Iran-Iraq War

From 1980-1988, Iran and Iraq founght a long, bloody, and almost pointless war, and the outside European powers stayed away. What an odd event, in the middle of so much else that was happening in the Middle East!

Bernard Lewis deals with this event on pages 368-369 of The Middle East: a Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years. Since I'm betting that question #4 about the Iranian Revolution of 1979 will be on Tuesday's final exam, and I'm sure the Iran-Iraq war was significantly impacted by this revolution, I thought I'd get a running start by attempting to answer this question: What was the Iran-Iraq war all about, and how was it influenced by the Iranian Revolution of 1979? How's THAT for an ambitious Saturday morning endeavor?
The Middle East has been convulsed since World War II with the ongoing "Arab-Israel war", as Lewis calls it. The "outside powers" (i.e., Europeans) had so much at stake, and these battles were so devastating and dangerous, that all attention was riveted on what happened in this arena. Meanwhile, Iraq invaded Iran, and nobody seemed to care!

As Lewis says on page 368, "Unlike the Arabs and Israelis, neither side could command any strong international support - if anything, the contrary, since both regimes had aroused powerful antagonisms in the outside world. Neither the powers nor the international bodies seemed disposed to make any great effort or take any great risk to bring the fighting to an end. The result was a conflict which lasted longer than the Second World War and which, in its toll of death and destruction, greatly exceeded all the Arab-Israel wars put together."

The war "began" when Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded the Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran. Although personally the war was a confrontation between two charismatic leaders, Khomeini and Hussein, actually the issues were more complex:

• Ethnically - the war was between Persians and Arabs.
• Ideologically - the war was between Islamic revivalism and secular modernism. (Lewis says that Saddam later changed his mind about this, but I have no idea what he means!)
• Religiously - the war was a sectarian battle between the Shï'a and the Sunni.
• Economically - the war was over who would control the region's oil resources.
• Politically - the war was a "quarrel over territory and a struggle for regional hegemony".

Lewis points out a remarkable fact: both the Iranians and Iraqis were patriotically loyal to their countries, and to the governments that ruled them. This is quite significant when one realizes Iran included a significant portion of Sunnis, and Iraq include many Shï'a (as recent events in Iraq show us all too well!).

As I mentioned before, the most significant fact at the time is that the outside powers did not want to get involved. The effect was significant. "Impeded by neither domestic nor international pressures, nor yet - since both were oil exporters - by serious finanacial constratin, the two sides were able to pursue their mutually destructive war for eight years." (p. 368)

Although Iran successfully defended against the attack, and went on to invade Iraq, on p. 369 Lewis says that "The Iraqis, with significant intelligence and logistical support from the United States and financial support from the wealthier Arab states, were in turn able to halt the attack and eventually Iran was compelled to agree to a peace which left Iraq in a slightly better position." SO - the "outside powers" means only the European powers, for clearly the US and our allies were aids to Iraq during this war. How ironic, of course, that we should prop up Saddam in one decade, and destroy him just two decades later...

Next Lewis compares the invasion of Iran with the invasion of Kuwait, and evaluates Hussein's political and military assumptions and mistakes. "In attacking Iran, he calculated - rightly - that neither regional nor outside powers would lift a finger in support of a revolutionary regime that had both outraged and alarmed them. He also calculated - wrongly - that the invasion of Iran at a time of revolutionary upheaval would be quick and easy." Lewis goes on to say that the balance of strategic calculations was reversed in the invasion of Kuwait: "In his invasion of Kuwait ten years later, the balance of correct and incorrect calculation was the other way round. His military calculation that the invasion and annexation of Kuwait would be quick and easy was correct. His political assumption, that the regional powers would be supportive or at least acquiescent and that outside powers would not go beyond some perfunctory and ineffectual protest was, from his point of view, disastrously mistaken." And today we live with those results.

So, thus ends this mornings historical meanderings. I'm not sure this little exercise actually helped me prepare for my exam, but it seemed better to put this in writing than to make more hand-written notes that will be hard to decipher later! And, with a little bit of luck, I can copy-and-paste at least part of this response into my exam! Such is the beauty of the computer, with the assistance of the Internet.

Parenthetically, I'll add that the Iranians are currently trying to cut off or shut down or kick out the Internet usage in their country. One of the results is a dearth of DSL, and the death of high-speed internet. Another, no doubt, is the inspiration of technological creativity and innovation on the part of those Iranians who seek to know more, and to be more, than the current regime is ready to allow. History will play out this drama, and next generation's students will study what happened.

In re-reading what I've written, I realize I haven't even attempted to answer the second half of my self-imposed question: How was the Iran-Iraq war influenced by the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Well, I guess I did, indirectly, by showing that, as the description of Saddam's calculations shows, it encouraged him to suppose he could be successful in such an endeavor. I'm betting also that it was in fact a deterrent, because the Iranians were just recently "revolutionized", and undoubtedly still had that fervor, and were not yet worn down, as they were later to be.