted out into the Persian Gulf. The Iraqi leadership was now faced with a force that could bypass the considerable defenses of al-Basrah and take the city from an open flank. A counterattacking force was hastily assembled and sent towards al-Faw, but poor coordination (tanks were attacking with minimal infantry support) allowed Iranian AH-1 Cobra helicopters and forces that had crossed to repel the Iraqis with ease. Iraq desperately sent its Republican Guard divisions and launched an air offensive to stem the Iranian offensive, which were successful but they could not drive the Iranians from al-Faw. Iraq launched a third counterattack on February 22 with three divisions with considerable air support, but they too were unable to defeat the Iranians due to poor infantry-tank coordination.

In February, the Iranians fed in more men to sustain the attack on the city. While Iranian forces managed to penetrate five of the six defensive lines around al-Basrah by the end of February, they had lost too much men (70,000-80,000) to continue attacking. Moreover, the arrival of Republican Guard reinforcements made the attacking task much more difficult. In March, the Iraqis attempted a second counterattack, which like the first broke down due to a lack of coordination. Ultimately, "Karbala-5" was the last large offensive operation Iran would undertake in the war. Other offensives like "Karbala-10" and "Nasr-4" were successfully carried out in Kurdistan, but they were strategically insignificant compared to the combat actions in the south.

With its oil production crippled, Iraq found itself unable to pay off any of its debts, the largest amount being owed to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. This eventually drove Saddam to order an invasion of Kuwait, which resulted in the First UsefulNotes/GulfWar, wherein the Iraqi army was all but destroyed by an international coalition. Over the next decade, Saddam would slowly lose his grip on power and his own country.

* ''ComicBook/{{Persepolis}}'': Part of the graphic novel (and the film adaptation) is set during the period, as we get to see stylized battle scenes and Tehran attacked by bombers and [=SCUDs=].

[[folder:Music]]
* the Cabaret Voltaire album Red Mecca focuses on the turmoil of the 1980s Middle East, with the Iran-Iraq war being a centerpiece.
[[/folder]]

The Human wave attacks, which were notoriously known in the west due to their extreme resemblance to brutal WW1 and Korean-War tactics, were a last-ditch to compensate for the scarcity of military hardware available to the Iranian Army. Because of this, The majority of the fighters involved were Paramilitaries, oftentimes sent to the frontlines with poor equipment and training. They typically consisted of the old and young (With teenagers as young as 14), and were oftentimes religiously motivated, both through Iranian propaganda and tradition. it is due to this significance of young soldiers during the war that it is not uncommon to see pictures of young men, and sometimes boys lined up on gravestones in Tehran, as a never-ending reminder of the horrors they faced.

As the war went on for the Iranians, more problems appeared that lowered their military effectiveness. The international arms embargoes against Iran meant that it could not easily replace its stocks of American weapons, its computerized logistics system was sabotaged during the revolution, and the Revolutionary Guards' human-wave attacks--once successful during the Iranian counteroffensive--were ineffective against prepared Iraqi defenses. These Revolutionary Guards volunteers were inspired before battle by tales of Ashura, the Battle of Karbala, and the supreme glory of martyrdom, and sometimes by an actor (usually a more mature soldier), playing the part of Imam Hossein himself riding a white horse, galloping along the lines, providing the child soldiers a vision of "the hero who would lead them into their fateful battle before they met God." Furthermore, the poor coordination between the Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian Army crippled initial success, as the army was unable to follow up a successful human-wave attack with exploitation forces. To compensate for their lack of war materiel Iran bought weapons from North Korea, Libya, and China.

In Iran, the Islamic revolution had grown ever more radicalized over the course of the war. Their leaders never forgot U.S. support of Saddam, blaming it for cheating them of victory.

The ''original'' Gulf War,[[note]]Until the Kuwait conflict in 1990, of course, and still known as the "First Persian Gulf War", where the wars involving the United States were the Second and Third Gulf Wars.[[/note]] in spite of its fury and length, has largely been passed over by world media, and indeed works set in it are rare these days outside of UsefulNotes/{{Iran}}. (UsefulNotes/{{Iraq}}, for [[UsefulNotes/GulfWar understandable]] [[TheWarOnTerror reasons]], doesn't have much of a film industry.)

For later installments of "Persian Gulf War", see the UsefulNotes/GulfWar and the TheWarOnTerror.

!!Tropes associated with this war:
* ArmsDealer: Iran and Iraq received aid, as well as bought vehicles and materiel, from many different countries. For Iraq, this included chemical and biological weapons.
** Most of the West, chief among them France, aided Iraq, along with Egypt, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Yugoslavia, and the USSR.
** Iran received military aid from Israel, North Korea, Libya, and China. There is also the unusual instance of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair the Iran-Contra affair]] where weapons were sold to Iran by US Government officials!!!
** Spain supplied arms to both Iran and Iraq. The U.S. and USSR also sold arms to Iran through other sources.
** Iraq received WeaponsOfMassDestruction or ingredients and equipment related to them [[http://www.iraqwatch.org/suppliers/nyt-041303.gif from multiple sources]]: Brazil, China, Egypt, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Niger, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
* ChildSoldiers: One of the war's most infamous things was the Iranian recruitment of young children, who were ordered to run straight out on Iraqi minefields in order to clear the ground for the main army. Some were also given infantry weapons and told to attack Iraqi positions. It's said that plenty of Iraqi troops cracked by the sheer guilt they felt after they had killed countless young children who tried to storm them by sheer numbers.
* DeadlyGas: There was considerable use of chemical weapons in an attempt to break the stalemate in the later years of the war, yet another parallel with UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, as evidenced by the picture above.
* EnemyMine:
** Iran received arms, training and spare parts from... [[ArchNemesis Israel]], of all countries, who regarded Saddam Hussein as the greater threat. It's also been claimed that the Israeli bombing of the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq was partially aided by Iranian intelligence (after the Iranians had attempted to bomb the same facility in 1980). [[FanonDiscontinuity Iran completely denies all of this]].
** The United States really didn't like Saddam's Iraq, yet they still provided it with support because they hated Iran more. They had actually helped Iran and even warned them of Saddam's plans, but cut off all support after the incident with the American embassy. In an even straighter example, the U.S. was only a minor supporter of Iraq, and the largest was... the Soviet Union.
* GoodGunsBadGuns: The Iraqis mostly used Soviet weapons, but used French aircraft and missile systems. The Iranians used mostly American and German weaponry for their actual military, but Soviet gear for the Basij. Zig-zagged in that [[EvilVersusEvil neither side was good.]]
* HollywoodTactics: Despite possessing an ''enormous'' equipment advantage right at the beginning of the war, kicking up production even further in the later stages, and using weapons of mass destruction to take out single militia squads, the Iraqis were still just barely able to draw in the war with Iran. Kenneth Pollack's "Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991" goes into detail about this.
** None of the low level Iraqi officers or non-commissioned officers had any initiative whatsoever. Tank platoons would dig in to static positions and absolutely refuse to maneuver unless specifically ordered to. This resulted in many, many cases of Iranian infantry flanking and destroying Iraqi tanks by shooting them in the side, while the Iraqis just sit on their asses, not even trying to move or defend themselves. Entire Iraqi battalions would fail to respond to Iranian infiltration of their lines, as well.
** The Iraqi infantry were barely trained, and armed with little more than rifles. For context, the average US Army fireteam consists of four men: two with rifles, one with a rifle + grenade launcher, and one with a light machine gun. The UK Army has a similar set-up. This gives the team the firepower needed to actually produce casualties (less than 10% of modern combat casualties come from rifle fire). The Iraqis decided "screw it" and skipped giving their men grenade launchers and machine guns, leaving them at a severe firepower disadvantage against the Iranians, who would spam [[MoreDakka machine gun fire]] wherever they could, and use RPG rounds to kill single soldiers. The Iraqis actually DID use light machine guns, occasionally... but only in static, [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI WW1]]-style trench nests. These static formations ran into the same problem as the dug-in tanks.
** This reached truly baffling levels with their artillery and fighter-bomber units. Men would shell/bomb pre-chosen locations and do absolutely nothing else. This resulted in some hilarious displays of "marksmanship". Like an artillery company wasting hundreds of shells pounding empty desert, because they were not explicitly ordered to adjust their aim when the enemy moved one kilometer to the right.
** As a result of the above lack of initiative, Iraqi assaults would break down the minute any detail of the plan changed. The Iraqi generals eventually got sick of their troops running around like lemmings with their heads chopped off at the slightest setback, and so resorted to micromanaging every movement down to the company level. They also refused to make plans that required their troops to fight or move longer than 48 hours, knowing that their men just couldn't manage it.
** The levels of Iraqi fail in this war can barely be adequately described in text. To give an idea of just how badly the deck was stacked in their favor, and how they managed to squander it anyway, here's a direct quote from Kenneth Pollack's book:
--->'''Kenneth Pollack''': In every battle the Iraqis were able to bring enormous firepower to bear against the outgunned Iranians. Despite this advantage, [[EpicFail Iraq's invasion of southwestern Iran did little damage to the disorganized and demoralized Iranian military, nor did Baghdad conquer anything of military or economic value in 3 months of unimpeded defenses]]. By the end of the war, Iraqi forces not only enjoyed a very sizable advantage in numbers of equipment but also possessed an equivalent edge in the sophistication of their weaponry. For instance, Iraqi forces deployed [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill nearly 5,000 tanks compared to the less than 1,000 tanks Iran could muster]]- and most of the Iraqi tanks that saw the brunt of the fighting were advanced T-72s and T-62s, while the Iranians were mostly equipped with miserable Chinese Type-59s. Whereas the Iraqi Air Force had nearly 700 combat aircraft, including new French Mirages and Soviet [=MiG-29s=], the Iranians had less than 100 flyable U.S. F-14s, F-4s, and F-5s, few of which were fully functional as a result of the US arms embargo. Still, Iraq was able to eke out a stalemate in 1988 only by resorting to liberal doses of chemical warfare and creating local force ratios of 20- or even 30-to-1 in tanks, troops, and guns.
* LaResistance: The Kurdish Peshmerga, who fought the Iraqis in the northern mountains of Iraq with the military support of the Iranians.
* KickThemWhileTheyAreDown: Iran was still reeling from the revolution, ''and'' the Shah had taken a lot of the military commanders with him when he fled the country, when Saddam decided to invade. Iran also was in a delicate position where they were antagonized by both the USA and the Soviet Union, meaning they were completely isolated and had no allies
* PropagandaMachine: Both sides used significant Islamic events to justify their actions during the war:
** The Iraqi media framed the campaign as "Saddam's al-Qādisiyya", referring to the decisive battle where the Rashidun Caliphate conquered the Sassanian Empire in a effort to cast Saddam as the leader of the Arab world by taking the fight against the Persians once again.
** In turn, the Iranian leadership drew parallels the Battle of Karbala, a important event in Shia Islam where Huseyn the son of Ali was executed by the Umayyad caliph Yazid for refusing to pledge allegiance to him. Saddam was framed as the new Yazid (just like they had done with the Shah during the Revolution) as the aggressor against Shias and the Iranian government emphasized this to rally the public which wasn't really on board with the Revolution that just happened and consolidate their power.
* ShaggyDogStory: The war ended in a stalemate with no changes. Except the loss of a million lives, of course. On the other hand, it did result in Iraq eventually turning against Arab and Western countries, so Iran was able to have more than a decade of relative peace. EarnYourHappyEnding, to a point.
* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: The Iraqi defenses around al-Basrah included ''antiaicraft guns'' that were used against the Iranians' massed infantry attacks.
* UnderestimatingBadassery: The Iraqis underestimated the Iranians with catastrophic results. They went in and expected to win a quick victory but as soon as the moment of surprise was gone and the Iranians started to counterattack, the Iraqis realized that they had underestimated the Iranians' zeal and military strength, and with it they could kiss the quick victory goodbye. Note that the Iranians genuinely were as poor as the Iraqis thought they were. Their actual military was outnumbered two to one by the Iraqis for most of the war in men, and anywhere from two to one/ten to one in tanks, artillery, aircraft, armored personnel carriers, and [[BoringButPractical trucks]]. The Iraqis had a technological advantage too, with the majority of their equipment being '70s vintage, as opposed to the Iranian equipment, which with the exception of their air forces came straight out of the late 40s/early 50s. Their army's command and logistic structure had been gutted by the revolution too, so a lot of the Iranian resistance the Iraqis encountered consisted solely of local light infantry without any central direction. It just so happens that the Iraqis themselves were really, really, ''really'' bad (see above).
%%* WeHaveReserves / HopelessWar: When you make UsefulNotes/WorldWarI look ''very'' good by comparison, you KNOW you have issues. (One trope per example. Choose one)
* ZergRush: The Iranians would use (extremely) expendable militia (e.g. Revolutionary Guards) to punch a hole in Iraqi lines. They would then follow that by creating a concentration of tanks, artillery, and professional troops, and using it to exploit the gap and flank entire Iraqi units. They didn't ZergRush with their actual army, as the Iraqis did, because they were very much outnumbered.

----

** In turn, the Iranian leadership drew parallels the Battle of Karbala, a important event in Shia Islam where Huseyn the son of Ali was executed by the Umayyad caliph Yazid for refusing to pledge allegiance to him. Saddam was framed as the new Yazid being the aggressor against a Shia-majority country and the Iranian government emphasized this to rally the public (which wasn't really feeling the Revolution that just happened) and consolidate their power.

* GeneralFailure: Saddam Hussein, seriously. Underestimated the Iranians, ''check''. Attacked Iran without any actual major preparations, ''check''. Didn't build any defenses for the resources industry and the supply lines, ''check''. Didn't arm the Iraqi Air Force with proper weapons before attacking, ''check''. Executed generals who retreated from unwinnable battles, ''check''. It's a wonder how he survived eight years of war without being overthrown and[=/=]or killed by the Iranians, no less managed to last 24 years in power and [[UsefulNotes/GulfWar two]] [[TheWarOnTerror other]] wars. However, it was subverted by the mid '80s when he allowed his generals more leeway in the management of the armed forces and the military operations themselves.

* PropagandaMachine: The Iraqi media framed the campaign as "Saddam's al-Qādisiyya", referring to the decisive battle where the Rashidun Caliphate conquered the Sassanian Empire in a effort to cast Saddam as the leader of the Arab world by taking the fight against the Persians once again.