Iran–Iraq War

Iran–Iraq War
Part of the Cold War, aftermath of the Iranian Revolution, Iraqi–Kurdish conflict, Iran–Saudi and Iraq–Syria proxy conflicts

Top-left to bottom-right:
  • An Iranian child soldier on the frontlines
  • An Iranian soldier in a trench wearing a gas mask to guard against Iraqi chemical attacks
  • The USS Stark listing to port after being struck by an Iraqi Exocet missile
  • Burned-out vehicles in the aftermath of Operation Mersad
  • Iraqi prisoners of war after the recapture of Khorramshahr by Iranian forces
  • The 152 mm gun-howitzer D-20 being used by the Iranian Army
Date22 September 1980 – 20 August 1988
(7 years, 10 months, 4 weeks and 1 day)
Location
Result Inconclusive[d]
Territorial
changes		 Status quo ante bellum[e]
Belligerents
Iran  Iraq
KDP
PUK
ISCI
Islamic Dawa Party
Hezbollah[1]
Shia volunteers[a]		 DRFLA[8][9]
MEK
NCRI
PDKI[10]
Salvation Force[11]
Arab volunteers[b]
Commanders and leaders
Main Iranian leaders:
 Main Iraqi leaders:
Units involved
See order of battle See order of battle
Strength

Start of war:[25][26]
110,000–215,000 soldiers

More:
  • 1,700–2,100 tanks,[27][28]
    (500–1,150 operable)
    1,000–1,900 armoured vehicles,
    (1,300 operable)
    300–1,100 artillery pieces,[29]
    421–485 fighter-bombers,[30]
    (200–205 fully operational)
    750–835 helicopters
    (240 fully operational)

    In 1982:
    350,000 soldiers,
    700 tanks,
    2,700 armoured vehicles,
    400 artillery pieces,
    350 aircraft,
    700 helicopters

    In 1988:[31][32][26]
    600,000–850,000 soldiers,
    1,500+ tanks,[note 1]
    800–1,400 armoured vehicles,
    600–900 heavy artillery pieces,
    60–80 fighter-bombers,
    70–90 helicopters

    KDP: 45,000 Peshmerga (1986–88)[33]
    PUK: 12,000 Peshmerga (1986–88)[33]

Start of war:[25][26]
200,000–210,000 soldiers

More:
  • 1,750–2,800 tanks,
    2,350–4,000 APCs,
    1,350–1,400 artillery pieces,
    295–380 fighter-bombers,
    300–350 helicopters

    In 1982:
    175,000 soldiers,
    1,200 tanks,
    2,300 armoured vehicles,
    400 artillery pieces,
    450 aircraft,
    180 helicopters

    In 1988:
    800,000–1,500,000 soldiers,[34][26]
    3,400–5,000 tanks,
    4,500–10,000 APCs,
    2,300–12,000 artillery pieces,
    360–900 fighter-bombers,
    140–1,000 helicopters

    KDPI: 30,000 Peshmerga (1980–83)[33]
    MEK: 15,000 fighters (1981–83, 87–88)[33]

Casualties and losses

Military dead:
200,000–600,000[note 2]

More:

Military dead:
105,000–500,000[note 3]

More:
Civilian dead: 100,000+[note 4]
Total dead:
450,000[54]–500,000[24]

The Iran–Iraq War was an armed conflict between Iran and Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. Active hostilities began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran and lasted for nearly eight years, until the acceptance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 598 by both sides. Iraq's primary rationale for the attack against Iran cited the need to prevent Ruhollah Khomeini—who had spearheaded the Iranian revolution in 1979—from exporting the new Iranian ideology to Iraq. There were also fears among the Iraqi leadership of Saddam Hussein that Iran, a theocratic state with a population predominantly composed of Shia Muslims, would exploit sectarian tensions in Iraq by rallying Iraq's Shia majority against the Baʽathist government, which was officially secular but dominated by Sunni Muslims. Iraq also wished to replace Iran as the power player in the Persian Gulf, which was not seen as an achievable objective prior to the Islamic Revolution because of Pahlavi Iran's economic and military superiority as well as its close relationships with the United States and Israel.

The Iran–Iraq War followed a long-running history of territorial border disputes between the two states, as a result of which Iraq planned to retake the eastern bank of the Shatt al-Arab that it had ceded to Iran in the 1975 Algiers Agreement. Iraqi support for Arab separatists in Iran increased following the outbreak of hostilities; Saddam disputedly may have wished to annex Iran's Arab-majority Khuzestan province.

While the Iraqi leadership had hoped to take advantage of Iran's post-revolutionary chaos and expected a decisive victory in the face of a severely weakened Iran, the Iraqi military only made progress for three months, and by December 1980, the Iraqi invasion had stalled. The Iranian military began to gain momentum against the Iraqis and regained all lost territory by June 1982. After pushing Iraqi forces back to the pre-war border lines, Iran rejected United Nations Security Council Resolution 514 and launched an invasion of Iraq. The subsequent Iranian offensive within Iraqi territory lasted for five years, with Iraq taking back the initiative in mid-1988 and subsequently launching a series of major counter-offensives that ultimately led to the conclusion of the war in a stalemate.

The eight years of war-exhaustion, economic devastation, decreased morale, military stalemate, inaction by the international community towards the use of weapons of mass destruction by Iraqi forces on Iranian soldiers and civilians, as well as increasing Iran–United States military tensions all culminated in Iran's acceptance of a ceasefire brokered by the United Nations Security Council. In total, around 500,000 people were killed during the Iran–Iraq War, with Iran bearing the larger share of the casualties, excluding the tens of thousands of civilians killed in the concurrent Anfal campaign that targeted Iraqi Kurdistan. The end of the conflict resulted in neither reparations nor border changes, and the combined financial losses suffered by both combatants is believed to have exceeded US$1 trillion.[55] There were a number of proxy forces operating for both countries: Iraq and the pro-Iraqi Arab separatist militias in Iran were most notably supported by the National Council of Resistance of Iran; whereas Iran re-established an alliance with the Iraqi Kurds, being primarily supported by the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. During the conflict, Iraq received an abundance of financial, political, and logistical aid from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, France, Italy, Yugoslavia, and the overwhelming majority of Arab countries. While Iran was comparatively isolated, it received a significant amount of aid from Syria, Libya, North Korea, China, South Yemen, Cuba, and Israel.

The conflict has been compared to World War I in terms of the tactics used by both sides, including large-scale trench warfare with barbed wire stretched across fortified defensive lines, manned machine-gun posts, bayonet charges, Iranian human wave attacks, Iraq's extensive use of chemical weapons, and deliberate attacks on civilian targets. The discourses on martyrdom formulated in the Iranian Shia Islamic context led to the widespread usage of human wave attacks and thus had a lasting impact on the dynamics of the conflict.[56]

  1. ^ Nimrod Raphaeli (11 February 2009). "The Iranian Roots of Hizbullah". MEMRI. Archived from the original on 11 February 2009.
  2. ^ "Memoires of Afghan volunteers in Iran–Iraq war published (tehrantimes.com)". 7 October 2018. Archived from the original on 17 June 2021. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  3. ^ "'Mohsen, the Japanese' chronicles life of Afghan volunteer fighter in Iran–Iraq war (tehrantimes.com)". 16 December 2020. Archived from the original on 7 February 2021. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  4. ^ "Iran's Shia Diplomacy: Religious and Foreign Policy in the Islamic Republic" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 6 July 2023. Retrieved 30 August 2023.
  5. ^ Shaery-Eisenlohr, Roschanack (2011). Shi'ite Lebanon: Transnational Religion and the Making of National Identities. Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231144278. Archived from the original on 27 April 2023. Retrieved 21 March 2023.
  6. ^ Williamson Murray, Kevin M. Woods (2014): The Iran–Iraq War. A Military and Strategic History. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-06229-0 p. 223
  7. ^ a b c "Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (Project Muse)". Archived from the original on 9 July 2022. Retrieved 30 August 2023.
  8. ^ Johnson, Rob (2010). The Iran–Iraq War. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1137267788.
  9. ^ Murray, Williamson; Woods, Kevin M. (2014). The Iran–Iraq War: A Military and Strategic History. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1107062290.
  10. ^ Entessar, Nader (2010). Kurdish Politics in the Middle East. Lanham: Lexington Books. p. 48. ISBN 9780739140390. OCLC 430736528. Throughout much of the 1980s, the KDPI received aid from the Ba'thi regime of Saddam Hussein, but Ghassemlou broke with Baghdad in 1988 after Iraq used chemical weapons against Kurds in Halabja and then forced Kurdish villagers to...
  11. ^ van Bruinessen, Martin (15 August 1986). The Naqshbandi Order as a Vehicle of Political Protest among the Kurds (With Some Comparative Notes on Indonesia). New Approaches in Islamic Studies. Jakarta: Indonesian Institute of Sciences. pp. 1–3. Archived from the original on 16 August 2023. Retrieved 19 July 2023 – via Academia.edu.
  12. ^ a b c d Middleton, Drew (4 October 1982). "Sudanese Brigades Could Provide Key Aid for Iraq; Military Analysis". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 8 December 2019. Retrieved 8 December 2019.
  13. ^ a b "Iraq–Iran war becoming Arab-Persian war? (The Christian Science Monitor)". The Christian Science Monitor. 5 February 1982. Archived from the original on 8 December 2019. Retrieved 8 December 2019.
  14. ^ "Jordan's call for volunteers to fight Iran misfires (The Christian Science Monitor)". The Christian Science Monitor. 11 February 1982. Archived from the original on 8 December 2019. Retrieved 8 December 2019.
  15. ^ Schenker, David Kenneth (2003). Dancing with Saddam: The Strategic Tango of Jordanian–Iraqi Relations (PDF). The Washington Institute for Near East Policy / Lexington Books. ISBN 0-7391-0649-X. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 January 2017.
  16. ^ "Jordanian Unit Going To Aid Iraq 6 Hussein Will Join Volunteer Force Fighting Iranians (The Washington Post)". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 8 December 2019. Retrieved 8 December 2019.
  17. ^ Dictionary of modern Arab history, Kegan Paul International 1998. ISBN 978-0710305053 p. 196.
  18. ^ "Iran–Iraq War Timeline. Part 1" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 September 2016.
  19. ^ Berridge, W.J. "Civil Uprisings in Modern Sudan: The 'Khartoum Springs' of 1964 and 1985", p. 136. Bloomsbury Academic, 2015
  20. ^ Mylroie, Laurie (1989). "Iraq's Changing Role in the Persian Gulf". Current History. 88 (535): 89–99. doi:10.1525/curh.1989.88.535.89. ISSN 0011-3530. JSTOR 45316185. S2CID 249695060. Archived from the original on 21 July 2023. Retrieved 21 July 2023.
  21. ^ "The 'beauty' and the horror of the Iran–Iraq war". BBC News. 26 September 2015. Archived from the original on 14 June 2018. Retrieved 21 July 2023.
  22. ^ Malovany, Pesach (2017). Wars of Modern Babylon: A History of the Iraqi Army from 1921 to 2003. University Press of Kentucky. p. 443. ISBN 9780813169453.
  23. ^ Coll, Steve (15 August 1990). "Saddam offers to conclude full peace with Iran". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 9 June 2023. Retrieved 8 June 2024.
  24. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Britannica Iran–Iraq War was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  25. ^ a b Pollack, p. 186.
  26. ^ a b c d Razoux, Pierre (2015). The Iran–Iraq War. Harvard University Press. pp. 515, 540. ISBN 978-0674915718. Archived from the original on 17 February 2023. Retrieved 29 January 2023.
  27. ^ Farrokh, Kaveh, 305 (2011)
  28. ^ Pollack, p. 187.
  29. ^ Farrokh, Kaveh, 304 (2011)
  30. ^ "The state of the air combat readiness of Iran ... • corporal_historian_23". Archived from the original on 2 October 2018. Retrieved 9 December 2018.
  31. ^ Pollack, p. 232.
  32. ^ Cordesman, Anthony H. The Lessons of Modern War: The Iran–Iraq War. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990. Chapter 10: "In fact, Iraq had captured so much equipment that it was able to put on an incredible show on the outskirts of Baghdad. Rather than include all of Iraq's gains, it included the equipment that could either be used immediately or be easily reconditioned. Iraqi sources claimed that since March, Iraq had captured a total of 1,298 tanks, 155 armored infantry fighting vehicles, 512 heavy artillery weapons, 6,196 mortars, 5,550 recoilless rifles and light guns, 8,050 rocket propelled grenades, 60,694 rifles, 322 pistols, 6,156 telecommunications devices, 501 items of heavy engineering equipment, 454 trucks, 1,600 light vehicles and trailers, 16,863 items of chemical defense gear, and 16,863 caskets... After its recent defeats, Iran was virtually defenseless in the south. It was down to less than 200 tanks."
  33. ^ a b c d Razoux, Pierre (2015). The Iran–Iraq War. Harvard University Press. pp. 543–544. ISBN 978-0674915718. Archived from the original on 17 February 2023. Retrieved 29 January 2023.
  34. ^ Pollack, p. 3.
  35. ^ a b c d Hiro, Dilip (1991). The Longest War: The Iran–Iraq Military Conflict. New York: Routledge. p. 205. ISBN 978-0-415-90406-3. OCLC 22347651.
  36. ^ a b c Rajaee, Farhang (1997). Iranian Perspectives on the Iran–Iraq War. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-8130-1476-0. OCLC 492125659.
  37. ^ a b c Mikaberidze, Alexander (2011). Conflict and Conquest in the Islamic World: A Historical Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. p. 418. ISBN 978-1-59884-336-1. OCLC 775759780.
  38. ^ Hammond Atlas of the 20th Century (1999), pp. 134–135.
  39. ^ Dunnigan, A Quick and Dirty Guide to War (1991)
  40. ^ Dictionary of Twentieth Century World History, by Jan Palmowski (Oxford, 1997)
  41. ^ Clodfelter, Micheal, Warfare and Armed Conflict: A Statistical Reference to Casualty and Other Figures, 1618–1991
  42. ^ Chirot, Daniel: Modern Tyrants : the power and prevalence of evil in our age (1994)
  43. ^ "B&J": Jacob Bercovitch and Richard Jackson, International Conflict : A Chronological Encyclopedia of Conflicts and Their Management 1945–1995 (1997), p. 195.
  44. ^ a b Abrahamian, Ervand (2008). A History of Modern Iran. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 171–175, 212. ISBN 978-0511984402. OCLC 171111098.
  45. ^ a b c Potter, Lawrence G.; Sick, Gary (2006). Iran, Iraq and the Legacies of War. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 8. ISBN 978-1-4039-7609-3. OCLC 70230312.
  46. ^ a b Zargar, Moosa; Araghizadeh, Hassan; Soroush, Mohammad Reza; Khaji, Ali (December 2012). "Iranian casualties during the eight years of Iraq–Iran conflict". Revista de Saúde Pública. 41 (6). São Paulo: Faculdade de Higiene e Saúde Pública da Universidade de São Paulo: 1065–1066. doi:10.1590/S0034-89102007000600025. ISSN 0034-8910. OCLC 4645489824. PMID 18066475.
  47. ^ a b c Hiro, Dilip (1991). The Longest War: The Iran–Iraq Military Conflict. New York: Routledge. p. 251. ISBN 978-0-415-90406-3. OCLC 22347651.
  48. ^ Rumel, Rudolph. "Centi-Kilo Murdering States: Estimates, Sources, and Calculations". Power Kills. University of Hawai'i. Archived from the original on 11 October 2017. Retrieved 26 March 2019.
  49. ^ a b c Karsh, Efraim (2002). The Iran–Iraq War, 1980–1988. Oxford, England: Osprey Publishing. p. 89. ISBN 978-1-84176-371-2. OCLC 48783766.
  50. ^ Koch, Christian; Long, David E. (1997). Gulf Security in the Twenty-First Century. Abu Dhabi: Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research. p. 29. ISBN 978-1-86064-316-3. OCLC 39035954.
  51. ^ Black, Ian (23 September 2010). "Iran and Iraq remember war that cost more than a million lives". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2 January 2017. Retrieved 14 December 2016.
  52. ^ Rumel, Rudolph. "Lesser Murdering States, Quasi-States, and Groups: Estimates, Sources, and Calculations". Power Kills. University of Hawai'i. Archived from the original on 4 October 2012. Retrieved 16 May 2012.
  53. ^ Sinan, Omar (25 June 2007). "Iraq to hang 'Chemical Ali'". Tampa Bay Times. Associated Press. Archived from the original on 17 October 2015. Retrieved 9 February 2013.
  54. ^ Pfetsch & Rohloff 2013, p. 154.
  55. ^ Riedel, Bruce (2012). "Foreword". Becoming Enemies: U.S.–Iran Relations and the Iran–Iraq War, 1979–1988. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. ix. ISBN 978-1-4422-0830-8. The Iran–Iraq War was devastating—one of the largest and longest conventional interstate wars since the Korean conflict ended in 1953. A half million lives were lost, perhaps another million were injured, and the economic cost was over a trillion dollars. ... the battle lines at the end of the war were almost exactly where they were at the beginning of hostilities. It was also the only war in modern times in which chemical weapons were used on a massive scale. ... The Iranians call the war the 'imposed war' because they believe the United States imposed it on them and orchestrated the global 'tilt' toward Iraq in the war.
  56. ^ Gölz, "Martyrdom and Masculinity in Warring Iran. The Karbala Paradigm, the Heroic, and the Personal Dimensions of War." Archived 17 May 2019 at the Wayback Machine, Behemoth 12, no. 1 (2019): 35–51, 35.


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).
Cite error: There are <ref group=note> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=note}} template (see the help page).

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.